  Beyond question, one of the particularly acute axial periods of history for people of African descent in the United States of America was that of the half-decade of civil war (1860–1865) continued through ensuing years of Reconstruction-struggles between White proponents of a culture of aspiring aristocratic genteel racial supremacy and a political economy devoted to developing industrial and finance capitalism in the North and East of the country who also wanted to preserve the federated union of states, and White proponents of a regional civilization devoted to a decidedly pronounced and violently aristocratic Southern hegemonic White Racial Supremacy based on a political economy of agrarian capitalism supported by enslaved Negro labor, proponents who forged a Confederacy out of states that seceded from the Union in order to preserve their distinctive civilizational project. For a great many Black people, the hope was that the Union forces would prevail in the war, the institution of slavery would be abolished, and they would be freed and free to enjoy lives of full citizenship. More than a few devoted themselves, in various ways, to aiding the Union efforts, some even as fighting soldiers. Frederick Douglass played a major role in persuading President Abraham Lincoln to allow Negro men to join the Union army as fighting soldiers and in persuading many men to join. With President Lincoln’s issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 freeing the slaves in the Confederate states and Union victory in the Civil War two years later, the day of Jubilation! for Black people and other opponents of the institution of slavery appeared to be at hand.