For Their Rights as Citizens :: essays papers

For Their Rights as CitizensDuring the Civil War, almost 200,000 African Americans fought alongside ashenpeople. What did these African Americans compact for? Some fought for the freedom ofothers of their kind. While others fought for equality in the eyes of white people. Even some fought for revenge against the Southern way of life. But what I debate that they fought for was their rights as citizens. They wanted to be treated as Citizens of the United States of America, and have all of the privileges endowed to citizens.If we press out to maintain a republican Government, we want Republican privileges.....all we ask is the proper enjoyment of the rights of citizenship, p205. This tells me that the African Americans were thinking of their rights of citizenship before the war had concluded. To them, being a citizen of the United States meant that they coulddo what ever they wanted to do. They could pursue dreams they had to go visiteverywhere and anywhere in this country freely. Nobody would be holding them down orselling off their children anymore. They would no longer be automatons, they would havea say in what they wanted to accomplish in life, from banking to farming, to being landowners themselves.The African Americans also wanted to demonstrate that they were willing to fightfor their rights. Sergeant Charles Singer wrote, show the whole world that we are willing to fight for our rights... p.215. This shows that they wanted to prove that they were willing to die for those rights allotted to citizens. Let us by a common cause now made holy by our blood, raise ourselves from the mire, p.216. To me this shows the willingness of the African Americans to join together fight for a cause, and non fear death. Because in the end, they would earn citizenship and all of its benefits. This is a goodreason to fight, earn freedom from oppression, and be given the rights allotted to allcitizens.Some engagement under the banner of citizenship and it s rights, believed that theydisserved the same rights as the white people. ...I am not willing to fight for anything less that the white man fights for.......Give me my rights, the rights that this Government owes me, the same rights that the white man has, p.208. This tells me that the African Americans wanted no less than what the white people already had.