Historic+Event


 * __Black Soldiers in the Civil War__**

//"Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letter, U.S., let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship." - Frederick Douglass//

Hypocrisy in our society is a very common concept, some of the biggest hypocrites of our American history could be thought of as far back as the very people who were fighting to preserve the Union and were in need of more men to fight, yet after the attack on Fort Sumter by the Confederates so many black men offered to help fight in the war; they were willing to offer their lives at a time when not even President Abraham Lincoln had announced that the war was a battle for slavery. Congress debated over the fact that black men had long been banned from "bearing arms for the U.S. army," yet in the American Revolution and other specific wars African-American men were used for combat.

Black men were not allowed into war for a while but as soon as the Emancipation Proclamation was announced in 1863 black men were now being recruited to join the Union in their effort to preserve the United States of America and to free all slaves. Yet, these very men fighting for the freedom of black men segregated the African-American combats. Black men were promised by Congress equal treatment and pay as white soldiers but yet black men were paid $10 a month and $3 of their pay was taken for clothing and other such equipment while white men were paid $13 a month and were not obliged to pay for any other expenses. African-American men made 10% of the Union’s soldiers but they were segregated, and suffered so much more than an average soldier.

Nevertheless, Huckleberry Finn is an excellent tool in being a critique of the American public during the middle and end of the American Civil War. The Union was fighting for a free land but what was a free land when the very Northerners who were fighting for African-Americans freedom treated them like trash. Northerners were hypocrites they fought and fought for the freedom of slaves yet they viewed them as less than white people. What is a free country when not even the people that want freedom are being honest? A country like that is the exact definition of what Mark Twain disliked and what he so harshly criticized with Huck helping Jim.

Just like Huck who appeared to be helping Jim his thoughts were thinking the worst. Huck felt that to do the right thing he needed to turn Jim into his owner. That is the only difference of Huck and the northerners, because Huck was taught that he was to believe that blacks were property but these northerners, they knew or said to know that blacks were free men just like whites. Yet when black men tried to help and fight for their freedom they were segregated and paid less. Black men were not defended like they had been promised. Northerners abused their power, because they claimed to be people who believed in a free and just America but when it came down to it they treated blacks like garbage. Blacks were forced to give their lives to gain nothing more but abuse from people who claimed to be people of fairness.