The American Civil War was ridiculous but definitely something I feel was inevitable (some historians may disagree with me). The Union fought to abolish slavery and the Confederacy was for it, obviously. But something I thought that was interesting in class that Professor O’Malley mentioned was that African Americans fought with the Confederacy. What? Really? That’s like a homosexual nowadays voting for Trump, right? Trump and his VP candidate is so against LGBT rights so why would anyone in their right minds vote for someone who is fighting against their rights; very frustrating. I never would have thought of African Americans fighting with the South but I guess it could have happened, and I’m sure it did. But why?
A thought I had on why Africans would fight with the South is because they were slaves and forced to fight. Maybe they didn’t want to but since they were property and owned, they had no other choice. Or maybe they joined intentionally and when it came to a battle against the North, they could escape away and join the Union. BUT since there was not much evidence of this, it is hard to come up with any outcomes as to why this happened. If they did fight to keep slavery, there is no other word to describe except self-hating.
While searching for photos (“African Americans Confederate”) on Google, I took a glance at a few articles written about the subject. One of the titles claimed that thousands of African Americans served in the Confederate Army, at least 750,000, maybe even 800,000. At first I was shocked that so many African Americans made up that much of the Confederate Army but read the article and saw that they only made up less than 1%. I feel that is something that is misconstrued and people could take differently than what the article had intended.
Something that also threw me off a little was when it was mentioned that Lincoln did not want the slaves to fight with the Union for their rights. Yes, he wanted to abolish slavery and that is seen in the Emancipation Proclamation and his famous Gettysburg Address “Four score and seven years ago…”, you know the story. We learned about it in 4th grade BUT again, we were not told that Lincoln did not want slaves to fight for their own rights. But why?
*AFTER GOOGLING AN ANSWER TO THE ABOVE QUESTION*
While searching for an answer, I came across an article called “5 Things You May Not Know About Lincoln, Slavery, and the Emancipation Proclamation (EP) ” by History.com. This is obviously one of the most well-known credible history resources so I trust what they say. I can’t speak for anyone else but I had always assumed Lincoln was all for equality and believed we should all live in harmony. But that’s not the case. It is said in the article that he did not believe black and white people should share the same rights, that he wasn’t an abolitionist (but believed it was “morally wrong”), and that the EP did not set all the slaves free. So I got my answer, and then some. Lincoln did not allow slaves to fight because they were black but also did not agree with the idea of slavery. What a confusing man.
On a side note, this is something that I still do believe happens in our society today. Or in a way. As an LGBT youth, there is so much prejudice within our culture and the standards of finding that perfect “someone”. Yes, we claim we are not racists because we don’t shoot black people just because of their skin color or because we have other black friends. BUT it is racist when we choose not to be involved with someone because they are black but claim it’s just a “preference”. Like what? If you’re intentionally not attracted to someone because they are black, it’s not a preference, it’s racism.