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Blacks were on both sides during Civil War
Liberty history
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In 1861, there were roughly 4 million free and enslaved blacks in the Southern states, including Liberty County.
The immeasurable mainstream either fought on behalf of or assisted the American Confederacy.  They did this by means of labor and/or raising crops.
Some also fought for the North. But the ultimate numbers of divergent U.S. Colored Troops amounted to only a little over 186,000 men. And some of them questioned whether they were enlisted without restraint or were daunted into service to replace northern white soldiers.
Challenged with this service, many blacks volunteered as they felt they had no alternative because those who refused were apprehended in the night by squads of other black soldiers.
In the South there was no question. It worked like a draft for the Confederate Army. On one plantation in Riceboro, a man was taken from his family, leaving his wife with 10 children to bring up without any idea of what was to come next. Those blacks who refused to go along with the draft were brutally treated, and those who had fled into the marshes were tracked to their hideouts, and if they still tried to run, other black troops would shoot them down or capture them.
A little known fact, as well, is that the South, including Liberty County as well as Georgia as a whole, enlisted black soldiers the exact day or week that Lincoln decided to support the recruiting of blacks into the Union Army. Even though the date is not exact, his last positive refusal to arm blacks was in early August 1862, and we know too from the well-known abolitionist Wendell Phillips that Lincoln was forced into emancipation.  President Lincoln did not go to emancipation and black military service eagerly.
Black abolitionist Frederick Douglass reported his concern early in the war that "there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but real soldiers having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets." Even federal General Grant knew of the black support for the Confederacy, and he instructed his officers late in the war to capture as many blacks as possible to avoid having them carry arms for the South or support it in any way.
The inland raids conducted by Northern forces from Virginia to Florida after 1863 were aimed at "liberating" slaves on Southern plantations and impressing them into northern service. This would also deny the Southern states of a military manpower pool, as well as damage food supplies by draining off the farm workers. The latter was a main reason why President Davis opposed using blacks in the military before January 1865.1

1 Slave and Soldier, Book Report, The, January, 2002.
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