Contrabands Join The Union Cause
Many contraband slaves and free blacks voluntarily served in the Union Army, forming the U.S. Colored Troops (USCT). Some also became scouts, guides, spies, cooks, hospital workers, blacksmiths, and mule-drivers, contributing immensely to the Union war effort for the balance of the Civil War. Numerous Union officers became more aware of both the potential and plight of the contrabands, and worked for and made contributions to educational efforts for them, even after the War.
See also: Samuel Chapman Armstrong and William Jackson PalmerRead more about this topic: Grand Contraband Camp
Famous quotes containing the words join and/or union:
“When we start deceiving ourselves into thinking not that we want something or need something, not that it is a pragmatic necessity for us to have it, but that it is a moral imperative that we have it, then is when we join the fashionable madmen, and then is when the thin whine of hysteria is heard in the land, and then is when we are in bad trouble.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)