Blacks in the CS Ranks?

[Mgreer]

I was recently in a debate on Black Confederates; the gentleman stated that the Confederacy welcomed Negro soldiers with open arms. He presented the following as proof, also stating that 65,000 was a very conservative number.

On Black Confederates By Scott Williams
"‘It has been estimated that over 65,000 Southern blacks were in the Confederate ranks. Over 13,000 of these, "saw the elephant" also known as meeting the enemy in combat. These Black Confederates included both slave and free. The Confederate Congress did not approve blacks to be officially enlisted as soldiers (except as musicians), until late in the war. But in the ranks it was a different story. Many Confederate officers did not obey the mandates of politicians, they frequently enlisted blacks with the simple criteria, "Will you fight?" Historian Ervin Jordan, explains that "biracial units" were frequently organized "by local Confederate and State militia Commanders in response to immediate threats in the form of Union raids". Dr. Leonard Haynes, an African-American professor at Southern University, stated, 'When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South.' "

As it goes with most debates such as these the Louisiana Native Guards came up. But I have had no success in finding documentation that the CSA accepted this militia group into their service. I do believe that I read years ago that the Confederacy denied the Louisiana Native Guards the privilege of fighting for the CSA. The Louisiana Native Guards never received uniforms or weapons

On March 13, 1865 Recruitment of Black soldiers was approved by the Confederate Congress and signed by President Jefferson Davis. Two companies of blacks were enlisted under this act. But these men never saw action.

I will admit there were blacks that did fight for the south but I have not found the proof to say that 65,000 plus men of color served in rebel ranks. I will admit there were several hundred thousand slaves and free men pressed into work gangs as laborers.

Now all that being said, does anyone have any reliable sources that would give a realistic number of blacks that fought Union troops, or photos of black confederate soldiers? I am not looking for slaves and man servants.

Thanks

Marvin

[J. Donaldson]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

Kevin Levin spends a good deal of time discussing this in depth on his blog about Civil War memory and might be a good person to correspond with on this topic.

Civil War Memory blog

[Pvt Schnapps]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

I think it's Hendrickson's Road to Appomattoxwhere I read that those two companies actually defended part of the Confederate train on the retreat, withstood one attack of Union cavalry, then surrendered when attacked again.

Elsewhere I saw this account credited to Confederate Veteran magazine in 1915, pp. 404 and 411. I don't usually consider this a reliable source, but the story seems credible. John Jones saw the companies actually drilling, it makes sense that they would be used as train guards, and it makes further sense that they wouldn't fight to the last.

[David Fox]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

One must be from Missouri, so to speak, on 65 enrolled Confederate blacks. 65,000 is simply revisionist twattle. Twattle, I say!

[Gary of CA]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

With 65, 000 more men (regardless of color), Lee could have held Petersburg longer. Come to think of it, he could have flanked Grant and rolled him up.

With 65,000 men Sherman's 50,000 wouldn't have marched through Georgia. Come to think of it, Sherman march on Atlanta would have been in doubt.

With 65,000 men, Pemberton could have broken out of Vicksburg. Come to think of it, if outside of Vicksburg they could have captured part of Grant's army and then relieved Vicksburg.

With 65,000 men, Early would have captured Washington and the whole thing with Sheridan in the Valley never would have happened.

With 65,000 men, Hood might have won at Nashville. Then again, he could also have lost those 65,000 in another brutal frontal assault calculated to restore the fighting elan of his men.

There are a lot of possibilities with 65,000 men. But there weren't any 65,000 negroes who fought for the Confederacy. Levine's book, Confederate Emancipation, is an excellent read and so is Chandra Manning's What This Cruel War Was Over.

[PetePaolillo]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

Marvin,
This might not be a source that disproves the 65,000 number but it might be a worthy read.


http://www.americancivilwar.com/civi...1589804554.htm

Black Southerners in Confederate Armies
While the book itself is remarkably free of pro-Southern retoric, the context of the book is not, as can be seen by its reviews, along with those for other similar books.
The existence of black Confederates is taken as a proof that the objectives of Secession and the Confederacy were somehow validated.
The point to be made here in opposition was that the OFFICIAL policy of the Confederate States was, initially, that blacks, other than as personal servants of white soldiers, were unwelcome in the Army. When the colored and mixed race militia of Louisiana offered their services to the Governor on secession, they were rejected and then disarmed. The officers, NCOs and soldiers of these militia units became the cadre of the Corps d' Afrique later raised by Butler upon Union recovery of New Orleans. The Confederate government did not OFFICIALLY recruit slaves as combat soldiers until April 1865. This position is well documented, as was the virulent opposition against earlier recommendations, such as that by Patrick Cleburne, one of the South's best division commanders and an Irish immigrant with no stake in the pre-war South's attachment to slavery. The response of Southerners as varied as the Adjutant General of the Confederate Army to the former Governor of Georgia was uniformly adverse to recruiting slaves as combatants. It must be pointed out that the total number of black combat soldiers that can be validated by muster rosters and pension petitions is less than 1,000. Compare this to the over 180,000 black combat soldiers (and the more than 250,000 Southern whites) in the service of the Union, validated by the same types of documents. It should be pointed out that during the Civil War, Grant captured three Confederate armies. All three were processed, the first as prisoners of war, the other two being. In the official records, nor in any published memoir, regimental history or other document related to the processing of these armies is there any reference to the capture and processing of black Confederate soldiers. Either they didn't exist or they refused to come forward, for whatever reason, to identify themselves as such. The only blacks mentioned are bandsmen, cooks, teamasters and servants.
Certainly blacks served as muscisians, litter bearers, cooks and teamsters. Yet, it is debateble as to how many were there voluntarily, as was the use of free and slave blacks as engineers on defensive works or in the wartime industries, both government and privately owned in the Confederacy. The Confedrate government began to recruit slaves from their masters for these positions in 1862, when, along with the unilateral extension of enlistments and the introduction of a draft, efforts were being made to maintain the combat strength of the Confederate armies. It must be remarked there was no effort to recruit slaves, much less free blacks as combat soldiers. Placing weapons in the hands of such was severely restricted by Confederate Army policy.
Consider that by the census of 1860, there were over 400,000 free and 3.4 million slave blacks in the states that seceded. This should have translated into around and at least 40,000 free and 340,000 slave male blacks of military age. Yet, where the Union was able to officially mobilize over 140,000 of these individuals (the difference between this figure and the 180,000 is the 40,000 free blacks recruited in the North and West) as combat soldiers, the Confederacy couldn't mobilize more than a thousand. Yet from a white free population of something over 6 million, the Confederacy mobilized over 750,000 soldiers (and the Union, 250,000). This sin't exactly a ringing indorsement of the Confedercy's political, social, economic and cultural objectives by the South's black populace.

I cant validate the above source

[Iron Dyed]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

Gents,

Pardon me for butting in. I had a black history professor named Dr. Mays. He wrote a book on Africa-American families living in the South. He had told us in class that no more than 9,000 Blacks served in the Confederate Army. Just my two cents.

Greg Richardson
Sgt. Major of the Jeff Davis Guard
Bitter Brothers Mess.

[David Fox]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

When Lee's Miserables entered Pennsylvania in June, 1863, an indescriminant kidnapping of Pennsylvania blacks began, coffles being sent back south amid the herds of Pennsylvania cattle. As a reverse of the coin, an exodus for freedom occured amongst the Army of Northern Virginia's black cooks, body servants, and the like, often to the utter shock and dismay of Lieutenant Massa, as appears in letters and diaries. A local western North Carolina authour recently penned a work of historical Civil War fiction in which he misplaces the Battle of Fredericksburg by six months, has the two sides throwing "high explosives" at one another, and places a well-known local black body servant (buried about a half mile from where I sit) in the Confederate ranks. His authority for the high explosives is on a parr with authority for the mirage of hordes of cheerful black rebel soldiers. Remember: only one racist in the ranks would doom the inclusion of a single black serving in any Confederate company in any capacity other than menial. Does anyone sincerely think the Southron boys of 1864, products of their rearing just as we are products of ours, were so enamoured with singing "Kumbaya" around the campfire that they started passing spare Enfields out to Cuffy? How on earth did 140 years of scholarship (scholarship, not misty-eyed revisionism) mislay 65,000 stalward Afro-Confederates bent upon perpetuating involuntary servitude? This wish-thinking comes up periodically and is on the same plane as holocost denial in Germany (and, regretably, here) and assertions in Japan that the Rape of Nanking was really a love-in. Sure, here and there a body servant or cook grabbed a musket in the heat of battle and is celebrated in Lost Cause lore and for decades at UCV reunions. If one moots a figure of 65,000, one can better wedge into mainstream thinking a number of, say, 6,500...and raise the possibility of black "train guards", forsooth. Next thing, we'll hear there's a secret colony of black train guard decendants holding out in the mountains loyally preserving the Confederate gold spirited out of Richmond in '65 and awaiting a return of Jeff Davis, rather like elusive Japanese stragglers in obscure jungle hideouts. Cuffy being carried on the rolls alongside massa? Tell it to the Marines.

[Hank Trent]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

One point on this topic which I admittedly haven't explored myself, is how are the people who promote the highest numbers of black CS soldiers, defining "black"?

Are they counting only men who would have a B or M beside their name in the census and whenever their race was recorded in the period?

Or would they include those who could pass for white and did so, but who were "really" black, meaning... well... I'm not sure what. At that point, it gets complicated. A man who was listed as white but whose parents in another state were both M on the census might gleefully be counted as "yet another black Confederate" by someone who was looking for as many black Confederates as possible, and in one sense that would be true. But if he looked reasonably white, self-identified as white, and had as much white blood as black, what color would he be?

Haven't researched this, but I'm not totally making up the possibility, either. See this, starting at the bottom of the page. Naturally, someone would only out his friends so casually in unusual circumstances such as that: to an abolitionist when they were already in a US black regiment where the fact they were black didn't matter. To find evidence of blacks who successfully passed as white and joined CS regiments would be much much harder, but not impossible.

I don't know if there have been enough men identified like that to even make a guess or an extrapolation as to their numbers, but I've been mildly curious about whether there have been enough identified to have any effect in the black CS soldier debates.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@gmail.com

[David Fox]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

The South in 1860 was acutely aware of the fact that the white male population was generating upon the black female population generation-by-generation lighter and lighter skinned mulottoes. One needs only ponder the dissolute Carolinian James Hammond, who molested his slave women (selling the product of their loins down river) and the minor daughters of Wade Hampton with equal abandon, to watch the process in action. Consciousness of the phenomenon was reflected in all southern states' laws. "Black" was particularly defined, and remained so long after the war. To see this portrayed, see the superior 1930's version of the movie "Showboat" featuring the best-ever rendering of "Old Man River" by fellow Garyite Paul Robeson and featuring a sheriff who played Ming the Merciless in the "Flash Gordon' serials. In Charleston, South Carolina, "whitish" females had to wear veils over their faces when outside so as not put the gentry at risk affording them curtesy. Strong movements were afoot in the 1860 deep south to boot out or re-enslave all those not pure white. They weren't generally accepted with open arms by society. Each community knew who was whom. There was little chance a non-white would be able to covertly enlist in the Calhoun Yankee Exterminators. Except, of course, for that largest of southern cities, the Peoples Republic of New Orleans.

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

deleted by Chris Rideout

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

deleted by Chris Rideout

[OldKingCrow]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

deleted by Chris Rideout

[David Fox]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

Humm. You believe newspaper reports? Guess you didn't serve in Viet Nam.

[Tom Dodson]

Re: Blacks in the CS Ranks?

I have the book "Black Southerners in Confederate Armies". The author was a speaker at a SCV meeting back in 2001. In the book are copies of Confederate pension checks paid to black soldiers. There are copies of newspaper articles describing black Confederate soldiers fighting for the Cause in various battles. There are photos of blacks at Confederate reunions.
It lists 36 blacks who were paroled at Appomattox. Not a one is listed as a soldier.
Were there blacks who fought for the Confederacy? It seems there most certainly were. I think the number would be closer to 65 than 65,000 however.
Tom Dodson