In both poems, Paul Laurence Dunbar talks about the fact that black people’s contributions were unrecognized during the Civil war, in favour of accounts of white soldiers. In “Black Samson of Brandywine,” he writes:
Sing of your chiefs and your nobles,
Saxon and Celt and Gaul,
Breath of mine ever shall join you,
Highly I honor them all.
Give to them all of their glory,
But for this noble of mine,
Lend him a tithe of your tribute,
Black Samson of Brandywine.
Dunbar is arguing that the stories of black heroes should be as celebrated as those of white ones, exemplified by the legends of Saxons, Celts and Gauls. The poem “The Colored Soldiers” has a similar objective, as it argues that black soldiers who were fighting in the Civil War made enormous contributions to it, that are often forgotten. He says that:
None were stronger in the labors,
None were braver in the fight.
From the blazing breach of Wagner
To the plains of Olustee,
They were foremost in the fight
Of the battles of the free.
His intention is to remind readers of the vital role that Black Americans performed during the war, and to remind us of their contribution to eliminating slavery and fighting for the rights of the “free.”
