Black men too expected a soldier’s due out of this war—safe firesides, public recognition, and a place in at least some form of reconciliation between blacks and whites. Indeed, both Wester and Hoyle, like the more famous Douglass before them, were convinced that in equal suffering, if not in natural law, the country might discover the roots of equal rights. In this sense, for black soldiers and their future families, equality was another word for reconciliation. These black soldiers had no trouble defining the meaning of freedom and the war; they were only beginning the long struggle to
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