Black Southerners and the Confederate Cause: The Post-War Newspapers

Andersonh1

Brigadier General
Moderator
Joined
Jan 12, 2016
Location
South Carolina
Many of you are aware that I've been collecting and posting wartime newspaper accounts that dealt with black southerners and how they responded to the Confederate war effort. In that thread, I started out by restricting myself to strictly wartime accounts, but at a certain point that seemed too limiting and I started digging through post-war newspapers. With a lot more years to cover, obviously, than the four years of the war, this is a research project that has not gone nearly as far as the wartime news. But having started some time ago posting stories chronologically in that thread, it's going to be a long time before we get back around to these, so perhaps it's time to give them their own thread.

I'm going to follow the same approach here that I do in the wartime stories thread and post in chronological order. I will also note that when it comes to "black Confederate" I do not restrict myself to just stories about armed soldiers. Any form of support, military or civilian, slave or free, willing or unwilling, falls under the scope of this thread, so long as the newspapers covered it. The idea is to understand not only what people did, but how it was viewed after the fact. Sometimes decades after the fact, given the dates on some of these stories. I don't doubt that I'll find a lot more information as I continue to search, but there is so much interesting material that I've already found that I wanted to start sharing it.

Like the other thread, let's keep commentary to a minimum, but any supporting information that can add to our understanding of a story is welcome.

So let's start with 1866, and a discussion of the role the slaves played in "the rebellion" and how culpable they are, versus the poor whites who were also "forced" to fight when they were conscripted by the Confederate government. The slaves are referred to at one point as "quasi-rebels" and there is a lot that could be unpacked from this editorial about opinions in the year after the war ended.

The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, March 01, 1866
xMgpNFw.jpg


More discussion about "white rebel vs black rebel" treatment, with the author of this piece complaining that black rebels he knows of were allowed to vote.

The Pulaski citizen. (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, March 16, 1866
cyGNEDu.jpg
 
Back
Top