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All the elements of the myth are there:
1. blacks were forced into the Union armies
2. The solictious care given black vets by white southern vets.
3. "blacks marched with the southern armies from the beginning, while Union armies refused to enlist blacks at first."
4. The "false idea" that the war was fought over slavery.
5. And I love his concluding line about how black and whites who had been in the CS army together were, "equal in peace, as in war." This is in 1913. I feel ill.
What do I think? I think we are all better off reading a real book, by a real historian about what really happened. I suggest "Confederate Emancipation" by Bruce Levine.
This issue has been thoroughly discussed in the thread "Black Confederates at the Mobile Forts" over in South Western forum.
Very well said. From some of the messages I read (here and elsewhere) I get the distinct impression that the general concensus is that:
1. Southerners were 100% to blame for slavery.
2. Slavery was evil, therefore Southern people were evil.
3. Blacks hated whites in the South, both then and/or now.
4. Whites hated blacks in the South, both then and/or now.
5. Slave owners all were harsh, cruel and intoxicated on the power they held over slaves.
6. Most slave owners drank mint juleps on the veranda while happily watching the slaves tend their white gold cotton crops.
7. All slave owners whipped their slaves.
8. Most slave owners didn't value the family unit of the slaves.
I am most sincerely sorry if that is all you've taken from the discussions, Rose. It must seem like that from time to time, but you've passed over the conciliatory posts to concentrate on what you've perceived to be a majority opinion. Not one of the 8 items listed is apparent in any post in this or any other thread. I hope you were just having a bad day when you listed these, and that your next days will be considerably better.
Best regards,
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I am most sincerely sorry if that is all you've taken from the discussions, Rose. It must seem like that from time to time, but you've passed over the conciliatory posts to concentrate on what you've perceived to be a majority opinion. Not one of the 8 items listed is apparent in any post in this or any other thread. I hope you were just having a bad day when you listed these, and that your next days will be considerably better.
Best regards,
Ole
I think I will simply echo the thoughts of Ole; it is either that or make myself sick trying to figure out how the obviously intelligent can come to such conclusions.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
....and sometimes "common belief" can be vastly wrong.
What would "common belief" say about Black Federal troops captured by that "devil incarnate"- Nathan Bedford Forrest?-
"ENGINEER OFFICE,
Mobile, Ala., February 5, 1865.
Morning report of the Forrest captured negroes, February 4, 1865."
Not only are these "Forrest captured negroes" not in any prison camp...
...they do not seem to be held under any close guard (note the number of detachments and "absent without leave" category. Shouldn't it be escaped prisoner?)
According to "common belief" these former USCT are suppose to be doing all in their power to escape to Federal lines.
"Aggregate February 3, 1865.................................... 806
Aggregate February 4, 1865.................................... 806
----
Absent without leave............................................. 18
Sick in quarters.......................................... ........... 28
Sick in hospital.......................................... ............ 96
Detached with Major Myers, chief of ordnance.............. 5
Detached with Doctor Sherard, Verona Hospital............. 9
Detached with Doctor Thompson, assistant surgeon....... 1
Detached with Doctor Newson, assistant surgeon.......... 1
Detached with Lt-Col Winder in charge picket-boats..... 47
Detached with torpedo-boat...................................... 1
Detached with steamer Piney Woods.......................... 20
Detached in commissary department.......................... 25
Detached in quartermaster's department..................... 58
Detached on steamer Le Baron, quartermaster's dept.... 12
Detached in Hospital Nott, general hospital................... 4
Detached in Hospital Ross, general hospital................. 10
Detached in Hospital Moore, general hospital............... 18
Detached in general hospital...................................... 6
Detached with Doctor Heard..................................... 12
Detached with Doctor Paine...................................... 15
Detached with Doctor Kelly......................................... 1
Detached with Captain Williams, fifer for company........... 1
Detached with Navy Department................................ 50
Total detached in other departments, sick, absent,&c....438
-----
Detached at Battery Huger...................................... 59
Detached with Leroy, Supt. at McIntosh and Gladden... 71
Detached at engineer workshops.............................. 11
Detached in wagon yard, taking care of stock.............. 2
Detached with P. McDonald, cart drivers.................... 11
Detached with Jas. Wilkins, engineer store-keeper......... 5
Detached with B. Wilson, carpenters on batteries......... 18
Detached as cooks and washers for negroes................ 41
Detached in office, commissary and yard boys............... 6
Detached with engineer tool keeper............................. 1
Present for duty on city intrenchments...................... 143
---- Total on engineer duty..................................... 368
Actually the source document linked to says nothing about POWs but the term "impressed" is used... aka slaves grabbed from various plantations... more of the Lost Cause hard at work?
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
I know you've been reading material from '
Documenting the American South: First-Person Narratives of the American South' and wonder if you've looked at 'Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl-Harriet Jacobs', or commonly known as the Jacob's Diary, or
Twelve Years a Slave-Somomon Northup. Both great books.
I have, in the past, read several narratives from Documenting the American South, but I don't think I read the specific ones you mention. I'll be sure to read those next.
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
"MOBILE, May 20, 1864.
General COOPER, Adjutant and Inspector General:
Some negroes captured by General Forrest at Fort Pillow sent here. Put them to work on fortifications. Chief engineer will keep records of the time in order to remunerate their owners. Is my action approved?
DABNEY H. MAURY,
Major-General, Commanding."
*
"RICHMOND, VA., May 21, 1864.
General D. H. MAURY, Mobile, Ala.:
Your employment of the negroes captured by General Forrest is approved.
S. COOPER,
Adjutant and Inspector General."
O.R., Series II, Volume 7, p.155-156
(USCT were also captured at Brice's Crossroads)
*************
"HEADQUARTERS DISTRICT OF THE GULF,
Mobile, Ala., March 4, 1865.
Major General GORDON GRANGER, U. S. Army,
Commanding District of West Florida and South Alabama:
...200 negro slaves, who were captured by Major-General Forrest and sent to this district, are engaged in labor upon the fortifications just as other slaves are and have been almost since the commencement of the war employed by both the Governments of the United States and Confederate States. From the statment of these negroes themselves it appears that they were taken away from their homes and their lawful owners by invading parties of U. S. forces, and during the temporary occupancy of portions of C. S. territory placed in the army or employed for other military purposes, and this against their will. These negroes are well fed and provided and generally content in their present situation. They express the utmost reluctance and indisposition to be returned to the dominion of the United States, and restored to involuntary service with their armies...
I would further submit that of all the conclusions you have reached are yours and yours alone and are not truly representative of the general consensus of this board.
That is true and I should have pointed that out, myself.
Quote:
The Southern people were not evil or cruel, they had simply become accustomed to their circumstances and their social and cultural customs and practices, in other words, their way of life.
Thank you. That has always been my sentiments yet it is something I rarely hear from others who are not Southern.
Quote:
Change is the one thing that people say they want the most but yet encourage the least. We hate change and distrust it and wish it would not trouble us, in our lives and our jobs, with our relationships with other people.
Again, I agree and I think it's fair to say that Southerners are traditionalists (more often than not) and dread change more than most.
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
I am most sincerely sorry if that is all you've taken from the discussions, Rose. It must seem like that from time to time, but you've passed over the conciliatory posts to concentrate on what you've perceived to be a majority opinion. Not one of the 8 items listed is apparent in any post in this or any other thread. I hope you were just having a bad day when you listed these, and that your next days will be considerably better.
Best regards,
Ole
Ole, that isn't "all" I've taken from these discussions, but it is the general gist of some of the threads. It seems anything I (or others) have to say about the South in a positive light gets pummeled with negativity and sometimes it seems very narrow minded (to me).
But, I realize everyone has their opinions and we all have a right to express them. Not only am I "ok" with that, I'm thankful for it. I realize my message sounded more like a whinning complaint than what it was meant to be. I intended it to be taken as my observations, only.
Regards,
Rose
__________________ "Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names".--J.F.K.
The War Between the States established... This principle that the Federal Government is, through its courts, this final judge of its own powers.
-- Woodrow Wilson
Actually the source document linked to says nothing about POWs but the term "impressed" is used... aka slaves grabbed from various plantations... more of the Lost Cause hard at work?
From the newspaper, Mercury, in Charleston, South Carolina, January 13, 1865:
"The wild talk prevalent in the official and the semi-official organs at Richmond grates harshly upon the ear of South Carolina. It is stillmore grievous to her to hear the same unmanly proposition from those in authority in the old State of Virginia. Side by side Carolina and Virginia have stood together against all comers for near two centuries--the exemplars and authors of Southern civilization. Side by side it is our earnest hope they will stand to all time against the world. But we grieve to say there are counsels now brewing there that South Carolina cannot abet--that she will not suffer to be consummated, so far as she is concerned in them.
There are men in Virginia, and there are men in South Carolina, who have supposed that there is jealousy existing between these States, in the race of fame and ambition. These men are small pettifoggers and petty creatures. There is no State in the Union that has the solid, calm respect for the merits of Virginia, that exists here in South Carolina. But we are not mouthers, or worshipers. We have no demonstrations to make. It is not our habit. We act. John C. Calhoun, the idol, the demi-god of South Carolina, could have made his most magnificent effort of genius before a Charleston audience, and the only response, at the climax of one of his grand syl[l]ogisms, would have been a slight, a very slight rapping on the floor. Men who worshiped him, found it not congenial to their natures to demonstrate. Calm and quiet approval is our habit--our custom--to all...
But we are no followers.
In 1860 South Carolina seceded alone from the old union of States. Her people, in Convention assembled, invited the slaveholding States (none others) of the old Union to join her in erecting a serparate Government of Slave States, for the protection of their common interests. All of the slave states, with the exception of Maryland and Kentucky, responded to her invitation. The Southern Confederacy of slave States was formed.
It was on account of encroachments upon the institution of slavery by the sectional majority of the old Union, that South Carolina seceded from that Union. It is not at this late day, after the loss of thirty thousand of her best and bravest men in battle, that she will suffer it to be bartered away; or ground between the upper and nether mill stones, by the madness of Congress, or the counsels of shallow men elsewhere.
By the compact we made with Virginia and the other States of this Confederacy, South Carolina will stand to the bitter end of destruction. By that compact she intends to stand or to fall. Neither Congress, nor certain make-shift men in Virginia, can force upon her their mad schemes of weakness and surrender. She stands upon her institutions--and there she will fall in their defense. We want no Confederate Government without our institutions. And we will have none. Sink or swim, live or die, we stand by them, and are fighting for them this day. This is the ground of our fight--it is well that all should understand it at once. Thousands and tens of thousands of the bravest men, and the best blood of this State, fighting in the ranks, have left their bones whitening on the bleak hills of Virginia in this cause. We are fighting for our system of civilization--not for buncomb, or for Jeff Davis. We intend to fight for that, or nothing. We expect Virginia to stand beside us in that fight, as of old, as we have stood beside her in this war up to this time. But such talk coming from such a source is destructive to the cause. Let it cease at once, in God's name, and in behalf of our common cause! It is paralizing [sic] to every man here to hear it. It throws a pall over the hearts of the soldiers from this State to hear it. The soldiers of South Carolina will not fight beside a ni gger--to talk of emancipation is to disband our army. We are free men, and we chose to fight for ourselves--we want no slaves to fight for us. Skulkers, money lenders, money makers, and blood-suckers, alone will tolerate the idea. It is the man who won't fight himself, who wants his ni gger to fight for him, and to take his place in the ranks. Put that man in the ranks. And do it at once. Control your armies--put men of capacity in command, re-establish confidence--enforce thorough discipline--and there will be found men enough, and brave men enough, to defeat a dozen Sherman's. Falter and hack at the root of the Confederacy--our institutions--our civilization--and you kill the cause as dead as a boiled crab.
The straight and narrow path of our deliverance is in the reform of our government, and the discipline of our armies. Will Virginia stand by us as of old in this rugged pathway? We will not fail her in the shadow of a hair. But South Carolina will fight upon no other platform, that that she laid down in 1860."
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
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