Rare Recruitment Broadside For Colored Soldiers

[All Slaves were made Freemen By Abraham Lincoln...] chromolithograph broadside or handbill. [Philadelphia of Boston?]: N.p., [1863]. 8 x 10 1/4 in.

Rare broadside or handbill displayed and circulated to recruit black soldiers during the Civil War. A full color lithograph occupies the entire field of the recto. At center, a white Union officer treads upon a Confederate flag, holds his saber high, and with his other hand bears a waving American flag with the riband "Freedom to the Slave" superimposed. Behind him, are vignettes of former slaves taking advantage of their new freedom. At left, a Black man has abandoned a plow for a newspaper. Behind him, a throng of African Americans file into a Public School. To the right, rejoicing slaves are released from their shackles, and behind them, Black troops charge into battle while waving the Stars and Stripes that reads: "U.S. Regt. Colored Troop."

The verso boldly proclaims: "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 U.S. / Camp, and fight for the Stars and Stripes!"

FIRST EDITION, FIRST PRINTING of a remarkable recruitment broadside/handbill aimed at African American men. The Emancipation Proclamation, emphasized by the verso legend here, was signed into effect on 1 January 1863 and made provisions that Black men "of suitable condition, will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts." Very rare. Copies of the first printing are exceedingly scarce, with only 2 other copies located, one in a private collection, and one in the William A. Gladstone Collection, illustrated in Mark E. Neely, Jr. and Harold Holzer's The Union Image: Popular Prints of the Civil War North (plates 18 & 19). This copy, in notably superior condition to the Gladstone copy, previously sold at Swann with a price realized of $16,100 (Sale 1961, Printed & Manuscript African Americana, 27 February 2003, Lot 266). A second more common printings included the verse and chorus of "The John Brown Song" as further inspiration.

Over 180,000 Black men served as soldiers in the Union Army with another 19,000 enlisted into the Navy. While the dangers of war, infection, and disease were omnipresent threats for all soldiers, Black soldiers faced the menace of enslavement or re-enslavement if captured. Fort Pillow horrifically demonstrated that even in surrender, African American troops were summarily executed rather than taken as prisoners of war. They even faced discriminatory treatment within their own ranks and equal pay to white soldiers was not guaranteed until June 1864.

A very rare and beautiful piece of recruitment ephemera.

[African Americana, African American History, Black History, Slavery, Abolition, Enslavement, Emancipation, USCT, U.S. Colored Troops, Frederick Douglass, John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, Emancipation Proclamation]