Black Confederats split from Black mayor joins SCV

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jgoodguy

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CSA Today said:
The listings for individual states are for white troops, the blacks are under a single list marked USCT. In North Carolina there were fours black unionist regiments and four white unionist regiments. The total number of the NC white unionists was 3,156 with 43 battle related deaths – they didn’t do a lot of fighting either.

“When it came time for the Buffaloes to take to the woods, they took to the field.”
Seems you don't want the service of black confederates denigrated but your more then willing to do so the service of southern unionists..
"Several thousand White North Carolinians wore the Union blue. Of these some never switched their allegiance to the Confederacy while others did, only to become disenchanted and return to the United States' fold. About half joined regiments of other states becoming lost among the names of those with whom they served. The others, numbering at least 3,156, 3 were organized into four regiments of North Carolina Union Volunteers" seems you left some out..
Given what unionists faced In NC,I don't know if I would have had the courage to be one,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ConfederateAtrocities/message/185
 
CMWinkler said: ↑
You have a point, Union. No one has posted anything to show he fought; only that he served. It seems though to me more than a bit pedantic to decide that is the criteria which must be displayed. I was doing some research recently on a Michael N. Calgy who is buried in the Gallatin City Cemetery and died in 1864. He was a white man who enlisted in Robison's 2nd Tennessee and ended up a Sergeant at the time of his death. He spent the vast majority of his service detailed as a nurse in various hospitals. I found no evidence that he FOUGHT for the Confederacy only that he nursed for it. There are many units, North and South, that did not see active combat. I'm curious as to exactly what proof, other than loyal service, you think it necessary to show.
CMWinkler,

I have trouble with the word "served," especially when it comes to blacks 'serving' with Confederate forces who are in fact, "slaves."

You point out your research on Michael N. Calgy, which includes the fact that he enlisted and that he served as a nurse in various hospitals. You must have an enlistment form, perhaps various company rosters, that shows that the man did serve, loyally, as you put it.

Herein lies my biggest problem with such efforts by the SCV with the mayor's ancestor. First, he is given the rank, the military rank, of private, which to one and all signifies he was a member of the Confederate army. We know, based upon the documentation provided by Andy Hall and others, there is no record of his enlistment in such, while you have proof of Calgy's enlistment.

When it comes to the loyal service of a slave attached to the Confederate army, why not simply list that fact? Why is there an almost desperate need to attach a military flavor to such slave service? Maybe because a slave who "served" comes across a bit uncomfortable to 21st century folks because one has to always wonder, was this "willing" service or was this compelled "service?" Maybe the rank of "private" quells those uncomfortable feelings and forestalls those uncomfortable questions about sources and documentation.

No, I have no problem with the service of enlisted nomcombantants or the actual telling of what that "service" entailed. But let's be totally honest about such events.

Right now, as I read it from the sources provided, the mayor's ancestor was a Confederate slave who provided service to the Confederacy.

Why not simply say that when awarding membership to the mayor? Why not honor the nearly four million slaves who provided service to the Confederate army by building fortifications, driving wagons, cooking meals, tending crops and fields at home while the white men enlisted and served in the Confederate army? Was not the slaves "service" honorable? Cannot the slaves myrid of tasks and duties in support of the war effort for the CSA be listed as "loyal service?"

Start awarding SCV membership based on that criteria of "service" and I will definately begin to develope a more tolerant attitude towards the organization.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

I didn't want his lost before I could respond.
 
If the SCV wants to grant membership to a descendant of a servant, that's their business and none of mine. What makes it hinky is implying that Sam was a private in the CSA. Sneaky and not at all true.

Why?
 
CMWinkler,

I have trouble with the word "served," especially when it comes to blacks 'serving' with Confederate forces who are in fact, "slaves."

This puzzles me, Union. You don't like "served." You don't like "fought." If these slaves, often called servants, did not serve what word can we use that passes muster?

You point out your research on Michael N. Calgy, which includes the fact that he enlisted and that he served as a nurse in various hospitals. You must have an enlistment form, perhaps various company rosters, that shows that the man did serve, loyally, as you put it.

Sgt. Calgy was enlisted, raising to the rank of Sgt., but seems not to have "fought." I realize that an enlisted man who served in a noncombat role is different than a slave or even a free black who did so, but, frankly, I see no problem with honoring anyone for faithful and honorable service, regardless of their enlistment.

Herein lies my biggest problem with such efforts by the SCV with the mayor's ancestor. First, he is given the rank, the military rank, of private, which to one and all signifies he was a member of the Confederate army. We know, based upon the documentation provided by Andy Hall and others, there is no record of his enlistment in such, while you have proof of Calgy's enlistment.

Here's where we go into what I call pedantic semantics. I honestly don't know who assigned the title private to this man but I'm astonished by the vehemence of the fixation on it. You, yourself, seem to fall victim to semantics. His ancestor WAS a member of the Confederate Army. Now, I agree, he wasn't an ENLISTED member but clearly he was a member.

When it comes to the loyal service of a slave attached to the Confederate army, why not simply list that fact? Why is there an almost desperate need to attach a military flavor to such slave service? Maybe because a slave who "served" comes across a bit uncomfortable to 21st century folks because one has to always wonder, was this "willing" service or was this compelled "service?" Maybe the rank of "private" quells those uncomfortable feelings and forestalls those uncomfortable questions about sources and documentation.

Perhaps. Maybe, his family has always referred to his service that way. Be that as it may, the wastage of so much bandwidth and emotion over seems that more than the 21st Century folks who contrive military titles are uncomfortable with the service these folks performed.

No, I have no problem with the service of enlisted nomcombantants or the actual telling of what that "service" entailed. But let's be totally honest about such events.

OK, I have no issue with this but let's be fair here. When there's a photo caption and that's it, there are often not "full descriptions."

Right now, as I read it from the sources provided, the mayor's ancestor was a Confederate slave who provided service to the Confederacy.

I agree.

Why not simply say that when awarding membership to the mayor? Why not honor the nearly four million slaves who provided service to the Confederate army by building fortifications, driving wagons, cooking meals, tending crops and fields at home while the white men enlisted and served in the Confederate army? Was not the slaves "service" honorable? Cannot the slaves myrid of tasks and duties in support of the war effort for the CSA be listed as "loyal service?"

I have no issue whatsoever with that. Only those who served with the Army, however, would be entitled to SCV membership, however. From my perspective, they were all black Confederates.

Start awarding SCV membership based on that criteria of "service" and I will definately begin to develope a more tolerant attitude towards the organization.

Well, speaking for myself, I know I'd be relieved by a more tolerant attitude. Seriously, Union, if you don't like the SCV, fine. It appears, however, that you, amongst others, are so unhappy with the SCV that it causes you to dismiss and dishonor folks, like Cullom, who seem to me to be entitled to honor.

Just an observation.
 
This puzzles me, Union. You don't like "served." You don't like "fought." If these slaves, often called servants, did not serve what word can we use that passes muster?



Sgt. Calgy was enlisted, raising to the rank of Sgt., but seems not to have "fought." I realize that an enlisted man who served in a noncombat role is different than a slave or even a free black who did so, but, frankly, I see no problem with honoring anyone for faithful and honorable service, regardless of their enlistment.



Here's where we go into what I call pedantic semantics. I honestly don't know who assigned the title private to this man but I'm astonished by the vehemence of the fixation on it. You, yourself, seem to fall victim to semantics. His ancestor WAS a member of the Confederate Army. Now, I agree, he wasn't an ENLISTED member but clearly he was a member.



Perhaps. Maybe, his family has always referred to his service that way. Be that as it may, the wastage of so much bandwidth and emotion over seems that more than the 21st Century folks who contrive military titles are uncomfortable with the service these folks performed.



OK, I have no issue with this but let's be fair here. When there's a photo caption and that's it, there are often not "full descriptions."



I agree.



I have no issue whatsoever with that. Only those who served with the Army, however, would be entitled to SCV membership, however. From my perspective, they were all black Confederates.



Well, speaking for myself, I know I'd be relieved by a more tolerant attitude. Seriously, Union, if you don't like the SCV, fine. It appears, however, that you, amongst others, are so unhappy with the SCV that it causes you to dismiss and dishonor folks, like Cullom, who seem to me to be entitled to honor.

Just an observation.

There is always more than one way to look at something. A positive here is that if “Union” and the other vociferous anti-Confederate are against SCV recruiting policies, the SCV must be doing something right. :happy:

“Black is nothing other than a darker shade of rebel gray”
Nelson Winbush
 
There is always more than one way to look at something. A positive here is that if “Union” and the other vociferous anti-Confederate are against SCV recruiting policies, the SCV must be doing something right. :happy:

“Black is nothing other than a darker shade of rebel gray”
Nelson Winbush

So, you are proud of the SCV only because folk disagree with you and the organization on certain issues?:cautious:

Kevin Dally
 
s.

Well, speaking for myself, I know I'd be relieved by a more tolerant attitude. Seriously, Union, if you don't like the SCV, fine. It appears, however, that you, amongst others, are so unhappy with the SCV that it causes you to dismiss and dishonor folks, like Cullom, who seem to me to be entitled to honor.

Just an observation.

How has anyone here dishonored Cullom?

Kevin Dally
 
I'd have to go back through the thread, Kevin, to give specifics, but that's my sense. His service was, in my view, belittled by some.

Does me firmly believing the man was NEVER a "Private" and a paid and armed soldier, recognized as such by the CSA Government in any way dishonor him?

Kevin Dally
 
Does me firmly believing the man was NEVER a "Private" and a paid and armed soldier, recognized as such by the CSA Government in any way dishonor him?

Kevin Dally

You are free to believe as you will. Believing he was not enlisted or mustered in Confederate service does not, in my view, dishonor him, no.
 
How has anyone here dishonored Cullom?

Kevin Dally


Well your not questioning Cullom's motives are you? Or the SCV?

Lets just imagine how this came to be. either Collum or the local SCV camp found information about Cullom's ancestor. Either Cullom approached the SCV or vice versa. The SCV can accept anyone on the camp level for membership and present certificates all the time to local business's or other organizations, local essay contests etc. What I find important here is someone found some common ground in Confederate Ancestry and approached each other. As many claim Black Confederates were, he was not forced to accept the award, made to march to a battlefield and made to serve. He accepted the award of his own free will.

Collum is no doubt taking flack for his decision. I am sure he did it out of a feeling of good will.
 
Well your not questioning Cullom's motives are you? Or the SCV?

Lets just imagine how this came to be. either Collum or the local SCV camp found information about Cullom's ancestor. Either Cullom approached the SCV or vice versa. The SCV can accept anyone on the camp level for membership and present certificates all the time to local business's or other organizations, local essay contests etc. What I find important here is someone found some common ground in Confederate Ancestry and approached each other. As many claim Black Confederates were, he was not forced to accept the award, made to march to a battlefield and made to serve. He accepted the award of his own free will.

Collum is no doubt taking flack for his decision. I am sure he did it out of a feeling of good will.

Was all the excitement here because the man was Black? Would the Camp have made as big a deal of it if the person was White?
I remember years ago when I was in the SCV, they called for everyone in the northern area of Texas to participate in a Marker ceremony...they were wanting a BIG turn out, the News Media was going to be there, Television, Radio, newspapers...it was BIG deal because it was for a Black Confederate Soldier!
Now, when I joined, there was no media involved, no camera's, radio, newspapers...(I didn't want all that) but it was so that the Texas Division could make the claim the war had nothing to do with slavery because of this Black Confederate Soldier. I remember guys in the camp saying "that would show em", inferring that the war wasn't about slavery.

You bet I'm skeptical!

Kevin Dally
 
Unique is unique. For me if its an opportunity to reach out across barriers that should have been done long ago and without fanfare. I cant fix the past but I can the future. You cant fix slavery or the people involved with it. They are long gone. I can however control where my money goes and don't have to buy products from countries that support slavery. Most Confederates need markers and I have traveled deep into the woods and at a dumpster site (created by the county) to mark graves. Wherever and whenever I can I go to a service for these soldiers. I was at the re-interment of William Thomas Overby in Newnan,Ga. and the men of the Hunley recovered and re-interred in Charleston, S.C.. It was worth the time and trouble to go. There was no fanfare when I joined and no fanfare when I became a lifetime member. It's had its ups and downs but I have never regretted it.
 
Now, I agree, he wasn't an ENLISTED member but clearly he was a member.

Indicating that he wasn't a soldier, and could not be one under the existing laws, therefore affording him a military rank is a lie. Being forced to act in association with soldiers is not the same as being one.
 
It always amazes me why a certain group of people insist on the existance of thousands of Black Confederate soldiers when the CS Govt itself appears to have been wholly unaware of them. If the CS govt & military didn't consider a black man fit to be a soldier and certainly didn't acknowledge the existance of such in their own army... In short if their govt & military didn't see them, their enemy didn't see them... well where these hordes of Black Confederate Soldiers? Are the manservants of an officer soldiers? The soldiers didn't think so. Were civilian contractors soliders? Because if so we had better start seriously increasing the estimates of the size of the CS army. Every slave laboring in a field growing corn, every slave working in a harness shop making tack etc had better be added to the rolls. All of a sudden the CS isn't out numbered... something those same posters wouldn't want.

If there were so many Black Confederate soldiers why were black people treated so brutally by the White League & Klan, was their no appreciation for the veteran of the CS army in their hearts?

It appears apparent that the SCV and a certain class of people want to honor men who may not have actually had anything to do with being soldiers. The SCV is a private organization with a select membership, that is their right. I know the American Legion has a rather strict membership policy and non veterans need not apply. Today there is something called "Stolen Valor" which deals with those posers pretending to be soldiers for their own gain. I just wonder the ethics of someone putting forward a civilian as a soldier 100 years after their death.

Most of these claims of thousands of Black CS veterans wouldn't hold water in a court room and they certainly haven't in the court of history.

It's only really been since the Civil Rights era anyone has put forward this idea that because there were tens of thousands of black men willingly serving as soldiers in the CS Army that slavery must not have had any bassis as the cornerstone of the CS and the CS was really just this big happy multi cultural family. It's an Alice in Wonderland take on history and makes the Hatter seem well adjusted.
 
So, you are proud of the SCV only because folk disagree with you and the organization on certain issues?:cautious:

Kevin Dally

I said, somewhere, that I was proud of the SCV only because folks disagree with me and the organization on certain issues? I think someone is being a little single-minded in his daily rant against the SCV.

"A modest little person, with much to be modest about."
Winston Churchill
 
Was all the excitement here because the man was Black? Would the Camp have made as big a deal of it if the person was White?
I remember years ago when I was in the SCV, they called for everyone in the northern area of Texas to participate in a Marker ceremony...they were wanting a BIG turn out, the News Media was going to be there, Television, Radio, newspapers...it was BIG deal because it was for a Black Confederate Soldier!
Now, when I joined, there was no media involved, no camera's, radio, newspapers...(I didn't want all that) but it was so that the Texas Division could make the claim the war had nothing to do with slavery because of this Black Confederate Soldier. I remember guys in the camp saying "that would show em", inferring that the war wasn't about slavery.

You bet I'm skeptical!

Kevin Dally

Speaking of being skeptical, you were in the SCV?

"I salute the Confederate Flag with affection, reverence
and undying devotion to the Cause for which it stands."

The Sons of Confederate Veterans Salute
to the Confederate Flag
 
Now, I agree, he wasn't an ENLISTED member but clearly he was a member.

Indicating that he wasn't a soldier, and could not be one under the existing laws, therefore affording him a military rank is a lie. Being forced to act in association with soldiers is not the same as being one.

Lie is a bit too strong, IMHO. A lie is going to require more direct evidence than we have. If private is an honorary term given to him either in honor or in jest by the soldiers he served with, then it is not a lie. If the SCV stops at calling him private, they are only repeating what was. If private was something post war that was a family tradition or extended family tradition(including his former master) then again the SCV is innocent of lying.

In short for the charge lie to prevail, you must show a deliberate intent to deceive. That is the SCV made it up totally up.

In short while we have evidence of a military rank being very unlikely, we do not have evidence of a honorary rank or where the rank came from.

Deception is another issue, but even then the SCV can claim they just repeated what they were told. There is no burden on the SCV to go digging to disprove what they assert.

We assert with evidence that it is extraordinary that Sam Cullom would be a private in the CSA and we do not have extraordinary evidence that he was.
 
A couple of black confederate mythos accounts I have collected,

"There was nothing more to do in the fort so we were marched down to the
railroad and went to fixing it. We would rip up the iron and make pens out of
the ties, then lay the irons across the pens and set the pile on fire, and when
the irons got hot each end would bend to the ground. We had the negroes helping
us and one smart negro refused to help burn the ties and he got a minie ball
through him. The rest of them were all right after that."
Civil War Memories
Of Robert C. Carden
Company B, 16th Tennessee Infantry

"Gun after gun was silenced and abandoned…every embrasure within
range of a thousand yards was silent," Colonel Ripley proudly wrote
of their efforts, adding that Berdan's men also suppressed Rebel
small-arms fire. "The rebel infantry," he wrote, "which at first
responded with a vigorous fire, found that exposure of a head meant
grave danger, if not death."
As Ripley stated, deadly shots from the sharpshooters made manning
the Confederate defenses dangerous work. In response, it seems some
Southern troops then resorted to a desperate tactic. "They forced
their negroes to load their cannon," an officer in the 1st U.S.S.S.
sadly noted. "They shot them if they would not load the cannon, and
we shot them if they did."
Killers in Green Coats
Civil War Times,February 20, 2008

A CONFEDERATE SURGEON'S LETTERS TO HIS WIFE
LETTERS TO HIS WIFE
BY SPENCER GLASGOW WELCH
Surgeon
Thirteenth South Carolina Volunteers
McGowan's Brigade

"We are in Yankeedom this time, for certain, and a beautiful and magnificent
country it is too. Since we started we have traveled about fifteen miles a day,
resting at night and drawing rations plentifully and regularly. We are about
fifteen miles over the Pennsylvania and Maryland line and within seven miles of
Chambersburg. We are resting to-day (Sunday) and will get to Harrisburg in three
more days if we go there.
We hear nothing of Hooker's army at all, but General Lee knows what he is about.
This is certainly a grand move of his, and if any man can carry it out
successfully he can, for he is cautious as well as bold.We are taking everything
we need—horses, cattle, sheep, flour, groceries and goods of all kinds, and
making as clean a sweep as possible."

" Old Jim Beauschelle, our chaplain, is out of prison and is back with us again.
He was at Fort Delaware awhile, and was then sent to Johnson's Island in Lake
Erie. He looks better than I ever saw him. He has a new hat, new shoes, and
everything new, and looks like a new man. He speaks very highly of the Yankees
and the way they treated him and of the good fare they gave him. He seems
perfectly delighted with the North and the Yankees. I am sorry they did not
handle him rather roughly and cure him of his wonderfully good opinion of them."

"Edwin still has some of the good things to eat which he brought from home in
his trunk. His servant, Tony, stole some of his syrup to give to a negro girl
who lives near our camp, and Ed gave him a pretty thorough thrashing for it. He
says Tony is too much of a thief to suit him and he intends to send him back
home. I had to give Gabriel a little thrashing this morning for "jawing" me. I
hate very much to raise a violent hand against a person as old as Gabriel,
although he is black and a slave. He is too slow for me, and I intend to send
him back by Billie when he goes home on furlough."

"We have a new chaplain in our brigade named Dixon. I heard him preach
yesterday, and he does very well. If Congress would pass a conscript law
bringing the preachers into the army we could have chaplains. They have acted
worse in this war than any other class of men."
 
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