![]() ![]() A desperate Washington openly recruited Fleetwood and his fellow African-Americans into the Northern ranks, though at unequal pay and with inferior provisions and assignments. `` `This is a white man's war' met the Negroes at every step of their first efforts to gain admission to the Armies of the Union," Fleetwood wrote.Īll that changed in 1863 after staggering Union losses at Gettysburg. Its reticence reinforced Fleetwood's ambition: to emigrate to the African nation of Liberia. Whether or not slaves were emancipated, Christian Fleetwood didn't think he'd get a chance to make a difference in the Civil War - or ever get a fair shake in the supposed Land of the Free.Ī 23-year-old writer, choirmaster, and shipping clerk in Baltimore, Fleetwood was disgusted by the North's initial reluctance to accept black soldiers to fight the South. Uncommon Valor: A Story of Race, Patriotism, and Glory in the Final Battles of the Civil War, Melvin Claxton and Mark Puls, John Wiley & Sons Inc., 231 pp., $24.95 ![]()
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