Army Quote by Frederick Douglass

There are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers , but…

— Frederick Douglass

There are at present many Coloured men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and labourers, but real soldiers, having…

— Frederick Douglass

“The fact remains that women and children were left vulnerable to sickness and disease, manipulative slaveholders, and even apathetic Union officers during the Civil…

— Jim Downs

Every time I look at Atlanta I see what a quarter of a million Confederate soldiers died to prevent.

— John Shelton Reed

A major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes, with or without their consent…They are being conscripted.

— John A. Logan

“The fear had precedent. Toward the end of the Civil War, having witnessed the effectiveness of the Union's 'colored troops,' a flailing Confederacy began…

— Ta-Nehisi Coates

“Whatever the reason for enlisting, by 1865 the Union had sworn in 2,128,948 men, approximately one-third of the military-age male population of the northern…

— Allen C. Guelzo

Officers in command of colored troops are in constant habit of pressing all able-bodied slaves into the military service of the U.S.

— Lovell Rousseau

In the beginning of the war, Southern women wanted their men to leave - in droves, and as quickly as possible. They were the…

— Karen Abbott

In the 1950s, the black men and women and their white allies who fought for civil rights and basic human dignity could look to…

— Joy Reid

We must have black troops, and a limitless number of them too - paid and treated like their white brothers.

— Benjamin Lincoln

“Our government seemed to expect the same of them as of white men. Poor Negroes! They are hopelessly inferior. . . . If you…

— Joseph E. Persico