"Freedom to the Slave" – Rare Civil War Broadsheet Recruiting African Americans for the Union Army

Chromolithographed Civil War recruiting broadsheet: a Union soldier holds a flag with the banner "Freedom to the Slave," while U.S. Colored Troops march at right and African Americans walk into a public school at left. The Union figure stands on a Confederate flag being torn by a freed slave, with broken shackles in the foreground.

"All Slaves were made Freemen. By Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States... Come, then, able-bodied Colored Men, to the nearest United States Camp, and Fight for the Stars and Stripes."

Issued in Philadelphia around 1863-1864 by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments, the sheet also carries the "original version" of the John Brown song, written by Hartford poet Henry Howard Brownell to be sung to Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus," later eclipsed by Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic."

After Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation took effect January 1, 1863, recruiters moved quickly to enlist Black soldiers, likely distributing sheets like this one in the South among the newly freed. By war's end roughly 180,000 African American men had served in the Union Army and 19,000 in the Navy; nearly 40,000 died, most from disease. Captured Black soldiers faced re-enslavement or, as at Fort Pillow, summary execution. Segregated into regiments under white officers, they were paid less than white troops until Congress mandated equal pay, retroactively, in June 1864.

[SUPERVISORY COMMITTEE FOR RECRUITING COLORED REGIMENTS]. Broadsheet, chromolithographed illustration on recto, lettering on verso. Philadelphia, c.1863/1864. 8 1/2 x 10 in. Ex: The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Inventory #28351.

Condition: upper left corner clipped in margin; verso with small tissue reinforcement and light soiling; bottom margin slightly unevenly trimmed.