Fighting for Citizenship
Click to look inside
Summary
The feel-good place to buy books
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 | NIN9781469659770 |
| ISBN 13 | 9781469659770 |
| ISBN 10 | 1469659778 |
| Title | Fighting for Citizenship |
| Author | Brian Taylor |
| Series | Civil War America |
| Condition | New |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The University of North Carolina Press |
| Year published | 2020-09-30 |
| Number of pages | 248 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | This is a new book - be the first to read this copy. With untouched pages and a perfect binding, your brand new copy is ready to be opened for the first time |