Free Essay on African-Americans in the Civil War

How many African-Americans were brought to the United States for the purpose of slavery?

Starting in 1619, 12.5 million African-Americans were taken from their families and homes, and only 10.7 million of them survived, they were brought to the plantations and harshly treated by the owners. In the new and cruel country, they were looking towards a greater future for themselves and their families. The methods African-Americans used by which they fought for their freedom were helping the Northern side by enlisting in the army, becoming cooks, merchants and more, over one-hundred-thousand ex-slaves, fought on the Union lines with over five-hundred-thousand fleeing their plantations to help the Northern region of the United States win the war. African-Americans have fought during the Civil War for freedom and fair treatment throughout the country. In 1862, Frederick Douglass stated that “Negroes have repeatedly threaded their way through the lines of the rebels, exposing themselves to bullets to convey important information to the loyal army of the Potomac”. In the quote, Frederick Douglass means that African-Americans helped the Potomac army in the American Civil War by conveying important information and therefore earning their freedom later on by winning the American Civil War. African-Americans have helped the armies fight in many dangerous ways for a common goal, the freeing of all of the African-Americans across the United States, therefore stopping slavery.

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Through various methods by which the slaves fought in the Civil War, they were able to earn their freedom in the United States of America. On January 1, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, making roughly 3 million slaves legally free. Both of the regions, Southern States and the Northern States, used African-Americans in the war. The Southern states used slaves for slave labor, meanwhile, the Northern region used African-Americans as military volunteers and for wage labor. The African-Americans in the Civil War worked as soldiers, nurses, cooks, and blacksmiths. Therefore, they were a big part of the success of the Northern side of the United States.

Throughout African-Americans’ lives before and during the Civil War, they believed that the pursuit of happiness, life, and liberty did not fit in with the principle of slavery. By constantly fighting for their freedom, they have made a major breakthrough; with the creation of the Emancipation Proclamation along with the 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution, slaves were finally beginning to acquire more rights in the country of the United States of America, which the Southerners did not like, as the slaves were the backbone of their economy. With the creation of the 13th Amendment, most of the slaves were freed with some states still revolting. Two and a half years later, after the creation of the 13th Amendment, the slaves in Texas were informed that they were free. By the continuous push for freedom from the Northern side of the United States and the African-Americans, this country is the strongest and the most united in the world. Today, people all over the world come to the United States because they recognize what the country had done for the people, turning the cruel slave-dependent country to the most powerful and one of the safest countries in the world. For a long time, African-Americans have fought for the freedom they deserved. No human in the world should be treated as cruel and as mean as the slaves were, torn apart from families, beaten and made to work in the sun for long and exhausting hours.