Eye for an Eye: The Role of Armed Resistance ... - Freedom Archives

The same year abolitionist and fugitive Frederick Douglass also spoke to a
Philadelphia audience of the importance of arms to securing that liberation of his
brothers and sisters in bondage. Once an advocate of moral slavery, who opposed
the call for armed Black insurrection issued by Henry Highland Garnet, Douglass
realized the American Civil War with armed Blacks in Union uniforms could
fundamentally change how whites viewed Black humanity. In his unique and
dynamic style, Douglass wrote that learning the use of arms was to :
. ..(B)ecome familiar with the means of securing, protecting, and
defending your own liberty . . .When it is found that Black men can
give blows as well as take them, men will find more congenial
employment than pounding them.'
Black participation in the war as combatants was motivated by the collec-
tive desire for liberation and personal wishes to free relatives and friends and even
retaliation against their personal slavers. In some cases Black soldiers used their
guns to raid the plantations of their former masters . In many cases Black Union
combatants helped to free spouses, lovers, children, and other family members
and friends from bondage . Newly freed Black communities realized the day of
"Jubilee" was here . These actions make it clear Black Union regiments were seen
as a liberation army to people ofAfrican descent . After Union forces seized
Wilmington, North Carolina ; one Black Union soldier commented :
Men, Women, old and young, were running through the streets,
shouting and praising God . . .We could truly see what we had been
fighting for, and could almost realize the fruits of our labors . . . We
have been instruments in liberating some five hundred of our