Camp Servants and Confederate Exceptionalism

[jgoodguy]

Camp Servants and Confederate Exceptionalism Civil War Memory.

Over the past few weeks I've made steady progress on my new manuscript, which is now tentatively titled, Searching For Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Enduring Myth. The first chapter on the history of Confederate camp servants serves as what I hope will be a solid foundation for the rest of the study. No historian has been more helpful to me in framing this chapter than Eugene Genovese, especially the short book, Fatal Self-Deception: Slaveholding Paternalism in the Old South, which he co-authored with his wife, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese.

The book offers a concise overview of those elements of slaveholding paternalism that the Genoveses have explored over the course of their career up to the moment of secession. They close with a brief analysis of the war years and even references a few examples of camp servants. This is where my study enters.
...
The more time you spend reading the wartime accounts from officers of the slaveholding class the more you understand that what eventually occupied a crucial place in the Lost Cause narrative was already firmly in place by the end of the war. Stories of loyal slaves in Confederate camps dominated postwar accounts while the debate over arming slaves was all but forgotten. It's the loyal slaves/camp servants who were welcomed back to Confederate soldier reunions and it was the loyal slaves/camp servants who were awarded pensions by former Confederate states by the turn of the twentieth century.

These stories came to embody the collective memory of Confederate Exceptionalism.

 

[CMWinkler]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[jgoodguy]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[CMWinkler]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[ForeverFree]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[jgoodguy]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[CMWinkler]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[huskerblitz]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[jgoodguy]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[Rebforever]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[peteanddelmar]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[huskerblitz]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[peteanddelmar]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[huskerblitz]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[FahanParish]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[ForeverFree]

You must log in or register to view this reply.

 

[jgoodguy]

You must log in or register to view this reply.