(MILITARY--CIVIL WAR.) ALL SLAVES WERE MADE FREEMEN BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, JANUARY 1st 1863. Come then able Bodied COLORED MEN to the Nearest United States Camp, and Fight for the STARS AND STRIPES. Chromolithographic broadside, 8-1/8 x 10 inches, depicting a Black officer with raised sword and holding a flag with streamer reading FREEDOM TO THE SLAVE; all around him and in the background are many symbolic images. The reverse with the above text. (WGC) [Philadelphia?, 1863]
a very fine example of a rare recruitment broadside seeking colored troops. This broadside is a small version of a six foot tall poster that was pasted up on walls, both in the captured Southern territories as well as in the North-East. The Emancipation Proclamation also opened up the army up to ex-slaves and North-Eastern free blacks. In fact the majority of the colored regiments were made up of recently freed slaves. Lincoln had said "The colored population is the great available and as yet unavailed of force for restoring the Union." (The Man Behind the Myths, page 112 (Harpers 1984) Recent scholarship suggests that Frederick Douglass wrote the text used on both the present broadside and the larger poster version.
