Chromolithograph print titled "Freedom to the Slave" published by the Supervisory Committee for Recruiting Colored Regiments in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to encourage African American men to enlist in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The print depicts a African American man dressed in the uniform of a United States Army Artillery officer holding a sword in his right hand and in his left hand, a United States flag surmounted with a red liberty cap and thin swallow-tail flag reading "Freedom to the Slave." The man is standing on a Confederate national flag with a snake on its blue field which is being torn by a shirtless African American man who appears to have been freed from the broken shackles at his feet. Behind him, an African American man in Union Army uniform is freeing a shirtless man and woman from similar shackles while they rejoice. Further behind, a long line of African American soldiers marches in formation to the right under a United States national flag. To the left of the soldier in the center of the illustration, a respectably-dressed African American man is reading a newspaper while seated in a chair near a plow with a girl in a dress at his feet. Behind him, a group of African Americans enter a building with Public School written above its entrance and an American flag flying above, with a steeple behind it. The reverse of this dramatic illustration is a recruiting poster. From its reference to emancipation, and the phrase urging “colored men” to come “to the nearest United States Camp,” suggests this handbill may have been circulated by Union troops in the South.
Both the North and the South saw Vicksburg as the lynchpin to victory in the war. President Abraham Lincoln said: "Vicksburg is the key. The war can never be brought to a close until the key is in our pocket," Confederate President Jefferson Davis said: "Vicksburg is the nail head that holds the South's two halves together." On May 22, 1863, Ulysses Grant sent brigades from three corps of the army to assault the city. While the assault showed some success, a long bitter struggle ensued and the Confederates quickly restored their original lines of defense. The Union army suffered 3,199 casualties, while the Confederates lost less than 500 men. Realizing that the city could not be taken by assault, Grant ordered his engineers to begin siege operations. The siege cut off all supplies going into the city and the constant hammering of siege artillery drove many of the citizens into caves dug into the hillsides. The siege finally ended when on July 4, 1863, General John Pemberton surrendered the town to Grant, thus sealing the fate of the Confederate States of America.