Picture the Emancipation Proclamation, the Civil War-era executive order that changed the legal status of enslaved African Americans in secessionist states, and you might imagine a large broadside, perhaps nailed to a tree or held aloft by Abraham Lincoln. But one of the earliest editions of this document took the form of a thin, pocket-sized pamphlet, no bigger than a playing card. Commissioned by John Murray Forbes, a white entrepreneur and abolitionist, this edition was distributed in the South in hopes of recruiting Black men to fight for the Union Army.
Forbes served as a Union recruiting agent throughout the war and was an early advocate for the military inclusion of Black men, who were barred from serving in combat roles until the Emancipation Proclamation lifted the ban on 1 January 1863. Lincoln had initially feared that recruiting Black soldiers would alienate slaveholding states that remained loyal to the Union, while many Union officers claimed African Americans were too undisciplined for combat. It was even thought that mustering Black regiments would bring about a second Haitian Revolution, which, at the start of the 19th century, had established an independent Black nation. Forbes, however, was convinced that involving Black soldiers was essential to the war’s progress and, along with others, including Frederick Douglass, lobbied federal officials to change their minds.
