Henry Louis Gates and Black Confederates (Redux)

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Henry Louis Gates and Black Confederates (Redux)
Kevin Levin December 31, 2013 @KevinLevin

Yesterday Henry Louis Gates published an extensive piece on the process that led to the recruitment of African-American soldiers during the Civil War at The Root. It’s well worth reading. As I was perusing the piece I wondered whether Gates would use the occasion to discuss the controversy surrounding black Confederate soldiers.

I find it quite confounding that some historians are reluctant even to entertain the possibility that some black people, no matter how twisted their logic, would decide to ally their best interests with the Confederacy—particularly free Negroes who owned slaves. After all, black people are just as complex as any other human being. To deny this possibility of what today we would call “race betrayal” is, frankly, to deny the very complexity of the African-American people.

Unfortunately, the second paragraph quickly veers right off the road. First, it reflects some of the comments that were directed at me a few years back at a talk at Harvard given by John Stauffer on the subject. I don’t know a single professional historian who denies that a few free African Americans may have been able to enlist as soldiers in the Confederate army at some point during the war before the Confederate Congress authorized enlistment at the very end. Gates fails to identify a single historian, though he did mention James McPherson at the Harvard talk as someone who is uncomfortable for reasons that go beyond mere evidence. Nonsense. The point about “complexity” was hammered home as well during the Harvard talk, though I still fail to see its relevance. Again, no one denies that African Americans are complex, but why should we allow such an obvious statement of fact to steer what ought to be a much more careful process?

Sounds a lot like discussions here.
 
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