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The myth of the black Confederates

By Bruce Levine
Posted at 6:39 PM ET, 10/30/2010

Next year, the country will begin observing the sesquicentennial of the bloodiest war in U.S. history -- the Civil War. But the question of how to remember that war sometimes seems as contentious as the war itself was. On Oct. 20, The Post reported that in Virginia, fourth-grade students received textbooks telling them that thousands of African Americans fought in Confederate armies [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/19/AR2010101907974.html ] during the Civil War. The textbook's author, who is not a historian, found that false claim repeated so many times on the Internet that she assumed it had to be true.

She thereby helped propagate one of the most pernicious and energetically propagated myths about the Civil War. According to that myth, anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000 Southern blacks -- both free and enslaved -- served voluntarily, loyally, consistently and as fully fledged combatants in the South. Most of those who make these claims do it to bolster another, bigger myth -- that most Southern blacks supported the Confederacy.

As a matter of fact, one of Jefferson Davis's generals did advise him to emancipate and arm slaves at the start of the war. But Davis vehemently rejected that advice. It "would revolt and disgust the whole South," he snapped. During the first few years of the war, some others repeated this suggestion. Each time, Richmond slapped it down. Not only would no slaves be enlisted; no one who was not certifiably white, whether slave or free, would be permitted to become a Confederate soldier.

And the Confederacy's policy of excluding blacks from its armed forces was effective. John Beauchamp Jones, a high-level assistant to the secretary of war, scoffed at rumors that the Confederacy had units made up of slaves. "This is utterly untrue," he wrote in his diary. "We have no armed slaves to fight for us." Asked to double-check, Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon confirmed that "No slaves have been employed by the Government except as cooks or nurses in hospitals and for labor."

Why were the leaders so stubborn on this point? Because they were fighting to preserve African American slavery and the racial creed that justified it. Slavery's defenders insisted that blacks were inferior to whites -- uniquely suited to dull, arduous labor but incapable of assuming the responsibilities of free people, citizens or soldiers. As Seddon explained, since the Confederacy had taken that stand both before "the North and before the world," it could "not allow the employment as armed soldiers of negroes." Putting blacks into gray uniforms would be seen as a confession that this ideology was a lie. Even more practically, the Confederacy worried about what black troops would do with their weapons. At the very least they feared (in the words of Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin) that black Confederate soldiers would desert to the enemy "in mass."

Finally, approaching military defeat forced Jefferson Davis to reverse course and support the black troops idea at the end of 1864. At that point, he faced fierce resistance from white Southerners who continued to insist that blacks would make only poor or disloyal soldiers. Davis now had to argue that black soldiers might yet fight effectively for the South. Tellingly, however, in trying to make that case, neither he nor his allies ever pointed proudly to the record of any of the black units (or even individuals) who purveyors of the modern myth claim were already in the field.

After months of heated debate, a severely watered-down version of this proposal became Confederate law in March of 1865. Gen. Richard S. Ewell assumed responsibility for implementing it, and Confederate officials and journalists confidently predicted the enlistment of thousands. But the actual results proved bitterly disappointing. A dwarf company or two of black hospital workers was attached to a unit of a local Richmond home guard just a few weeks before the war's end. The regular Confederate army apparently managed to recruit another 40 to 60 men -- men whom it drilled, fed, and housed at military prison facilities under the watchful eyes of military police and wardens -- reflecting how little confidence the government and army had in the loyalty of their last-minute recruits.

This strikingly unsuccessful last-ditch effort, furthermore, constituted the sole exception to the Confederacy's steadfast refusal to employ African American soldiers. As Gen. Ewell's longtime aide-de-camp, Maj. George Campbell Brown, later affirmed, the handful of black soldiers mustered in Richmond in 1865 were "the first and only black troops used on our side."

The writer is a professor of history and African American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This column is adapted from a piece that appeared in the Fredericksburg, Va., Free Lance-Star in September.

© 2010 The Washington Post

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-opinions/2010/10/the_myth_of_the_black_confeder.html [with comments]


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Virginia and the Black Confederates

By mike
October 21, 2010 – 2:59 pm

ecently the news was full of the fact that VA’s fourth grade his­tory text­book described large num­bers of black men serv­ing in uni­form for the con­fed­er­acy [ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/19/AR2010101907974.html ]. The claim is these slaves were loyal to their mas­ters and fought to pre­serve slav­ery. This is sim­ply absurd: it’s wish­ful thinking.

It’s true that late in the war, Con­fed­er­ate politi­cians and edi­tors began talk­ing about the pos­si­bil­ity of arm­ing slaves. This edi­to­r­ial, from a Jack­son Mis­sis­sippi news­pa­per in late 1863, is typical:

“We are forced by the neces­sity of our con­di­tion to take a step which is revolt­ing to every sen­ti­ment of pride and to every prin­ci­ple that gov­erned our insti­tu­tions before the war..we can make them fight bet­ter than the Yan­kees are able to do. Mas­ters and over­seers can mar­shal them for bat­tle by the same author­ity and habit of obe­di­ence with which they are mar­shaled to labor“1

On thing to notice here is that even though this edi­tor seems to favor enlist­ing slaves, he never imag­ines they will freely choose to fight: they will have to be forced.

Did some slaves fight for the Con­fed­er­acy? Well, con­sider that the Con­fed­er­ate Con­gress com­pletely banned the enlist­ment of slaves until March 16, 1865. Lee sur­ren­dered three weeks later. They only con­sid­ered enlist­ing slaves as a des­per­ate neces­sity, and even then:

“Refer­ring par­tic­u­larly to the employ­ment of negroes as sol­diers [Mis­sis­sippi Con­gress­man H.C.] Cham­bers said that he was “ashamed to debate the ques­tion. All nature cries out against it. The negro was ordained to slav­ery by the Almighty. Eman­ci­pa­tion would be the destruc­tion of our polit­i­cal and social sys­tem. God for­bid that this Tro­jan horse should be intro­duced among us.” [John] Goode of Vir­ginia was opposed to the sug­gested use of the negroes because it was “a con­fes­sion of weak­ness to the enemy”; because he thought “it would end in abo­li­tion”; and because it was ‘degrad­ing to our men.’” 2

Even though Gen­eral Lee in Jan­u­ary 1865 requested that the CSA Con­gress enlist slaves, they still resisted the idea. How­ell Cobb of Geor­gia in Jan­u­ary of 1865 called the use of negroes as sol­diers “the most per­ni­cious idea that has been sug­gested since the war began,” con­tin­u­ing, “you can­not make sol­diers of slaves or slaves of sol­diers.… The day you make sol­diers of them is the begin­ning of the rev­o­lu­tion. If slaves will make good sol­diers, our whole the­ory of slav­ery is wrong.“3

So even in Novem­ber of 1864, when the rebel army was starv­ing, and in des­per­ate straits, the CSA con­gress still opposed enlist­ing slaves, and it was not legal to do so until March of 1865.

So where does the claim of black Con­fed­er­ate sol­diers come from?

Well, when Rich­mond fell the Union Army did find some par­tial com­pa­nies of slaves who were train­ing as soldiers–the exact num­ber is unclear, 200 at most, says David Blight.4

The sin­gle biggest source for this, though, is very star­tling and worth look­ing at. North­ern Dr. Lewis H. Steiner wit­nessed the Con­fed­er­ate cap­ture of Fred­er­ick, MD in 1862. Steiner wrote “Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this num­ber [of Con­fed­er­ate troops]. These were clad in all kinds of uni­forms, not only in cast-off or cap­tured United States uni­forms, but in coats with South­ern but­tons, State but­tons, etc. These were shabby, but not shab­bier or seed­ier than those worn by white men in the rebel ranks. Most of the Negroes had arms, rifles, mus­kets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc.….and were man­i­festly an inte­gral por­tion of the South­ern Con­fed­er­ate Army.“5

Peo­ple who want to believe that loyal slaves fought for the Con­fed­er­acy take this very strong account, and assume that it rep­re­sents the aver­age num­ber of black sol­diers in the Con­fed­er­ate Army, and con­clude that as many as 50,000 black men fought for the con­fed­er­acy! 6

There are all sorts of prob­lems with this. A: was Steiner right about the num­ber? B: was he right that he saw sol­diers, and not slaves in sup­port units? C: can you extrap­o­late what he saw to apply to the rest of the Con­fed­er­ate Army D: what was Steiner’s agenda?

Steiner’s account, which can be read on Google Books [ http://books.google.com/books?id=5Hc4BqSNlIQC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=Lewis+H.+Steiner+frederick+negro&source=bl&ots=5yB9v6pCRN&sig=vlLFIyYAvA_DXZkmHrUzbjW8Khc&hl=en&ei=cEHATMTvKsGqlAeP0OHNCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false ], is worth exam­in­ing. Steiner was a par­ti­san: a ded­i­cated Yan­kee, his account of the Con­fed­er­ate Army is clearly designed to ridicule and belit­tle. He mocks the CSA sol­diers for being dirty and ill smelling. He writes, of the black sol­diers: “The fact was patent, and rather inter­est­ing when con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with the hor­ror rebels express at the sug­ges­tion of black sol­diers being employed for the National defence.” Was he report­ing an accu­rate num­ber, or try­ing to mock the CSA and its Army? It’s also worth not­ing that Steiner’s account describes How­ell Cobb, quoted above, as march­ing into Fred­er­ick with this col­umn of 3000 black troops–the same How­ell Cobb who would write, less than three years later: “you can­not make sol­diers of slaves or slaves of sol­diers.… The day you make sol­diers of them is the begin­ning of the rev­o­lu­tion. If slaves will make good sol­diers, our whole the­ory of slav­ery is wrong.” Can Steiner be right?

Mean­while, none of the other accounts from the occu­pa­tion of Fred­er­ick sup­port this obser­va­tion. None of the con­fed­er­ate sol­diers who were at Fredrick write about black Con­fed­er­ate soldiers–in fact, as Chan­dra Man­ning points out, white CSA sol­diers were for the most part strongly opposed to using slaves in the Army. And again, there’s the fact that the govt. of the CSA for­bid the enlist­ment of slaves in 1862, when Fred­er­ick fell.

There are no accounts from natives of Fred­er­ick of describ­ing 3000 armed black men in town. There are very few accounts from north­ern sol­diers of black troops in arms for the CSA. And keep in mind Civil War bat­tles were heav­ily cov­ered by reporters. Fred­er­ick is not far from Wash­ing­ton. There are no con­tem­po­rary accounts from reporters of large num­bers of armed black sol­diers in the CSA.

So we have a case of one source–Steiner–being taken as gospel and then enlarged to the point where it has turned into 50,ooo black sol­diers, approx­i­mately 1/3 the total CSA Army in 1865.

It’s a case of wish ful­fill­ment. Peo­ple want to believe in black Con­fed­er­ates, and they reuse to let his­tor­i­cal evi­dence stand in their way. It’s pos­si­ble some black men fought for the con­fed­er­acy: it’s a big coun­try, there are a lot of peo­ple in it with a lot of motives. It’s very likely some slaves and pos­si­bly free blacks served in sup­port posi­tions and as ser­vants. Nos­tal­gia, after the war, might remem­ber that ser­vice as sol­dier­ing. To turn it into a large scale phe­nom­e­non of black men fight­ing for the Con­fed­er­acy, you have to ignore the facts.

*

1. McPher­son, Bat­tle Cry of Free­dom, p. 831

2. Thomas Rob­son Hay, “The Ques­tion of Arm­ing the Slaves,” in Mis­sis­sippi Val­ley His­tor­i­cal Review [ http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA53&lpg=PA53&dq=%22On%20November%207%2C%201864%2C%20W.%20G.%20Swan%20of%20Virginia%20introduced%20a%20resolution%20into%20the%20house%20setting%20forth%20the%20statement%22&sig=sVxvjCrGmBDKAhcDDgs1nIuFTFk&ei=m0fATIG9G8Oblge425X_CQ&ct=result&id=bToOAAAAYAAJ&ots=fNxMRd7QEF&output=text ], June, 1919 v. 6

3. Hay, “The Ques­tion of Arm­ing the Slaves.” p. 63 [ http://books.google.com/books?pg=PA63&lpg=PA53&dq=%22On+November+7,+1864,+W.+G.+Swan+of+Virginia+introduced+a+resolution+into+the+house+setting+forth+the+statement%22&sig=sVxvjCrGmBDKAhcDDgs1nIuFTFk&ei=m0fATIG9G8Oblge425X_CQ&ct=result&id=bToOAAAAYAAJ&ots=fNxMRd7QEF#v=onepage&q=%22On%20November%207%2C%201864%2C%20W.%20G.%20Swan%20of%20Virginia%20introduced%20a%20resolution%20into%20the%20house%20setting%20forth%20the%20statement%22&f=false ]

4. http://www.davidwblight.com/levine.htm

5. Lewis H. Steiner, Report of Lewis Henry Steiner, inspec­tor of the San­i­tary Com­mis­sion, con­tain­ing a diary kept dur­ing the rebel occu­pa­tion of Fred­er­ick, Md. [ http://books.google.com/books?id=5Hc4BqSNlIQC&pg=PA20&lpg=PA20&dq=Lewis+H.+Steiner+frederick+negro&source=bl&ots=5yB9v6pCRN&sig=vlLFIyYAvA_DXZkmHrUzbjW8Khc&hl=en&ei=cEHATMTvKsGqlAeP0OHNCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBcQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false ] (Wash­ing­ton DC 1862) p. 19–20

6. http://www.usgennet.org/usa/mo/county/stlouis/blackcs.htm

Copyright 2010 The Aporetic (emphasis in original)

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