The following educational document corresponds with Unit Seven: Gender and the Politics of Freedom in the After Slavery exhibition. Note the "Questions to Consider" section included at the end of each document.

Context
Enlistment into Lincoln's army transformed black men's worlds. Horizons stretched, circles of acquaintances grew, and knowledge multiplied when the formerly enslaved donned Union blue, took up arms, and eventually for many, marched into battle. Black soldiers experienced much during their terms of service, encountering everything from northern racism (most visibly manifested in grossly unequal pay rates) to schools northern volunteers conducted for soldiers in camp. Black soldiers' contacts with northerners—other soldiers, teachers, officers, clergymen, and the like—also introduced many of them to new ideas about what women and men ought to be and do: as citizens, as producers, and as partners. When enlistments expired and black soldiers turned toward home, they carried those ideas and experiences with them, conveying them in turn to those who had been left behind. As the document below further suggests, some of those returning soldiers put what they had learned in war to political use in freedom.

Soldiering Men

[Edisto Island, S.C.,] June 30, 1867
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For some time past there has been a disposition on part of the Freedmen in some parts of this District to form Military Organizations: regularly enlist their members and most of them for life.

All such organizations disbanded without trouble, upon my calling for the leaders and informing them of the consequences of persisting in such a course, except one company formed on Fenwick's Island on the plantation of Maj. J Jenkins and co., where one hundred laborers are employed. I visited this company, called together the reputed officers and directed them to disband, and not compel me to impose on them the severity of law. This they positively refused doing: stating they had orders from competent authority requiring them to form such organizations and they would continue to act under their instructions until compelled to disband by force of arms. They acted towards my directions in a very defiant manner; they positively refused to obey the directions of their employers (against whom they offered no complaint) but complained that any interference on part of the Government with their organizations and drilling, was a retrenchment of their rights and privileges. Their conduct had completely disorganized labor on that Island, and an utter failure of the crops was imminent.