The Home of the Brave
The Home of the Brave
The end of slavery reverberated through the North no less than the South. From the start of the war, black leaders in the free states had hoped to complete the uneven process of gradual emancipation that had been unfolding there since the Revolutionary War. They foresaw an end to the discriminatory laws and practices that compromised their citizenship and denied the elective franchise to most Northern black men. When the War Department began enlisting black soldiers, recruits soon encountered discrimination in the army and began to protest. Meanwhile, their families and other supporters at home leveraged the men's service to challenge all distinctions based on color, notably the practice of segregated streetcars in the cities. Several months before the war ended, black leaders resuscitated the antebellum national convention movement, and black communities across the North and in Union-occupied areas of the Confederacy selected delegates to participate in setting a national agenda for completing the abolition of slavery and extending all the rights of citizenship to black persons, North and South.
Keywords: gradual emancipation, discriminatory laws, citizenship, elective franchise, black soldiers, segregated streetcars, national convention movement, abolition, rights of citizenship
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