Fighting for Their Freedom—How Black Soldiers Came to Fight in the Civil War
Recruiting Poster, Courtesy of the family of Frederick Douglass
This recruitment poster calling “Men of Color To Arms!” was written by Frederick Douglass after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Douglass and 53 other prominent members of Philadelphia’s abolitionist movement signed the flyer, encouraging Black men to enlist in the Union Army during the American Civil War.