The Civil War began in 1861. At that time there were approximately four million African Americans living in the US. While there were almost half a million free African Americans at that time, most were still enslaved.
The Emancipation Proclamation, proposed by President Lincoln, promised freedom, but only after the war.
Many Black and white abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and New York Times Editor Horace Greeley, had long implored the President to free the enslaved. But, while Lincoln's personal view was that all people everywhere should be free, his main objective was the preservation of the Union.
In a letter to the President, Douglass famously proclaimed:
"Once let the Black man get upon his person the brass letters ‘US’, let him get an eagle his button, a musket upon his shoulder, and bullets in his pockets and there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned his right to citizenship in the United States".
"Once let the Black man get upon his person the brass letters ‘US’, let him get an eagle his button, a musket upon his shoulder, and bullets in his pockets and there is no power on earth that can deny that he has earned his right to citizenship in the United States".
But Lincoln would not allow Blacks to fight until it became clear
