Gary Gallagher: evaluation

Transcript context

…So you as a historian, you’ve looked at every layer of this, including diaries and- … what was motivating? What was going through the minds of African Americans who were fighting for the Union side? I think what you would expect is going… I mean, they would talk about Union occasionally, but what that means to them, it’s a union without slavery. They have the most… Of all the people who can have a direct impact on what’s going on versus slavery, there’s nothing more direct than picking up a musket and firing at the people who are defending a slavery-based society. It doesn’t get… And at the same time, you are not only doing that, you are also establishing an unimpeachable claim to citizenship. The whole point of a citizen soldier is that you do your bit for the nation that’s helping you, and the nation does these things for you. Well, okay, if I’m picking up and risking my life with a musket in my hand, are you gonna tell me I can’t vote after I do? I thought that’s the whole point of this, when I’m protecting the right to vote by doing my citizen’s role as a soldier. And that was a big debate in Congress. That really changed the equation of that debate as well. How are you gonna treat people after they’ve served in United States units? Can you tell them they can’t vote? You’re not gonna give the vote to them? How many people in the Black regiments, but also, you know, folks like Frederick Douglass, saw that Black Americans and white Americans should have equal rights?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.