Реферат: From Oppressed Slaves To Champion Soldiers Essay

plunged our souls into new and unfathomed depths of sin, to conciliate the favor and

secure the loyalty of the slave – holding class. We have hated and persecuted the

Negro we have scourged him out of the temple of justice by the Dred Scott decision we

have shot and hanged his friends at Harper’s Ferry we have enacted laws for his further

degradation, and even to expel him from the borders of some of our States we have

joined in the infernal chase to hunt him down like a beast, and fling him into the hell of

slavery we have repealed and trampled upon laws designed to prevent the spread of

slavery and in a thousand ways given to increase the power and ascendancy of slavery

! over all departments of Government and now, as our reward, this slave-holding power

comes with sword, gun, and cannon to take the life of the nation and overthrow the

great American Government (Long 26). “There is no more moving and telling an

expression of the Black’s view of the Civil War than this” (Long 26).

On April 15, Lincoln called for Union troops to regain the fort. The South regarded the

move as a declaration of war. Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee soon

joined the Confederacy.

Virginia had long been undecided about which side to join. Its decision to join the

Confederacy boosted Southern morale. Richmond, Virginia’s capital, became the capital

of the Confederacy in May.

It is ironic that only a few days before Fort Sumter was attacked, Douglass had agreed

to make a trip to Haiti to investigate the possibility of emigration there by free Blacks

at the invitation of the Haitian government. He had always been a strong foe of

emigration and repatriation schemes, but the increasingly hostile environments for

Blacks in the United States and the growing power of the slave-holders in the

government worried him into exploring the option of emigration. (Long 27).

When the Civil War began, about 22 million people lived in the North. About 9 million

people, including 3.5 million slaves, lived in the South. The North had around 4 million

men from 15 through 40 years old – the approximate age range for combat duty. The

South had only about 1 million white men from 15 through 40. The north began to use

black soldiers in 1863. The South did not decide to use blacks as soldiers until the