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To: Colt .45
Wrong answer Chuck, ex-slaves in the South were forcibly conscripted into the Federal army! It's all in the US Army records from the war.

Then you can point me to some?

62 posted on 08/31/2006 3:56:01 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Non-Sequitur; Colt .45
Then you can point me to some?

... the major- general commanding ([Union] General Foster) ordered an indiscriminate conscription of every able-bodied colored man in the department. As the special representative of the Government in its relation to them, I had given them earnest and repeated assurances that no force would be used in recruiting the black regiments. I say nothing of this order, in reference to my special duties and jurisdiction and the authority of the major-general commanding to issue it; but as an apparent violation of faith pledged to the freedmen, it could not but shake their confidence in our just intentions, and make them the more unwilling to serve the Government.

The order spread universal confusion and terror. The negroes fled to the woods and swamps, visiting their cabins only by stealth and in darkness. They were hunted to their hiding places by armed parties of their own people, and, if found, compelled to enlist. This conscription order is still in force. Men have been seized and forced to enlist who had large families of young children dependent upon them for support and fine crops of cotton and corn nearly ready for harvest, without an opportunity of making provision for the one or securing the other.

Three boys, one only fourteen years of age, were seized in a field where they were at work and sent to a regiment serving in a distant part of the department without the knowledge or consent of their parents.

From the OR.

67 posted on 08/31/2006 4:14:39 PM PDT by rustbucket
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