In March 1863 Frederick Douglass issued an emphatic call to African Americans. He wrote, I urge you to fly to arms and smite with death the power that would bury the government and your liberty in the same hopeless grave. African Americans were anxious to join the fight.
An act of Congress made it legal. It declared for ever free the soldier that enlisted. So if you enlisted, you were forever free.
Also, it said that your mother, your wife, and your children were forever free. Trading shackles for uniforms, the lash for the gun. At last, African Americans were able to fight for their own people.
The opportunity to fight on the side of the Union for former slaves as well as for free blacks was seen as a real opportunity to prove themselves as men. Mom, move up. Douglas'own son. Charles and Lewis enlisted. General Butler mustered the very first African American Federal regiments into service, the first and the second Louisiana native.
What Butler says about these soldiers is noteworthy. He said, better soldiers never shouldered a musket. They are intelligent, obedient, and they hold their position in high esteem.
They really like being soldiers at this point. As recruits rushed to join the Union Army, a new private named Gordon revealed an enduring indictment of slavery. Gordon escaped from a plantation in Mississippi and traveled more than a week to eventually find safety in a Union camp in Louisiana. He decided that he wanted to enlist in the Army, and he had a medical exam. And when he took off his shirt, the doctors saw the extraordinary beating that he had endured.
There was a photographer in the camp at that time. And pictures of Gordon immediately circulated. The graphic image shocked the nation. Abolitionists like Frederick Douglass would point to this image and to Gordon's story as proof that the peculiar institution of slavery was not a benign institution at all.
One, one. Black soldiers already knew what was at stake, and they responded. One, two. It's a battle like the 54th Massachusetts famed assault on South Carolina's North Valley, attested to the bravery of African-American troops and inspired more to enlist. The Confederates were outraged to find former slaves staring down the barrel of a Yankee gun.