akes under the command of Oliver H. Perry. At least one-tenth of the crews on the fleet on the lake region were African American. Captain Perry, like Washington, disagreed with the involvement of Blacks to his naval ships. But after the Battle of Lake Erie, Captain Perry was in praise of the African American who he felt were insensible to danger. After the Battle of Lake Erie the New York legislature authorized the forming of two Black regiments which were formed in Kansas and Louisiana. The mobilization for New Orleans was very significant because it was then on September 21,1814, three months before the Battle of New Orleans, that General Andrew Jackson issued his proclamation "To the Free Colored Inhabitants of Louisiana." In that proclamation, Jackson, who needed to strengthen his forces, called upon the free Blacks of Louisiana, which of course had to be a slave state, to answer the appeal of their country. In the appeal he confessed that the policy of the United States in bareing Negroes from the service had been a mistaken one. The United States won the War of 1812. The slaves who had been enlisted by their masters in the American army found themselves re-enslaved after the war was over and the United States had no further needs of their military services. The black slaves then found themselves as a servant to the White masters for a second time until the Civil War. The third and most important war Black Americans fought in was Civil War. Though this war eventually resulted in the ending of slavery it began between Northern industrialists and Southern Slave owners to determine who would have more power over the federal government and who would be able to expand into the new territories in the West. When the Civil War began, blacks weren't allowed to fight in the Union army. Unfortunately, Abraham Lincoln was more concerned with political relations than the treatment of African American slaves. The federal government and the Union...
