Participation Of Blacks In The Civil War
...of the war. Blacks in America had been in bondage since early colonial times. In 1776, when Jefferson proclaimed mankind's inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the institution of slavery had become firmly established in America. Blacks worked in the tobacco fields of Virginia, in the rice fields of South Carolina, and toiled in small farms and shops in the North. The Library of Congress stated that "In 1776, slaves composed forty percent of the population of the colonies from Maryland south to Georgia, but well below ten percent in the colonies to the North." The fact that African Americans made up a majority of the American population during the 1800's had a definite role in the Civil war.
The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 provided a demand for cotton thus increasing the demand for slaves (Horton). By the 1800's slavery was a foundation throughout the South, a foundation in which slaves had few rights, and could be sold or rented by their owners. They lacked any voice in the government and lived a life of hardship.
Considering these circumstances, the slave population never deserted the desire for freedom or the determination to refuse to accept control by the slave owners. The slave's reaction to this desire and determination resulted in uprisings and individual acts of defiance. Still, some people place the strongest reaction in the enlisting of blacks into the war. Individual acts of defiance ranged from the use of the Underground Railroad, a secret organized network of people who helped slaves reach the Northern states and Canada; to the daily resistance or sabotage found on the plantations. Wilson agrees with the existence of the Underground Railroad but disagrees with other historians as to its importance. He notes that it never became as well organized or as successful as the South believed...
View Full Essay
