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Black Confederates Reconsidered by Clyde Wilson There were hundreds, probably thousands of black men with the Confederate army at all times. Most were not officially enrolled, although a few musicians and others were officially enrolled. We know that the Southern states paid pensions to some black men for Confederate service. There may be something about this at the Dept. of Archives and History. We know that black men who had served were welcome attendees at Confederate reunions. First-hand evidence abundantly demonstrates that black men were present in great numbers with Confederate armies at all times. A great deal of the cooking, wagon driving, tending wounded, camp work was done by these men. Many Southerners remarked with gratitude after the war of the support of such people. Of course, some took off, but many others did not, despite many opportunities to do so. President Davis is when in the army camps greeted and shook hands with the black men as well as the white. The famous postwar writer George Washington Cable, who served on Gen. Forrest's staff, tells this story. Forrest took 50 slaves with him as teamsters and promised them freedom if they served faithfully. Cable, late in the war, was instructed to make out manumission papers for 49 men. Despite the efforts of some historians to trump up stories of fierce resistance by and fierce put-downs of slaves, it is obvious that there was never any hint of slave insurrection or the South could not have fought so long and so effectively. The women and children were perfectly safe at home from that possibility. Kent Masterson Brown, a distinguished lawyer from Kentucky who is also well known as a Civil War historian, has recently completed a book on the Confederate retreat from Gettysburg. The book has been or soon will be published. He found that when the survivors came back from the Pickett-Pettigrew charge, they returned to Confederate lines that were lined with black faces. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of black men went with the army to Pennsylvania---and back. The English observer Col. Fremantle saw a black Confederate marching a Yankee prisoner to the rear. He wondered at their reaction if the abolitionists in London could see that. Brown has found that many of those black men after Gettysburg took their wounded and dead masters home, sometimes to distant places in the Far South. It is hard for current folks to accept, but relations between blacks and whites in the South were sometimes familial. In soldiers' letters (and this is also true of ante-bellum Southerners in general) it is sometimes difficult to determine whether people mentioned are family members or servants. When you think about it, this is not at all unusual. History is full of examples of faithful retainers and servants fighting for their masters and against their masters' enemies. It is a quite common human phenomenon. Faulkner, the great American artist of the 20th century, portrayed this situation often, along with its ambiguity and contradictions. The interesting question, of course, is why acknowledgment of these facts is so fiercely resisted and misrepresented. Reason One: There is a natural reluctance among many black people to accept that many "accepted" slavery, that all of their forebears were not in constant resistance and rebellion. But the choice for most of their people most of the time was not between slavery and freedom, but rather just making the best of the situation which life gave them. (Like most of us, most of the time). Black and white Southerners have different histories, of course, but I very much believe that we should emphasize the good parts of the common history that we have shared. From my outsider's viewpoint, it seems to me a plus for African-Americans t o recognize that their history is much more complex, multi-dimensional, and interesting than a simple story of repression and rebellion. To really understand the position of the slaves of the South in the Civil War and to explain the resistance to ideas that contradict the official story, you have to understand that for mainstream America the Civil War is a morality play in which Yankees righteously liberate the grateful oppressed. That story has tremendous emotional commitment but it is not true. Before, during, and after the Civil War, the Yankees never did anything from the primary motive of helping the black people. This is what Frederick Douglas meant when he called Lincoln "the white man's president." The denial of the existence of black Confederates has less to do with African-Americans than with American self-righteousness. The American myth would have you think that the righteous soldiers in blue and the liberated slaves rushed into each others arms. Nothing could be further from the truth. We can understand the black Confederate better if we understand that liberation by the Yankees was not always a positive experience. Southerners owned slaves and believed in white supremacy. But as many foreign observers pointed out, they were not as militantly racist as Northerners. In general, Yankees were more interested in getting rid of black people rather than in freeing them. Letters of Northern soldiers who were encountering large numbers of black people make the biggest collection of racist literature before Goebbels. Remember, Lincoln's Illinois had laws, of which Lincoln approved, forbidding black people to even settle in the state; and those who lived there had no civil rights. The Union was fighting for power, not freedom and equality. When black soldiers were enlisted it was because they freed that number of white men from risking their lives. When farms---houses, food, livestock, crops---are deliberately destroyed by an invading army whose policy is to demoralize civilians, black people as well as white are left starving. Black people are just as subject to murder, robbery and rape by invading troops as are white, probably more so. Historians have recently trumped up a good many stories of atrocities by Confederates against slaves. But that is minor and exaggerated compared to the Union armies well-documented atrocities against and disdain for the black people of the South. We know that many black people left the plantations and farms in the wake of Union armies. Of course, people in a devastated area people naturally take to the road and go where they think they can find food. And some were fed by the Union armies at times, though Yankee generals constantly complained of the freed slaves as a nuisance. Actually, it is not clear to what degree slaves went with the Union army willingly or they were actually kidnapped and forced. And what is their fate if they do follow the liberator. To become a forced laborer of the army or a servant or concubine of a Union officer. It is not too far a stretch to recognize that many people might choose to remain with the home and people they knew, even if they were slaves. |