Secondary Source
“A majority of black Union soldiers were former slaves, particularly from the border slave states, who fought to gain their own and their families’ freedom since they were excluded from the purview of the Proclamation. In taking up arms against the Confederacy, black soldiers helped make emancipation a reality.
. . . Black service in the Union Army and Navy [also] became a powerful argument for African American citizenship and equality. Though they served in segregated regiments and units as the United States Colored Troops, black soldiers and their abolitionist and radical allies in Congress waged a successful battle for equal pay and access to officer ranks. Around 180,000 black men served in the Union Army and another 20,000 in the Union Navy. Black heroism and daring in the battles of Fort Wagner, Milliken’s Bend, and Port Hudson convinced some skeptical northerners of the wisdom of emancipation. The exploits of former slave Robert Smalls of South Carolina, who delivered a Confederate battleship to Union hands and was destined to become a leading black politician during Reconstruction, was widely read about in the North.”
- Manisha Sinha, Historian, “Allies for Emancipation? Black Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln,” 2008