Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
The south may or may not have been monolithic, but its leadership was very close to being single minded on the issue of slavery and emancipation and they were the gov't in Richmond. Which is why, that gov't could not bring itself to emancipate their slaves, even to save the Confederacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Battalion * Lee, 11 January 1865- "...to accompany the measure [of using black troops] with a well-digested plan of gradual and general emancipation..."
* Duncan Kenner mission initiated by Jefferson Davis.
"Lee had no power in this at all. He wasn't a member of congress, nor was he the president.
Regards, Cash"
Who was?
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You quoted Lee above, from his letter to Sen. Hunter. Those weren't Davis' words, they were Lee's. What Lee wanted to see was nice for Lee, but not what was going to happen. The confederate congress made the laws, signed into law by the confederate president.
"you could illuminate us as to what you believe are the myths in the book?" A daunting task, if he hasn't read the book.
Levine describes a range of debate among Confederate citizens over the costs and benefits of using a massive number of slaves as soldiers. Among the people he quotes are those who thought the economic dislocation caused by the loss of slave labor would actually weaken the war effort, those who thought it was unthinkable that blacks might be good soldiers, and the employment of black soldiers would fatally weaken white morale, those who frankly stated that emancipation would betray the purpose of the Confederacy, those who thought that armed, organized blacks would turn their guns on the Confederacy, or desert enmasse to the Union.
There were also many who thought blacks would make useful soldiers, and had been advocating their use, with the freedom as the reward, since the start of the war. But it was the worsening military situation, that spurred leading figures like Davis to consider large scale emancipation.
It should be noted, that except for Lee, most of these "emancipationists" had a very limited idea of freedom for these projected veterans. They were to be confined to a caste between slavery and full citizenship, or even returned to slavery, in everything but name.
In the end, it didn't happen on any scale. Obviously they weren't significant numbers of black Confederate soldiers at any point during the war.
__________________ "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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