Black Confederate

[garyjd]

This is an interesting image.

http://www.cowanauctions.com/upcoming_dates_view_item.asp?ItemId=75288

[Hardtack Herring]

Re: Black Confederate

Wow,

That is very cool. Nice uniform as well.

The topic of black confederates has always interested me.

[Johnny Lloyd]

Re: Black Confederate

Wow. How rare! He looks to be of mixed racial background.

I love when we find the 'exception to the general rule' in history- something that blows-away popular modern misconception/'disconception' of what people think is correct...

So telling of people's views back then. Thanks so much!

All the best -Johnny Lloyd:wink_smil

[Emma Bilgewater]

Re: Black Confederate

There was a tintype of a white soldier and what they said was his slave dressed in a Confederate uniform on Antique Roadshow last night. To see the appraisal:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/archive/200902A33.html

Thought it might be of interest for those of you who have discussed this topic. :)
Warm regards,
Janet Wragge

[Michael Comer]

Re: Black Confederate

So the guy on Roadshow says his ancestor fought at Belmont, Mississippi. Glad I didn't see the episode. I'd have been screaming 'It's Belmont, MISSOURI!' at the TV. I don't know how many times I've seen that screwed up. Seems people just can't believe that anything happened here during the war. Or, they misunderstand an abbreviation in the records which is more like it in this case.

[riverratmess]

Re: Black Confederate

That's not his slave. The two boys are Silas and Andrew Chandler. Silas was the families slave but he was also Andrew's best friend growing up. They joined, Co. F, 44th Mississippi and served together. Here's a brief biography.

"Silas Chandler just received his free papers just before the war began but chose to stay with his friend and followed him off to war. After the Battle of Shiloh, Chandler was thrown in a Union prison in Ohio. Silas ran various errands back and forth from the Chandler homestead back in Palo Alto, Mississippi to the prison, seeing to Chandler's essentials. The boy was soon released and the two were very excited to rejoin their outfit.
During the fighting at Chickamauga, Andrew Chandler suffered a great wound to the leg which the surgeons were ready to amputate off. But Silas pulled out a gold coin that the boys were saving to buy some whiskey. Bribing the doctors to let Chandler go, he then carried the injured boy on his back to the nearest train. They rode all the way to Atlanta in a box car. Once there, the hospital doctors saved the boy's leg and life.
Soon after, they returned to home to Palo Alto, where they continued their friendship until their deaths. Chandler gave Silas land to build a church for the black community and saw that his friend got his confederate veteran pension in 1878.
His grave was adorned with a Confederate Cross of Honor that was placed there in 1994. Shortly after that, the great-grandsons of Silas and Andrew met. Traveling from Washington DC, Bobbie Chandler introduced himself to Andrew Chandler Battaile who still lives in Mississippi. They both maintain a long distance friendship that was rooted over a hundred years ago.
Silas Chandler has recently become a celebrated black confederate having his story recognized by the media. The picture of him and Andrew Chandler is the best well know photograph of a master and his body servant and is one of the only photos of it's kind to hang in a museum."

[Garrett Silliman]

Re: Black Confederate

An interesting image to be certain – thanks for posting it. I wish we had more information on its provenance rather than Cowan's commentary on the pervasiveness of Black Confederates. This debate over how common this type of combatant was has been discussed to death on here with no resolution, but I will say that it is interesting that Cowan provides the quote from the Daily Delta.

As Johnny pointed out, this individual does appear to have mixed ancestry. The Daily Delta was published in New Orleans prior to the war and I would imagine, although Cowan does not provide this information, that the quote comes from a member of the Native Guard, a black Louisiana militia unit. Although reportedly never used in combat by the Confederacy these men later became the core of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards (Federal) http://www2.netdoor.com/~jgh/story.html .

Unfortunately, Cowan doesn't provide more information on this specific photo, but I wonder if this is an image of a Native Guard soldier (?). The fact that he had his image struck as a black militiaman would not be unusual for the NG as these men were largely educated professionals like their white pre-war militia counterparts. Curious if anyone else out there has seen pieces of NG uniform or other id'd images that might shed some additional light on this one.

[rebjeb04]

Re: Black Confederate

That soldier looks as white as me. However, he could be a creole or cajun by those dark eyes and hair. I have many ancestors from Louisiana who served from the Spanish period onward and over the years other relatives have tried to make claim of them being of mixed racial ancestry. They were wrong. These Louisiana folk were of european bacgrounds of French, Spanish, and Native American. Intermarriage with blacks in those days was taboo, even in Louisiana. I will stand corrected if anyone at Cowan's or here can ever prove that this soldier was negro or mulatto other that him having black hair and eyes.

Emanuel Dabney is the only man I know faithfully and correctly representing blacks in the Confederate Army and Southern homefront. He deserves much credit for the work he has done and the knowledge he shares with others. It takes a strong person to do the impressions he has done without consequence or regret.

[J. Donaldson]

Re: Black Confederate

I enter this topic against my better judgment. That being said, I'd like to address Mr. Reardon's interpretation of the Chandler image, and indirectly address the entire question of black Confederates.

That's not his slave. The two boys are Silas and Andrew Chandler. Silas was the families slave but he was also Andrew's best friend growing up. They joined, Co. F, 44th Mississippi and served together.

The operative word in your quote is slave. While the two may have been of a similar age and entertained a close relationship, Andrew Chandler owned Silas Chandler. Silas Chandler was taken into the 44th Mississippi as a servant and slave and served no role beyond that. The power dynamic of the master-slave relationship denied freedom of choice and freedom of action from Silas Chandler and the perhaps thousands of other African-Americans in the South taken into service with their masters to act as body servants and other subordinate roles. No matter how close of a personal relationship these two may have had, to call them best friends, and to cite that reason for his presence in the 44th Mississippi, denies Silas Chandler's ability to act of his own free will in association and voluntary service. Silas Chandler's presence in the 44th Mississippi was based upon his ability to perform physical, menial labor to ease the life and duties of his owner and not predicated upon his freewill support of secession and Confederate civil and military goals.

The arming of these disenfranchised African-Americans in period images in my mind should play no role in the interpretation of the role of slaves in the Confederate military. How many other images have been discussed within the confines of this forum plainly detailing the use of photographer's props as a means to play up the warlike atmosphere in an image. An armed African-American was the worst possible fear in the South.

The Confederacy legally banned African-Americans from serving in the ranks of its military forces prior to February 18, 1865. Prior to that date, to discuss the presence of an African-American in a military unit as anything other than a servant is historically inaccurate. To argue that these men were present in Confederate military units as willing participants can not be supported by historical fact beyond negligible statistical inference.

I would encourage those interested in this discussion to seek out legitimate historical sources and honest discussions such as Kevin Levin's blog at Civil War Memory.

It is disheartening from the historian's point of view to see the propagation of these myths. Slavery denies individual agency to the African-American; to argue otherwise in favor of some underlying support of Southern society built upon a racial caste system militarily supported by African-Americans in Confederate service is problematic at best.

[Emmanuel Dabney]

Re: Black Confederate

I absolutely hate this on-going debate on one level and love it on another.

I was hoping however to not be brought into the discussion though I appreciate the compliments over the years in highlighting the experiences of black Southerners during the late antebellum and war years and continue to appreciate those compliments. I am however continually guided by history and try to portray a myriad of experiences but I am only one person. That brings me to another point: I am by no means the only person. My friends and members of this forum: Anita Henderson, M.D. and Marvin Greer are also striving to not only present the experiences of American blacks but also to do so with the most correct material culture and clothing & accessories available to them. But this isn't a thread about reenacting experiences of blacks (yet I needed to say that).

In regards to THIS PARTICULAR IMAGE (which is the discussion generator):

In my review of the 1860 census for Mississippi I find living in Chickasaw County Louisa Chandler, a 44 year old widow (presumably, she is head of household) whose real estate was worth $24,000 and whose personal estate was worth $40,000. Living with her was Andrew, 16; Benjamin, 12; and another male child (supposedly Kyle but the original image scan on Ancestry anyway is very light)age 11.

The 1860 slave schedule for that county is enlightening on the matter of who the Chandlers were as they owned 35 enslaved people. The oldest of these people was 80 years old and the youngest six months old. If indeed the planter class can be counted as those who owned 20 or more slaves than there is no doubt Andrew Chandler would have found the institution of slavery worth preserving even if through armed conflict. There certainly was discord on the plantation as there three runaways at the time of the census (June 1860). Racial mixing on the census is difficult to determine as different people look upon blacks and Indians differently. In this case however the three runaways were acknowledged presumably by Mrs. Chandler as being mulatto.

I did not see a Silas Chandler who was a free black for that county in the 1860 census and therefore will need to see some legal document from the 1850s showing that Silas was freed before the war.

I have read snippets over the years regarding the white and black Chandlers but I have yet to read any of Andrew's (or other white family members) actual letters to agree (or disagree) that there was some great friendship between servant and served. What I can say is that it does not seem that Silas operated outside of the acceptable box of a black man serving a white man to be transformed into an armed and fighting and killing Union troops soldier.

Still, the image is fascinating because the war ultimately will have some transformative character for the American people who North and South doubted the ability of black men to be trusted with weapons as though all were going to kill whites. We may look at this image was some glorification of the Confederacy among blacks or another case of white control over blacks; but imagine had this image been so reproduced in the war period. Would Southerners fearful of a recreation of the St. Domingue revolution and Nat Turner "rebellion" (or as it may be helpful to think of it as Nat Turner attempting to invert mastery) and living in the periods following the Stono Rebellion (1730s South Carolina), Gabriel's plot (1800), Denmark Vesey (1822), and the publication of David Walker's Walker's Appeal, in Four Articles; Together with a Preamble, to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in Particular, and Very Expressly, to Those of the United States of America (published in 1829) be so receptive to the depiction of a black male with knife and rifle? I don't think so (and Chandra Manning's research published in What This Cruel War Was Over presents the views of Confederate soldiers, not Cleburne, illustrates many soldiers were also not thrilled about arming blacks even in 1865) and that's an interpretive point worth talking about on the battlefields where these men fought and died. It is also a point worth talking about in depicting the "home front" where planters like Louisa Chandler lived.

[27thNCdrummer]

Re: Black Confederate

I know this thread is old but I feel I need to set things straight and address both the image and the issue of Black Confederate soldiers.

First of all, it is entirely possible that Silas and Andrew Chandler were friends. If you read any of the slave narratives from the Federal Writer's Project written from 1936-1938, they show that many slaves were indeed friends with their owners and their owner's children. Many former slaves remembered playing with their owners children and being quite attached to them .Their are even accounts of the owner's children sometimes secretly teaching the enslaved children to read and write, which if you examine historical accounts; was strictly forbidden on most plantations. So in fact, it is quite possible that Silas and Andrew Chandler were best friends.

Secondly, not only were there armed Black Confederate soldiers, they were NUMEROUS.

Captain Isaac W. Heysinger from Maryland left a detailed description of the Army of Northern Virginia as it passed through Frederick, Maryland on its way to Sharpsburg:

"At four o'clock this morning the rebel army began to move from our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The most liberal calculation could not have given them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in that number. These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only cast off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. They were shabby, but not shabbier or seedier looking than those worn by white men in the rebel ranks. Most of the Negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy Army. They were seen ridding on horses and mules, driving wagons, riding on caissons, in ambulances, with the staff of generals, and promiscuously mixed up with all the rebel horde. "

Union General George H. Gordon recalled "many men from my command were killed, and strange stories bruited about of the precision and fire of a Negro marksmen, a Rebel."

The New York Star Tribune reprinted a letter written by a Union soldier to the Indianapolis
Star, December 23, 1861, with the heading of "Attack on Our Soldiers by Armed Negroes." Part of the letter reads: "A body of seven hundred Negro infantry opened fire on our men, wounding two lieutenants and two privates. The wounded men testify positively that they were shot by Negroes, and that not less than seven hundred were present, armed with muskets. This is, indeed a new feature in the war. We have heard of a regiment of Negroes at Manassas, and another at Memphis, and still another at New Orleans, but did not believe it till it came so near home and attacked our men."

At least one free man of color was enlisted as a regular private in a Confederate unit. John Wilson Buckner, the nephew of an affluent South Carolina black who held numerous supply contracts with the Confederate army, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery on March 12, 1863. Buckner was wounded in the defense of Battery Wagner on July 12, 1863.

Robert W. Waitt, Jr. found troops from Confederate Jackson and Winder hospitals in Richmond, Virgina, under the command of an individual named Scott, who in March of 1865: "....ordered my battalion from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th divisions of Jackson Hospital to the front on Saturday night... My men acted with the utmost promptness and good will. I had the pleasure of turning over to Dr. Major Chambliss a portion of my negro company to be attached to his command. Allow me to state, Sir, that they behaved in an extraordinary suitable manner."

Also, in addition to black soldiers being listed as cooks, musicians, and body servants on North Carolina muster rolls, the following troops are listed as privates:

Everett Hayes 10th N.C. Inf.
James Newcom 1st N.C. Btn.
Arthur Reed 40th N.C. Inf.
Miles Reed 40th N.C. Inf.
Henson Revels 1st N.C. Btn. Hvy. Art.

The following black soldiers are also listed as captured at Fort Fisher but their rank or military occupation is not listed:

Charles Dempsey 36th N.C. Inf.
Henry Dempsey 36th N.C. Inf.
J. Doyle 40th N.C. Inf.
Daniel Herring 36th N.C. Inf.

And if that's not enough, I've attached the copies of three muster rolls of black Confederate soldiers. While one soldier from the grouping, Joseph Ruben, is listed as a cook, the other two soldiers Wiley Stewart and Alexander (who does not have both names listed) do not have their ranks listed, which may indicate that they were regularly enlisted as privates.

So, I think it is pretty safe to say that there were black Confederate soldiers bearing arms during the war.

[bAcK88]

Re: Black Confederate

First of all, it is entirely possible that Silas and Andrew Chandler were friends. If you read any of the slave narratives from the Federal Writers Project written from 1936-1938, they show that many slaves were indeed friends with their owners and their owner's children. Many former slaves remembered playing with owners children and being quite attached to them .Their are even accounts of the owner's children sometimes secretly teaching the enslaved children to read and write, which if you examine historical accounts; was strictly forbidden on most plantations. So in fact, it is quite possible that Silas and Andrew Chandler were best friends.

Yep. I would keep my best friend in chattel bondage instead of freeing him...

[Jimmayo]

Re: Black Confederate

At least one free man of color was enlisted as a regular private in a Confederate unit. John Wilson Buckner, the nephew of an affluent South Carolina black who held numerous supply contracts with the Confederate army, enlisted in the 1st South Carolina Artillery on March 12, 1863. Buckner was wounded in the defense of Battery Wagner on July 12, 1863.

Here is another.

http://www.petersburgexpress.com/Boone.html

I was there when they gave the CS battle flag off of Jason's stone to the oldest living relative. I believe she was 96. Jason Boone had many relatives. About half came to the service and the other half did not want to come. Later most of the latter changed their minds according to one member of the family and were sorry they had not attended.

[27thNCdrummer]

Re: Black Confederate

Yep. I would keep my best friend in chattel bondage instead of freeing him...

According to Emmanuel Dabney's research in the 1860 census on the previous page, if Silas was still enslaved during the war, he was owned by Andrew's mother not Andrew himself. So he really had no power in freeing him. Usually a slave owner's child did not inherit or own one of his parents slaves until his parents either passed away, or gifted the slave to him when he or she married and moved away from the plantation.

[Silas]

Re: Black Confederate

So in fact, it is quite possible that Silas and Andrew Chandler were best friends.

I expressly and unequivically deny ever being a friend of Andrew Chandler, ever meeting him or ever having been a slave.