ABSTRACT
A f r i c a n Americans, w i t h an eye to the C i v i l War's potential to become a war for freedom, were among the first to volunteer to serve in the U n i o n A r m y i n 1861. But a law dating from 1812 barred blacks f rom service in the U.S. military, and President L i n c o l n and others sti l l held that the C i v i l War was a conflict between whites over the fate of the U n i o n . Those opposed to A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n enlistment clearly understood that one consequence of blacks' f ighting for the U n i o n w o u l d be a major step toward racial equality. So, too, d i d abolitionists like Frederick Douglass. " O n c e let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S . , " he said, " a n d a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to cit izenship." H e was right: beginning in 1863, blacks d i d fight for the U n i o n , helping to destroy slavery and the Confederacy, giving the United States a new birth of freedom after the war was over.
