JACKSON CHERRY

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"WE OUGHT TO BE CONSIDERED AS MEN"

Corporal Jackson Cherry, Company I, 35th Regiment, United States Colored Troops, appeals for equal opportunity for freedmen.

We have been faithful in the field up to the present time, and think that we ought to be considered as men, and allowed a fair chance in the race of life. It has been said that a black man can not make his own living, but give us opportunities and we will show the whites that we will not come to them for any thing, if they do not come to us. We think the colored people have been the making of them, and can make something of ourselves in time. The colored people know how to work, and the whites have been dependent upon them. They can work again, and will work. A white man may talk very well, but put him to work, and what will he say? He will say that hard work is not easy. He will say that it is hard for a man who has owned so many able- bodied Negroes to have the Yankees come and taken them all away.

Source: South Carolina Leader, December 16, 1865