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The implication of the site is that there were large numbers of black Confederate soldiers "in the ranks" an opinion I do not support, as it gives the impression that they were soldiers and only 13,000 got the chance to see combat.
I am beginning to question the number 13,000 ever saw combat.
The site is the one that is misrepresenting itself, as the numberous quotes by historians have been repeatedly disproven on this forum and elsewhere.
I stand by my post.
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
Ok. I'll bite. Do you have any substantive, documented evidence of black confederates? The quotes were interesting, but really nothing more than sound bites. Any regimental histories? I wanna have an open mind here, but this is pretty thin.
Black Confederates - THE FORGOTTEN MEN IN GRAY
The General Nathan Bedford Forrest Historical Society
And the Nathan Bedford Forrest Camp 215 Sons of Confederate Veterans
"The story of some of the tens of thousands of loyal Black Southerners who served with the Confederate forces during the War between the states".
(As PAID EQUALS, not as contrabands of war who were paid less and drafted, at that!).
Desert Rose productions:
Nelson Winbush - Black American, Sons of Confederate Veterans
Forrest Historical Society
PO Box 11141
Memphis, Tennessee 38111
In an article written by Bruce Levine, titled "Black Confederates" that appeared in North & South magazine in July 2007 (Vol. 10, No. 2), he writes:
"The Confederate government wanted no slave — indeed, no men at all who were not certifiably white — under arms. To be sure, the U.S. Government entered the war with the same policy. But recognizing the inexorable logic of necessity (to prarphrase Frederick Douglass), the Union reconsidered. In 1862, it formed a few black units, and in 1863, it reversed its earlier all-white policy.
"The Confederacy, however, stood firmly by its ban on black troops. When one of Jefferson Davis' generals suggested after First Bull Run that the Confederacy arm its slaves, Jefferson Davis snapped that the very idea was 'stark madness' and 'would revolt and disgust the whole South.'
"...Why was southern leadership so stubborn on this score? Because it was fighting to preserve African Amercan slavery. The claim that blacks were racially inferior (and therefore poor soldier material) was basic to American slavery's ideological defense. As Secretatry (of War James J.) Seddon once again put it, the position that the Confederacy had taken both before 'the North and before the world' did 'not allow the employment as armed soldiers of negroes.'
"...Robert K. Krick Jr., for many decades the chief historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, has examined the records of at least 100,000 Confederate soldiers and found a total of twenty or thirty nonwhites among them.
"Claims that thousands (much less tens and even hundreds of thousands) served rest on wishful thinking, gullibility, and misuse and abuse of historical sources. The evidence offered in their behalf is rife with unsupported anecdotes and rumors, demonstrably erroneous (and usually second-hand) reports, wholesale misinterpretation, and quotations reproduced incompletely and/or out of context. Not one claim that company- (much less regimental- or brigade-) sized units of black Confederate soldiers actually existed has ever been documented in the ample surviving records of the Confederate War Department.
"General Patrick R. Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee initiated the first major attempt to change Richmond's stance on the question in December 1863-January 1864, after the fall of Vicksburg, the defeat of Gettysburg, and the terrible humiliation at Chattanooga. Cleburne urged that military-age male slaves be offered their freedom in exchange for joining the Confederate army. Boosters of the Black Confederate legend regularly invoke Cleburne and his proposal as evidence supposedly bolstering their case. But the significance of Cleburne's story and its aftermath is very different.
"First of all, if any black soldiers were already serving in the Confederate ranks, Cleburne clearly knew nothing of them. He complained, on the contrary, that while the Union was by then successfully recruiting soldiers from among both free blacks and slaves, 'our single source of supply is that portion of our white men fit for duty and not now in the ranks,' and that source was palpably near exhaustion.
"Second, Cleburne frankly acknowledged that the slave population — far from contented, loyal and anxious to defend the Confederacy — longed for freedom and therefore identified not with the Confederacy's war effort but with the Union's. 'For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced,' he wrote, 'the negro has been dreaming of freedom,' a freedom that 'has become the paradise of his hopes.'
"In January 1864 the Jefferson Davis government was still standing by its long-standing policy and rejected Cleburne's proposal. But by November the Confederacy's now desperate military situation finally forced Davis to reverse course. His words and deeds as he did so further discredit the modern legend of the Black Confederates.
"Once Davis decided that he must enlist black troops into his army, thus, he immediately linked such black enlistments to black freedom. No significant numbers of slaves would ever fight for the South, as he well knew, unless they were freed from bondage in return. Davis's closest advisor, Judah P. Benjamin, agreed. So did Robert E. Lee, who warned that 'unless freedom is guaranteed... we shall get no volunteers.' None of them was blind enough to believe, in other words, what modern supporters of the 'Black Confederate' legend today so emphatically insist — that is, that cheerful, contented, and ardently loyal slaves were ready to fight for the South while remaining in servitude...
"Did Davis think of his plan as the final expression of already-extensive slave combat on behalf of the South? Once again, not according to him. The Confederacy's chief executive notoriously micro-managed the Confederacy's military affairs, so we might presume that he knew something about who was fighting in his armies. But he was utterly unaware of the large groups of black soldiers that his armies are today said to have included.
"...After months of debate, carried on against a background of even further Confederate military reverses, a severely diluted version of Cleburne's original idea finally became Confederate law in March 1865. General Richard S. Ewell assumed responsibility for implementing it, and recruiters quickly fanned out into several states. Confederate officials and journalists confidently predicted massive enrollments. The actual results proved bitterly disappointing; most slaveowners still refused to cooperate while most slaves spurned the overture as too little, too late. A small company or two of black hospital workers was formed and attached to a unit of a local Richmond home guard. The regular army evidently managed to raise another forty to sixty men — men whom it drilled, fed, and housed at military prison facilities under watchful eyes of military police and prison wardens.
"The whole sorry episode provides a fitting coda for our examination of modern claims that thousands and thousands of black troops loyally fought in Confederate armies. This strikingly unsuccessful last-ditch effort constituted the sole exception to the Confederacy's steadfast refusal to employ African American soldiers. As General Ewell's long-time aide-de-camp, Major George Campbell Brown, later affirmed, the handful of black soldiers mustered in the southern capital in March of 1865 were 'the first and only black troops used on our side."
Levine is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbanna-Champaign and the author of 'Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War.'
In an article written by Bruce Levine, titled "Black Confederates" that appeared in North & South magazine in July 2007 (Vol. 10, No. 2), he writes:
"The Confederate government wanted no slave — indeed, no men at all who were not certifiably white — under arms. To be sure, the U.S. Government entered the war with the same policy. But recognizing the inexorable logic of necessity (to prarphrase Frederick Douglass), the Union reconsidered. In 1862, it formed a few black units, and in 1863, it reversed its earlier all-white policy.
"The Confederacy, however, stood firmly by its ban on black troops. When one of Jefferson Davis' generals suggested after First Bull Run that the Confederacy arm its slaves, Jefferson Davis snapped that the very idea was 'stark madness' and 'would revolt and disgust the whole South.'
"...Why was southern leadership so stubborn on this score? Because it was fighting to preserve African Amercan slavery. The claim that blacks were racially inferior (and therefore poor soldier material) was basic to American slavery's ideological defense. As Secretatry (of War James J.) Seddon once again put it, the position that the Confederacy had taken both before 'the North and before the world' did 'not allow the employment as armed soldiers of negroes.'
"...Robert K. Krick Jr., for many decades the chief historian at the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, has examined the records of at least 100,000 Confederate soldiers and found a total of twenty or thirty nonwhites among them.
"Claims that thousands (much less tens and even hundreds of thousands) served rest on wishful thinking, gullibility, and misuse and abuse of historical sources. The evidence offered in their behalf is rife with unsupported anecdotes and rumors, demonstrably erroneous (and usually second-hand) reports, wholesale misinterpretation, and quotations reproduced incompletely and/or out of context. Not one claim that company- (much less regimental- or brigade-) sized units of black Confederate soldiers actually existed has ever been documented in the ample surviving records of the Confederate War Department.
"General Patrick R. Cleburne of the Army of Tennessee initiated the first major attempt to change Richmond's stance on the question in December 1863-January 1864, after the fall of Vicksburg, the defeat of Gettysburg, and the terrible humiliation at Chattanooga. Cleburne urged that military-age male slaves be offered their freedom in exchange for joining the Confederate army. Boosters of the Black Confederate legend regularly invoke Cleburne and his proposal as evidence supposedly bolstering their case. But the significance of Cleburne's story and its aftermath is very different.
"First of all, if any black soldiers were already serving in the Confederate ranks, Cleburne clearly knew nothing of them. He complained, on the contrary, that while the Union was by then successfully recruiting soldiers from among both free blacks and slaves, 'our single source of supply is that portion of our white men fit for duty and not now in the ranks,' and that source was palpably near exhaustion.
"Second, Cleburne frankly acknowledged that the slave population — far from contented, loyal and anxious to defend the Confederacy — longed for freedom and therefore identified not with the Confederacy's war effort but with the Union's. 'For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced,' he wrote, 'the negro has been dreaming of freedom,' a freedom that 'has become the paradise of his hopes.'
"In January 1864 the Jefferson Davis government was still standing by its long-standing policy and rejected Cleburne's proposal. But by November the Confederacy's now desperate military situation finally forced Davis to reverse course. His words and deeds as he did so further discredit the modern legend of the Black Confederates.
"Once Davis decided that he must enlist black troops into his army, thus, he immediately linked such black enlistments to black freedom. No significant numbers of slaves would ever fight for the South, as he well knew, unless they were freed from bondage in return. Davis's closest advisor, Judah P. Benjamin, agreed. So did Robert E. Lee, who warned that 'unless freedom is guaranteed... we shall get no volunteers.' None of them was blind enough to believe, in other words, what modern supporters of the 'Black Confederate' legend today so emphatically insist — that is, that cheerful, contented, and ardently loyal slaves were ready to fight for the South while remaining in servitude...
"Did Davis think of his plan as the final expression of already-extensive slave combat on behalf of the South? Once again, not according to him. The Confederacy's chief executive notoriously micro-managed the Confederacy's military affairs, so we might presume that he knew something about who was fighting in his armies. But he was utterly unaware of the large groups of black soldiers that his armies are today said to have included.
"...After months of debate, carried on against a background of even further Confederate military reverses, a severely diluted version of Cleburne's original idea finally became Confederate law in March 1865. General Richard S. Ewell assumed responsibility for implementing it, and recruiters quickly fanned out into several states. Confederate officials and journalists confidently predicted massive enrollments. The actual results proved bitterly disappointing; most slaveowners still refused to cooperate while most slaves spurned the overture as too little, too late. A small company or two of black hospital workers was formed and attached to a unit of a local Richmond home guard. The regular army evidently managed to raise another forty to sixty men — men whom it drilled, fed, and housed at military prison facilities under watchful eyes of military police and prison wardens.
"The whole sorry episode provides a fitting coda for our examination of modern claims that thousands and thousands of black troops loyally fought in Confederate armies. This strikingly unsuccessful last-ditch effort constituted the sole exception to the Confederacy's steadfast refusal to employ African American soldiers. As General Ewell's long-time aide-de-camp, Major George Campbell Brown, later affirmed, the handful of black soldiers mustered in the southern capital in March of 1865 were 'the first and only black troops used on our side."
Levine is a professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbanna-Champaign and the author of 'Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War.'
Submitted for your consideration.
Thank you for your post.
Now duck.
Sincerely,
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
The General Nathan Bedford Forrest Historical Society
And the Nathan Bedford Forrest Camp 215 Sons of Confederate Veterans
"The story of some of the tens of thousands of loyal Black Southerners who served with the Confederate forces during the War between the states".
(As PAID EQUALS, not as contrabands of war who were paid less and drafted, at that!).
Desert Rose productions:
Nelson Winbush - Black American, Sons of Confederate Veterans
Forrest Historical Society
PO Box 11141
Memphis, Tennessee 38111
From the Arkansas, Telegraph of January 13, 1865.:
"The great conservative institution of slavery, so excellent in itself, and so necessary to civil liberty and the dignity of the white race, is one of the grand objects of our struggle. It should never be lost sight of, nor under any pressure should we ever take any step incompatible with the relation of master and slave. No entering wedge to emancipation should ever be allowed. It should not be held forth to the slave as a boon for his services. Our theory is, that he is better off a slave; and even if he were not, we could notsafely have an emancipted class of them amongst us. Much less can we put arms in his hands. That would ruin him forever. Slavery afterwards would become impossible."
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
From the Arkansas, Telegraph of January 13, 1865.:
"The great conservative institution of slavery, so excellent in itself, and so necessary to civil liberty and the dignity of the white race, is one of the grand objects of our struggle. It should never be lost sight of, nor under any pressure should we ever take any step incompatible with the relation of master and slave. No entering wedge to emancipation should ever be allowed. It should not be held forth to the slave as a boon for his services. Our theory is, that he is better off a slave; and even if he were not, we could notsafely have an emancipted class of them amongst us. Much less can we put arms in his hands. That would ruin him forever. Slavery afterwards would become impossible."
Unionblue
Neil, you still post a wicked message. That one cut to the chase. Such, however, was the prevalent school of thought among those who cared one way or the other. I still contend there were those not so concerned, not to say they shouldn't have been.
__________________ Ancestors in US Army: 13th TN Cav; 10th TN Cav; 3rd NC Inf
Ancestors in CSA Army: 48th VA; 63rd VA, 5th NC Cav; 37th NC
Wife and Grandson's CSA: 15th AL, 51st GA, 41st TN; 36th TN; GA Mil 1197 Dist
Enough were concerned, a large majority in fact, to keep the idea of black slaves serving as soldiers out of Southern reach to ensure the death of the Confederacy.
They were people of their times, Larry, nothing in this century will erase that simple fact.
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
Neil, you still post a wicked message. That one cut to the chase. Such, however, was the prevalent school of thought among those who cared one way or the other. I still contend there were those not so concerned, not to say they shouldn't have been.
Blue has a lot of fun with our LEFT. Clearly this is more Stephens-esque drivel. Quotes from Davis or Lee on the subject?
I think not.
Your DENIAL, I believe, runs through the North as a flash flood tributary!
B-Wulf
And BTW, wasn't that part of Arkansas under Yankee control for much of the war, according to that new guy who posted ?
And since Lincoln didn't shut it down, it had to have been a RADICAL UNCONSERVATIVE newspaper! (Note the use of the word CONSERVATIVE in the text... Rarely do I see CONSERVATIVES use the word themselves... Always I hear it from the LEFT...).
But this writing?
Nothing Pro Negro. This slave state condition would be necessary for Lincoln men to ship them all back to Africky...
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