With the 1862 Militia Act and the subsequent Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans had once again joined the ranks of the military and would eventually make up 10 percent of U.S. forces.18 Frederick Douglass understood early on what this meant. He keenly observed, “Once you let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, ‘U.S.,’ let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket, and there is no power on Earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.”19
