I am trying to understand why black men fought in the American Civil War. The first thing that comes to mind is why would they want to be involved? If a battle or even the war was won, it did not mean that blacks were going to be freed. Freeing the slaves wasn't even an agenda for Lincoln until toward the end of the war. Black men even fought for the South, which is just mind-blowing. Why did they do it?
They were told that they would become citizens if they fought. Some of them were forced into the war by their "masters" so that they could still serve them while they fought. Those reasons and Fredrick Douglas had made it clear that they were ready and they would go, and he was a famous leader at that time. They couldn't even legally fight until the war was already started, so it felt like a privilege for them to fight when they were allowed to. I guess like now, there are different reasons for everybody.
