If you've seen the movie Glory They all die without exception at the end In a gross violation of the normal procedure in civilized warfare they executed everyone involved with the 54th en masse, even the white commissioned officers
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Putting a gun in the hands of a Black man and telling him to go use it to kill white men was a violation of the South's most sacred taboo, the law on which their whole society was founded A Black soldier in a uniform was spitting in their collective face
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That's why Frederick Douglass was so in favor of the colored regiments, even though the Union Army was still a massively racist and abusive institution toward Black men In his view the basic logic of Black military service made abolition inevitable
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This is the whole thing with why it's sinister to ban, say, trans people from the military, even if you think joining thy military is an awful idea and that what the military is used for is mostly imperial aggression
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When a society bans a whole class of people from the military what that society is saying is it fears that class of people ever gaining the power to kill It prefers that other classes of people have that power over them
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Hence one of the first steps to removing Jewish personhood in Nazi Germany was Hitler banning Jews from the military (Some heavy irony there, since it was a Jewish officer who had recommended Hitler for the Iron Cross in WWI)
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Yes, exactly. There's a great example of this in the description of the Battle of the Crater in Bruce Catton's history book 'A Stillness at Appomattox'. One of my all time favorite non fiction books.
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Iirc In one battle, the union switched out their forces white combatants at the last moment but as it turned out they'd just finished training for a tricky siege manoeuvre and didn't have time to drill the white guys so they got absolutely slaughtered trying to breach a fort.
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The Crater
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