White people love to take all the credit, but Black American slaves freed themselves. That's right, they did it on their own with little to no help from white Americans. Many of the Americans who did fight for the union army, about 25% in total, fought not for the freedom of slaves, but for the right to citizenship, which they were promised if they fought against the south. Historians have largely left this fact out of the coverage of the Civil War, instead opting to paint a completely freedom obsessed picture of the mostly racist white North. Another 18% of the Northern forces was composed of men who had a least one parent who was an immigrant. Though these immigrants were born in America, their first language was most likely no English and it takes far more than one generation to become fully naturalized to a new country. That adds up to 43% or almost half of the union army. That means that about half of that army was not American at all, but a combination of different freedom loving people from around the world who were essentially being paid with acceptance into American culture for themselves and their families. Can we really say the motivation here was morality? No, not really. It was much more about gaining the opportunity to call oneself a true American, at least for that 43%. This was not a war about freeing slaves; it was a war about the haves and the have nots. As most war narratives are, it protested too much about its grand supposed goal of liberating the poor black people. Hell, they would not even fight alongside us for the most part (the only exception was the Navy, where very few battles took place) as most of the military brigades remained segregated throughout the war. Initially, black people had to beg to join the war effort because the Northern whites viewed blacks as unskilled at fighting war. This was later proven inaccurate as black soldiers gave the North the edge in winning the war. The truth is that very few Americans wanted to fight for their black fellow citizens, so few that the draft had to be initiated. Many racist Northerners rioted at the thought of having to fight a war to free black people. Further, the flood of people escaping the south caused land shortages and many newly freed slaves were shoved into camps where disease and starvation was common. So, what really freed the slaves if it was not these mythical white saviors? Well, slaves never really took kindly to slaver. They never really obeyed the way that hacks like Speilberg have implied. They were not crying and weeping under the boot of a ravenous master, praying for white Jesus to come and rescue them. They never took shit from their owners. Slaves took care of themselves. Today I have for you various stories of open slave rebellion, not from Nat Turner or any of the other famous slave revolts often taught as naughty stories to impressionable children; "don't be like Nat Turner kids, be like Martin Luther King and wait for the brick to hit you in the head before some crazy white man shoots you in the other side of your head". These are stories of everyday black working men and women who rebelled by either damaging property, refusing to work, refusing to travel, refusing to leave family members, walking off jobs, stealing the money they were owed it it was denied them, running away, and by brute force. These are not feel good make your white son or daughter dream about some mountaintop stories. These are kick you in the teeth, smash and grab action stories that make Total Recall look like a total flop. Are y'all ready for this?