Answers:
1. A successful Union military action
2. <span>Free African Americans were allowed to enlist in the Union army and navy.
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<span>This quote suggestions that "Americanization", rather than a form of assimilation into a homogeneous culture as some would have it appear to be, is in fact an act which has been in a state of national evolution since even the early days. Indeed, the influence of the Catholic immigrants upon the incumbent Anglo-Saxon protestant culture indicates one of the very earliest instances of this evolutionary shift.</span>