Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Taylor, Brian

Titel

A Politics of Service: Black Northerners’ Debates over Enlistment in the American Civil War

Ist Teil von

• Civil War history, 2012-12, Vol.58 (4), p.451-480

Ort / Verlag

Kent: The Kent State University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

Project MUSE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• African Americans' shifting attitudes toward military service and their complicated concerns about citizenship are investigated. Taylor, recognizing that black northerners did not see enlistment as a foregone conclusion, carefully follows the debate between black northerners who advocated immediate enlistment and those who argued that black men should wait until guaranteed rights commensurated with full manhood and citizenship before enlisting. "In this debate," Taylor contends, "black northerners articulated a politics of service that sought to use enlistment as a bargaining chip for the attainment of expanded rights and privileges--and through this politics of service, they evinced that they fought not to restore the old Union but to usher in a new, reformed one in which they would be treated as men and citizens."