The Civil War and some MD HIStory, in case you didn't know: Honoring Black HIStory '23

IN CASE YOU DIDN'T KNOW . . . George R. Rome was one of nearly 180,000 African Americans to fight for the United States during the Civil War. Rome was bor!n in 1835 to free African American parents living in Providence, Rhode Island. He later moved to Worchester, Massachusetts. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he and other African Americans were initially denied enlistment. The US government reversed its policy in 1863, however, and Rome joined the 55th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment the following year. He survived the war and died in 1900. The picture shows Rome dressed in his uniform and is part of a small collection of his items in the Museum of the Bible's care, including his pocket New Testament. (https://collections.museumofthebible.org/artifacts/19836-portrait-of-pvt-george-r-rome?theme-slug=The%20Bible%20in%20Black%20History)

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.(Galatians 5:1) The story is seldom told of men of color who served in the Civil War. Many in fact right here in Maryland fought for their freedom and the abolishment of slavery along with the Union armies (https://emilieamt.com/african-americans-face-the-invasion-of-maryland-1862/).

So, in case you didn't know . . .The onset of the Civil War in 1861 marked a new beginning for Black Baltimoreans seeking greater freedom for themselves and their neighbors. Hundreds of free Black people in Baltimore supported the Union army by working on fortifications and hospitals around the edges of the city. Over 8,000 enslaved Marylanders enlisted in the US Colored Troops between the spring of 1863 and the end of the war two years later. White Union supporters drafted a new constitution in 1864 that proposed to abolish slavery and disenfranchise Marylanders who fought for the “so-called ‘Confederate States of America,’” or gave “any aid, comfort, countenance or support to those engaged in armed hostility to the United States.”2 After a narrow vote of Maryland residents in October 1864 approved the new constitution, slavery in Maryland officially ended 222 years after enslaved Africans were first held in slavery at St. Mary’s City in Southern Maryland. In the politically turbulent period after the end of the Civil War, the nation adopted the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution in 1867 giving all Black Marylanders the right to equal protection under the law, and the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870, giving Black men the right to vote.(https://baltimoreheritage.github.io/civil-rights-heritage/1831-1884/)