Colored Citizens pledge loyalty to Union

Resolutions passed at a recent meeting of the colored citizens of Boston include these words:   “…our feelings urge us to say to our countrymen that we are ready to stand by and defend the Government as the equals of its white defenders  — to do so with ‘our lives, our fortunes,and our sacred honor’, for the sake of freedom, and as good citizens; and we ask you to modify your laws, that we may enlist  — that full scope may be given to the patriotic feelings burning in the colored man’s breast … and we pledge ourselves to raise an army in the country of fifty thousand men …..”   (Liberator, May 31, 1861, pg 2)