This man is the most photographed American in the 19th century. What famous former slave enlisted freed Blacks to fight for the Union Army?

Frederick Douglass believed freed Black men's service would inspire respect from their fellow white soldiers and, one day, full citizenship of African Americans. In fact, two of his sons were amongst the first to enlist after Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Douglass also advocated for equal pay and better conditions for soldiers. As for his photographed image, Douglass saw being photographed as a movement toward fair and accurate representation of Black people. He would not smile in pictures in order to counter the caricatures of the "happy slave" at the time.

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