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

separate Black army with its own "captains, colonels, generals" to "strike for our
own liberty." Delany campaigned for and finally won Lincoln's approval for a
"corps d' Afrique ." Delany's inspiration for the "corps d' Afrique" was the
Zouaves d' Afrique, a division of African combatants who served the French in
the Algierian War. Lincoln appointed Delany to the rank of major and sanctioned
his plan to organize "an army of forty thousand blacks . . .commanded entirely by
blacks ." Delany won this approval too late as the war ended before he could
establish his African corps in Black-majority South Carolina ." Nationalists like
Delany and Turner may have envisioned the development of autonomous Black
regiments into a permanent fighting force for Black liberation under a Black
command . The tradition of Black armed resistance not only continued through
Black participation in the Union military, but through insurrectionary conspiracies
by enslaved Africans and maroon guerilla warfare . In each of the states which
sanctioned forced Black labor, there were attempts to rebel through insurrection-
ary violence from 1861 to 1864 . In Mississippi alone, Aptheker reports four
insurrectionary conspiracies during the Civil War years in Adams, Jefferson,
Yazoo, and Amite counties . Confederate forces engaged in conflict with maroons
aligned at times with Confederate deserters and Union forces in Virginia, Ala-
bama, and Florida." The potential of Black insurrection and maroon guerilla
warfare posed a serious military problem for the Confederates . The rebellious
enslaved African and the insurgent maroon represented a fifth column which
could bring significant damage to the Confederacy if unattended .
After the Civil War, Black soldiers continued their role as fighters for
Black liberation . The presence of Black troops served as an inspiration to the