Fighting for Citizenship by Brian Taylor

Fighting for Citizenship by Brian Taylor

In Fighting for Citizenship, Brian M. Taylor complicates existing interpretations of why black men fought in the Civil War. Civil War - era African Americans recognized the urgency of a core political concern: how best to use the opportunity presented by this conflict over slavery to win abolition and secure enduring black rights, goals that had eluded earlier generations of black veterans. Some, like Frederick Douglass, urged immediate enlistment to support the cause of emancipation, hoping that a Northern victory would bring about the end of slavery. But others counseled patience and negotiation, drawing on a historical memory of unfulfilled promises for black military service in previous American wars and encouraging black men to leverage their position to demand abolition and equal citizenship. In doing this, they also began redefining what it meant to be a black man who fights for the United States. These debates over African Americans' enlistment expose a formative moment in the development of American citizenship: black Northerners' key demand was that military service earn full American citizenship, a term that had no precise definition prior to the Fourteenth Amendment. In articulating this demand, Taylor argues, black Northerners participated in the remaking of American citizenship itself - unquestionably one of the war's most important results.

Brian Taylor is a scholar of the Civil War era who has taught at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His public-history experience includes work for the National Park Service and National Museum of American History. His current project focuses on the Reno City neighborhood of Washington, D.C.

SKU	Nicht verfügbar
ISBN 13	9781469659770
ISBN 10	1469659778
Titel	Fighting for Citizenship
Autor	Brian Taylor
Serie	Civil War America
Buchzustand	Nicht verfügbar
Bindungsart	Paperback
Verlag	The University of North Carolina Press
Erscheinungsjahr	2020-09-30
Seitenanzahl	248
Hinweis auf dem Einband	Die Abbildung des Buches dient nur Illustrationszwecken, die tatsächliche Bindung, das Cover und die Auflage können sich davon unterscheiden.
Hinweis	Nicht verfügbar