Fighting for Citizenship

Brian Taylor's Fighting for Citizenship uncovers the public debate among Black Americans about whether they should enlist in the U.S. military during the Civil War. Previous histories have emphasized African Americans' willingness to volunteer, but Taylor has amassed convincing evidence showing that many men refused to do so. Instead, they argued that Black men should hold out until the nation recognized their full citizenship. Important for understanding African American history, this debate also, Taylor writes, “pushed federal officials to clarify and codify the content of American citizenship” (p. 7). Taylor organizes his book chronologically. He starts in the prewar period, when African Americans expressed their frustration that their military service in earlier wars had not earned them equality. Taylor writes that once the Civil War began, “some black Northerners scorned enlistment” (p. 39). While he recognizes that “at any given moment more black Northerners would have supported enlistment than opposed

African american · Citizenship · Military service · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · American Constitutional Law and Politics · American History and Culture · Gender Studies · Law