While white residents in Westchester split over the question of whether the purpose of the war was to keep the union together or to defeat the evil of slavery, there was never any question for black soldiers. In the words of Sergeant Tierce:

God is about to do the work that has been prayed years and years before we thought about praying, for God has seen and answered prayer. He is about to pluck out root and branch in the south and I see in some of the states he has been to work already. In the City of New Orleans…I saw that God had been to work there and had moved the old slaveholders out and colored people were keeping stores themselves and I saw that they were men and women capable of doing it.…All the colored people down here welcome us here with glad hands.
(Letter, 2/15/1864)

End

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