Black battlefield sacrifice converted colonization advocates by challenging their policy premise

Evidence

Catholic publicist Orestes A. Brownson had been one of many powerful Americans advocating emancipation as a war measure and colonization as a postwar measure, and he had advised Lincoln accordingly in 1862. After Fort Wagner, Brownson had to admit that the “negro, having shed his blood in defense of the country, has the right to regard it as his country. And hence deportation or forced colonization is henceforth out of the question.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 602

Categorization

• XREF: A case where a concrete event and moral claim (blood shed = citizenship) overturned an existing racist policy — useful for testing whether ideas ever precede policy against Kendi’s inversion.