From [HERE] During the period of the enslavement of African people by Britain and the United States, violence was a key instrument in the maintenance of the exploitative and oppressive system.

African people between the 17th and 19th centuries prior to the eruption of the Civil War (1861-1865), were largely prohibited from owning and carrying firearms.

Of course, there were exceptions during the war of separation from Britain during the 1770s and 1780s, when Africans fought on both sides of the conflict over who would control the 13 colonies located in the eastern region of what would become the U.S. Also, the War of 1812, when the British attempted to retake their colonies in North America, Africans participated again in both the U.S. and English military campaigns.

However, within these contexts, the enslaved and free Africans were objectively fighting on behalf of European colonial regimes and not for their own freedom. Although the British and the Americans told the Africans that their service in the war of independence and 1812 would lead to emancipation, slavery and national oppression continued leading up to the beginning of the Civil War.

Approximately 200,000 African men and women served in the army and navy during the war between the states. There was extreme resistance among the ruling class to the enlistment of African soldiers in the Union army. Nonetheless, the failure of the administration of then President Abraham Lincoln to quell the rebellion during the first year-and-a-half of the war, by late 1862, a decision had been made to arm Blacks to fight the Confederacy. [MORE]