Civil War History - The South & Western TheatersCheck this forum for all South and Western Theater Questions. Included are the Western, Pacific, Trans-Mississippi, & Lower Seaboard and Gulf Approach Theaters.
Dear Ole,
I believe that Johan Steele has established 130 cases of black fighting confederates, and he multiplies that number by 10 to have an estimate of 1300. A few more men then cycled through one USCT regiment. What were the motivations of these men? A legit historic question.
How many cases were ad hoc, single time incidents? How many "sightings" were workers employed near enemy lines, as opposed to armed fighters.
Certainly there is no equivalence to the Union use of tens of thousands of armed, uniformed black men in dozens of regiments and artillery batteries. Certainly these men's motivations and purposes were clear and unmistakable: End slavery. Play an essential role in Union victory that would translate into citizenship when the shooting stops.
"Sightings" of black confederates. Now that's a standard of evidence usually reserved for the Loch Ness Monster.
Neal: You weren't too subtle. Any "misunderstanding" was deliberate.
I can imagine the CSA interfering, limiting or partially abolishing slavery to use black men as infantry, if they were (1) desperate enough (2) had time enough to gain political support for such a radical move. War makes its own realities. But its a catch 22: if they're desperate enough, they don't have the time to make it happen, if they have the time, they aren't desperate enough.
Gentlemen, slavery was an unfortunate (to say the very least) part of life in the United States in 1860, in states both well north and well south of the Pennsylvania- Maryland state line. Lots of different economic structures and lifestyles stretched between Maine and Louisiana. Slaves were slaves, be they Italian, Irish, Choctaw or African. None of it was good if you were the slave. Northern factory owners gained from free or low cost labor just as did the rice planters, tobacco farmers and cotton planters in the milder climates. It was a system 'inherited' from some of our European and African ancestors and had been debated in the colonies since Jim Oglethorpe brought some Africans to Georgia in 1619 and the Plymouth settlers began acquiring the services of Pequots in Massachusetts as did the English with the Powatans in the Jamestown area prior to 1620, not to mention hundreds of thousands of indentured servants. When the war broke out in the south after 1861 this was a well established 'custom' in all the settled portion of our vast country. Slaves came from many nations and backgrounds and put up varying degrees of resistance to the situation all across the south and to New England (also known as New Amsterdam, don't forget my Dutch). There were, believe it or not places in the south were black and white farmers toiled the land side by on rocky hillsides, and when the war came their way, they joined in defense of the homeland. That was a fact, albeit not readily accepted by folks who try to label the south as a place that tortured blacks. (Yes, that did happen, but not in every field and village.) It happened that way in Bedford County, Tennessee and also in Sullivan County, Tennessee. One Confederate, One Union. All a victim of circumstance. Neither Army, north nor south, had the fortitude to recognize the seeds of civility sprouting in the land. It wasn't politically correct. Where have I heard that term?
Dear Larry,
Factory labor was rough, but it wasn't slavery. Slavery was permanent oppression. The factory worker had freedom and political rights and power that the slave never did. Immigrants rapidly gained political power in their community, unionized for better working conditions, and within 50 years of arriving in this country, were electing senators and governors. In the 200 years of American slavery, the circumstances of slavery were identical. Slavery was an unchanging, indeed unchangable condition.
Dear Larry,
Slavery was not an equal fact throughout the US in 1860. Economic circumstances, not some ingrained morality on the part of Northerners, meant that slavery was always concentrated in the South. Fewer Northerners practiced slavery, slavery had a smaller economic role, and therefore easier to eliminate.
However slavery was practiced nearly a century in Massachusetts. Why was it abolished? Because the voters of the state recognized it was wrong, and that sentiment was stronger than the relatively weak economic interest of slavery.
As far as black Southerners fighting the Yankee invader I can only ask why in the world would they do that? The answer is: they didn't, SCV propaganda nonwithstanding.
If you want to argue that a variety of northern groups, interests, and individuals supported slavery, or what white northerners could be as racist as white southerners you have my agreement.
[quote=matthew mckeon]Dear Larry,
Slavery was not an equal fact throughout the US in 1860. Economic circumstances, not some ingrained morality on the part of Northerners, meant that slavery was always concentrated in the South. Fewer Northerners practiced slavery, slavery had a smaller economic role, and therefore easier to eliminate.
I didn't mean that it was equal throughout the land, just that it did in fact extend from Canada southward. Indentured servants and factory workers did have freedom that the blacks on rice and cotton plantations obviously didn't.
Other blacks in the south had varying degrees of freedom (yes, it did vary) on smaller farms and in more urban situations. This horrible war did bring about a change, slowly, in general law, but it took at least a hundred years to bring about social change in the South and it is still a work in progress. In my 59 years on this earth, all in North Carolina and Tennessee, I can see much progress in equality for all.
However slavery was practiced nearly a century in Massachusetts. Why was it abolished? Because the voters of the state recognized it was wrong, and that sentiment was stronger than the relatively weak economic interest of slavery.
Slavery was abolished in the remaining states in much the same fashion, just took a mite longer in parts of the south. You could call it tradition, if you were white. I'll bet the blacks have a far different and far more accurate opinion.
As far as black Southerners fighting the Yankee invader I can only ask why in the world would they do that? The answer is: they didn't, SCV propaganda nonwithstanding.
QUOTE]
On this last point, I'll have to respectfully disagree. The SCV doesn't propagate propaganda. There might be some bs occasionally, but we have human members.
I've seen too many photographs of Confederate soldier groups taken in the early part of the 20th century with black faces dispersed in the rows to not believe the free blacks helped with the cause, however misdirected that action might have been. Nashville was considered "occupied" from 1862 until war's end. Last I read, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia had all been states from the 1780s on and had helped raise that invading army. My southern Union ancestors certainly had. So had the Confederates. Rob Lee as an example had been a very integral part of the US Army for years. The problem was that US Troops took a lot of liberties when they entered the southern territory, much of which was their homeland. Besides liberties, they took food, fodder and burned a few hundred court houses, barns and residences. That looked very much like an invading army to many Confederate soldiers, particularly the ones who owned the listed items. Blacks were in that number. That was just a fact. This was CIVIL war, it wasn't fun.
Last edited by larry_cockerham; 02-26-2006 at 11:16 PM.
I tend to agree with you on your recent above posts concerning slavery and its impact on both the North, South and the nation as a whole. I also tend to agree with you that the SCV, on the whole, is an honorable organization, an American one, that has, and is, hitting a few bumps on the political road right about now.
My own feelings concerning the South of the past and of the present is one of awe and curiousity. In the present, I have never been more comfortable, more at ease and more welcomed than the times I have been in the South. The people are friendly, kind, polite and quite willing to go out of their way to help a stranger and put him at ease at the expense of their own comfort. Southern hospitality is no stranger to this Yankee, I have seen it in operation too many times to doubt it.
As for the South of the past, I truely feel as Lincoln did on the question of slavery, even though I am known as the 'champion' of this cause of the late war, I completely agree with his speeches that if slavery had thrived in the North and not in the South, things would be reversed, that slavery was a national curse brought on by both sections of the nation. The South had climate and geography against it and then a sectional streak of stubborness and pride to compound its problem with the institution. I wonder if the reverse was true, would the North had done any better with the problem of slavery had been so prevelent in its section instead of the South's? I think not.
But one could suppose many things, but the questions that take place on this board generally deal with history, things that have already taken place, facts that have already been recorded, events in the past that cannot be changed, only studied.
It seems to me that history is one great, multiple, pile-up on the interstate of time and that we study the wreckage and victims as we pass the scene across the median as we drive slowly by, forcing traffic to back up behind us. We get a quick glance, and then we are forced forward towards our own journey into the future by the impatient drivers behind us, leaning on their horns, urging us on before we can really comprehend what the accident was all about.
As a fellow driver on that road, I tell you what I think I saw, you tell me what you think you saw, etc., etc., and we all draw our own conclusions. The journey permits very little else.
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
Neil, it's interesting and helpful to continue to learn your perspective, since you lived and live across the Ohio River from the New River Valley where I grew up. Just remember, without us and the good folks in Pennsylvania, the Ohio would be just a trickle. I grew up with the southern attitude all around me, so I take that for granted. The same folks and attitudes have been encountered by me many times in Tennessee, Kentucky and Alabama. I suspect many of them to be in fact cousins. I had two cousins of my own, probably still do, though fortunately I haven't seen either for more than 40 years, who live in Rochester, New York. Yankees to the bone, to quote an old southern saying. I write 'opinions' only from the heart and the impressions I've gained from living in the south. Much of it I suspect is true. Continue to show me the warps in the road. That's a fruitful activity.
It is a well established fact that slavery was supported by a national concensus in 1860. The moderate Republican position that slavery should be limited to its existing territory and not allowed to expand into new territories had nothing to do with the welfare of slaves but had everything to do with creating a white-only preserve such as already existed in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, etc. What some contributors to this list are calling "racism" was the national point-of-view in 1860 and certainly was not unique to the South. It should also be noted that many of the textile factory owners in the North supported slavery because the instutution kept the price of cotton down.
If the Abolitionists had been willing to accept gradual emancipation with compensation, as all other western nations used, the likelyhood of war would have been much less. The Abolitionists, with their demand for instant, uncompensated emancipation, must take a large share of the load for causing the war.
It should be kept firmly in mind that the United States of America was a slave-holding republic, and had been since its beginning. If the South wanted to live in a slave-holding republic it needed to do nothing--it was already part of such a nation.
What the South wanted was freedom to live in a nation without domestic terrorism such as that advocated by Radical Abolitionists and condoned by the Republican Party.
Kent Masterson Brown, Retreat From Gettysburg, U of N.C. Press, 2005, has much valuable information about Black Confederates in so far as the laborers, cooks, and teamsters of the Army of Northern Virginia were largely African American and slaves. Many of these men foraged in Pennsylvania to support the ANV and most returned to Virginia with that army.
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