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Btw, for everyone who would like to think of the Civil War as more than its White generals: Let's talk about how 250,000 Black men fought for the Union Army. Of these, 96,000 were refugees from Southern plantations and 154,000 were from the free Black population...
...Here's what's amazing about that, the entire free Black population was 400,000 people. Assuming about half of them to be women, that means 200,000 free Black males yielded 154,000 Union volunteers...
...This means that 75% of all free Black males volunteered to fight. I haven't even excluded the elderly and children. Basically, every free, fighting age Black man with two functional arms and two functional legs put on the blue uniform, again, all volunteers...
...I'm no expert on military history, but, my suspicion is that for a community to voluntarily send 75% of its male population into battle is without precedent, equal or superior in the entire long history of warfare. Let's talk about that. Where are their statues?...
...I don't want to slight the 96,000 either. Future South Carolina Congressman Robert Smalls famously escaped slavery by stealing the CSS Planter out of Charleston Harbor, skirting confederate patrols, and turning it over to the Union at Port Royal...
...Harriet Tubman became the first woman to lead American soldiers in 1863 during a raid on the Combahee river in South Carolina. Interestingly, Richard Wright's grandfather and Carter G. Woodson's father both left slavery to fight the Confederacy...
...The story of James Henry Woodson is particularly interesting. James was an enslaved carpenter and was allowed a great deal freedom due to his skill. One day, after becoming particularly sick of his "owner," Woodson found out there was a Union army detachment nearby...
...James approached the detachment and convinced a few of the soldiers to accompany him to his "owner's," plantation, where the soldiers tied up Woodson's "owner," and whipped him with his own bullwhip. After which James went and joined the army...
...Which I, being me, find to be a rather fitting liberation story for the father of the father of Black history.
...I say all this by way of saying, that Lee, Grant, Jackson, Sherman and all your other epauletted White men are, objectively, the least interesting parts of the civil war.
“See, there above the center, where the flag is waving bright,
We are going out of slavery; we're bound for freedom's light;
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight,
As we go marching on! Glory, glory hallelujah (x3)As we go marching on!”...
We are going out of slavery; we're bound for freedom's light;
We mean to show Jeff Davis how the Africans can fight,
As we go marching on! Glory, glory hallelujah (x3)As we go marching on!”...
...“We have done with hoeing cotton, we have done with hoeing corn, We are colored Yankee soldiers, now, as sure as you are born; When the masters hear us yelling, they'll think it's Gabriel's horn, As we go marching on!”-46th regiment US Colored Troops
