Black Union soldiers turned the war to save the Union into an anti-slavery war

Evidence

The Colonel told state senators in Rhode Island and newspaper editors in New York City that freedmen in attack on rebel breastworks make the war to save the Union an anti-slavery war. McClellan lost command. The might of Lincoln’s arithmetic abides: the Union plus two hundred thousand black warriors will equal liberty. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 745

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader reframing thesis: black military service was the mechanism by which a preservationist war became emancipationist — echoes the origin-story-as-infrastructure frame the reader is tracking. — connects to: Black Civil War service marked blacks as loyal Americans unlike other ‘foreigners’ — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 540