[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

America Erupts… ICE Raids Takeover The Streets

AC/DC- Riff Raff + Go Down [VH1 Uncut, July 5, 1996]

Why is Peter Schiff calling Bitcoin a ‘giant cult’ and how does this impact market sentiment?

Esso Your Butt Buddy Horseshit jacks off to that shit

"The Addled Activist Mind"

"Don’t Stop with Harvard"

"Does the Biden Cover-Up Have Two Layers?"

"Pete Rose, 'Shoeless' Joe Reinstated by MLB, Eligible for HOF"

"'Major Breakthrough': Here Are the Details on the China Trade Deal"

Freepers Still Love war

Parody ... Jump / Trump --- van Halen jump

"The Democrat Meltdown Continues"

"Yes, We Need Deportations Without Due Process"

"Trump's Tariff Play Smart, Strategic, Working"

"Leftists Make Desperate Attempt to Discredit Photo of Abrego Garcia's MS-13 Tattoos. Here Are Receipts"

"Trump Administration Freezes $2 Billion After Harvard Refuses to Meet Demands"on After Harvard Refuses to Meet Demands

"Doctors Committing Insurance Fraud to Conceal Trans Procedures, Texas Children’s Whistleblower Testifies"

"Left Using '8647' Symbol for Violence Against Trump, Musk"

KawasakiÂ’s new rideable robohorse is straight out of a sci-fi novel

"Trade should work for America, not rule it"

"The Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court Race – What’s at Risk for the GOP"

"How Trump caught big-government fans in their own trap"

‘Are You Prepared for Violence?’

Greek Orthodox Archbishop gives President Trump a Cross, tells him "Make America Invincible"

"Trump signs executive order eliminating the Department of Education!!!"

"If AOC Is the Democratic Future, the Party Is Even Worse Off Than We Think"

"Ending EPA Overreach"

Closest Look Ever at How Pyramids Were Built

Moment the SpaceX crew Meets Stranded ISS Crew

The Exodus Pharaoh EXPLAINED!

Did the Israelites Really Cross the Red Sea? Stunning Evidence of the Location of Red Sea Crossing!

Are we experiencing a Triumph of Orthodoxy?

Judge Napolitano with Konstantin Malofeev (Moscow, Russia)

"Trump Administration Cancels Most USAID Programs, Folds Others into State Department"

Introducing Manus: The General AI Agent

"Chinese Spies in Our Military? Straight to Jail"

Any suggestion that the USA and NATO are "Helping" or have ever helped Ukraine needs to be shot down instantly

"Real problem with the Palestinians: Nobody wants them"

ACDC & The Rolling Stones - Rock Me Baby

Magnus Carlsen gives a London System lesson!

"The Democrats Are Suffering Through a Drought of Generational Talent"

7 Tactics Of The Enemy To Weaken Your Faith

Strange And Biblical Events Are Happening

Every year ... BusiesT casino gambling day -- in Las Vegas

Trump’s DOGE Plan Is Legally Untouchable—Elon Musk Holds the Scalpel

Palestinians: What do you think of the Trump plan for Gaza?

What Happens Inside Gaza’s Secret Tunnels? | Unpacked

Hamas Torture Bodycam Footage: "These Monsters Filmed it All" | IDF Warfighter Doron Keidar, Ep. 225

EXPOSED: The Dark Truth About the Hostages in Gaza

New Task Force Ready To Expose Dark Secrets


Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

United States News
See other United States News Articles

Title: The Myth of Black Confederates
Source: las.illinois.edu
URL Source: http://www.las.illinois.edu/news/2013/confederates/
Published: Sep 1, 2013
Author: Doug Peterson
Post Date: 2015-06-23 16:10:38 by Pericles
Keywords: None
Views: 11678
Comments: 55

The Myth of Black Confederates

LAS professor rejects myth that blacks fought for rebels in large numbers.

Patrick R. Cleburne, a prominent general in the Confederate Army of Tennessee, could see what was happening in the South in late 1863. Southern troops were outnumbered, soldiers were demoralized, and the institution of slavery was collapsing. So on January 2, 1864, Cleburne rode through a sleet-driven night in northern Georgia to present an audacious proposal to nearly a dozen Confederate generals.

He proposed that the Confederate States of America offer freedom to military age male slaves who were willing to fight for the South.

“Most of the generals denounced him,” says Bruce Levine, University of Illinois history professor and author of Confederate Emancipation and The Fall of the House of Dixie.

Cleburne’s proposal was overwhelmingly rejected, for secessionist states were not about to undermine the system of slavery that they were fighting to defend. But despite this clear disdain for the idea of arming African Americans, Levine says that over the past 30 years there has arisen a myth that black soldiers did fight for the Confederacy in massive numbers—tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands, according to some accounts propagated online.

According to Levine, “The claims among modern romanticizers of the Confederacy are intended to bolster more fundamental claims—that African Americans identified with the Confederacy, that slaves were content with being slaves, and that the war had nothing to do with slavery.”

The problem is that the accounts of massive involvement of blacks in the Southern army are false, he says.

Levine says the Confederate army had a strict policy that if you were not certifiably white, you could not be a soldier in its ranks. However, in the early years of the Civil War, many slave owners did bring their servants into the Confederate army to carry equipment for them, and clean and take care of their clothes and horses. In addition, the Confederacy forced many slaves and free blacks in the South to labor for the war effort, building rail breastworks, driving wagons, burying the dead, and serving as nurses.

“On occasion, a slave might have even picked up a gun and taken a shot at the Yankees, proving how loyal and dependable he was,” Levine says. But this level of involvement is a far cry from tens of thousands of armed black soldiers marching in defense of the Confederacy.

What’s more, Confederates discovered that if they placed black laborers too close to Union lines, they ran the risk of African Americans fleeing to the other side; therefore, many slave owners stopped bringing along their black servants during the second half of the war.

Levine notes that there were two militias in the South made up of free African American soldiers—one in Mobile, Ala., and the other in New Orleans. But these were state militias, not part of the regular army, and they did not see serious action on behalf of the South. And numerous members of the “Native Guards” of New Orleans immediately switched allegiance to the Union when the Yankees occupied the city.

The Myth of the Black Confederates is a relatively new phenomenon, arising after the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, Levine says. The notion of African Americans fighting in large numbers for the South was never suggested in the immediate aftermath of the war because white veterans would have been still alive to shoot down the idea. “White Confederate soldiers would have taken it as an insult to have served in the same army with the same status as a black soldier,” he says.

As evidence that black men fought heroically for the South, neo-Confederates today will sometimes dig up photos of black servants dressed in military uniforms. But according to Levine, “Some servants were dressed in military uniforms because that was the kind of clothing available in the army.” It didn’t mean they were real members of those army units, he says.

Levine says that when the Confederacy was on its last legs, in March of 1865, the Confederate congress did pass an eleventh-hour law by a razor-thin margin, allowing for the enlistment of black soldiers. But even that law freed no one.

“The Southern government invited masters to volunteer their slaves for the army, but first they would have to emancipate them because Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee knew that still-enslaved black men would certainly not fight for the South,” he says. “The overwhelming majority of masters declined that invitation.”

In the final weeks of the war, the South tried to recruit black soldiers in a handful of states, he says, “but nothing happened anywhere, except Richmond and Petersburg, where they apparently raised about 60 black soldiers in the Confederate army, who then saw virtually no action.”

In contrast, once black soldiers were accepted into the Union army in 1863, roughly 190,000 to 200,000 fought for the North. Even more telling, he adds, an estimated 80 percent of those soldiers were slaves and free blacks recruited by the Union army in slave states.

Editor’s note: We have included a new image and caption at the top of the story and an updated caption for the second image—February 2014

By Doug Peterson

September 2013

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

#1. To: Pericles (#0)

The Civil War was fought over slavery.

The South seceded and proclaimed, in its articles of secession and constitution, that it was about slavery. The leaders said so.

Lincoln said it wasn't, but when the war got rough and recruitment lagged, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation for foreign policy and domestic political reasons. Northern recruitment became much brisker once the war WAS about slavery, and large numbers - a couple of hundred thousand - of Union troops were black.

The Confederacy was about slavery, and never had any intention of freeing any slaves.

States rights? Sure: the "right" of states to have slaves, and to extend slavery westward.

Of course the North wasn't innocent at all either. After all, for four score and seven years before that, the Northerners were mostly willing to tolerate slavery, and in the decade before the war, the North enforced the Fugitive Slave Act.

Truth is, America was founded on the principle of equality, and slavery stood out as an increasingly intolerable cancer on that principle.

Why Americans still need to fight over this TODAY is a bit of a mystery. Slavery was bad, the South stood up for it, lost, was defeated, slavery ended. Move on.

Of course the slavery story had a bookend: segregation. In truth, the "badges" of slavery didn't really start to disappear until the forced end of segregation in the 1960s, and the "incidents" - the massive economic differential of coming from the impoverished black slave class - still have not disappeared. Economic segregation remains.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-23   16:36:44 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

The Confederacy was about slavery, and never had any intention of freeing any slaves.

Wrong! Nathan Bedford Forrest prior to the war was a slave trader, however he always kind towards his slaves. He would never break up families,or sell one without the approval of the slave.

Forrest enlisted as a private, and rose to the rank of 3 star general. He raised several regiments out of his personal funds, and throughout the process offered freedom to any of his slaves who would serve under him for the duration. They did, and he kept his promise.

Go read the article regarding his speech at the National Pole Bearers association, which later became the NAACP.

After the war Lee was asked who was his best general. He replied, "A man I have never met Nathan Bedford Forrest." Make certain you research his role in founding the KKK.

I have read over 11 biographies regarding Forrest, and the truth is apparent if you seek it. I even had a movie producer convinced into making a film of his life, but the Left makes certain Forrest is demonized, and they let the producer know he would never be allowed to make the film.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-23   17:27:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: GarySpFC (#2)

Wrong!

No, RIGHT. The Confederate States of America was all about slavery. That was its rallying cry. "States Rights"? Sure! The "right" to own and trade in slaves.

Don't take MY word for it. Here is what the Confederate leaders THEMSELVES said in their own founding documents:

The Vice-President of the CSA: "The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the 'storm came and the wind blew.' Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth..."

"She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races." Jefferson Davis, January 1861

We went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the North about. I never heard of any other cause of quarrel than slavery. Men fight from sentiment. After the fight is over they invent some fanciful theory on which they imagine that they fought." -- CSA Col. John S. Mosby

From the Texas articles of secession: "[I]n this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave- holding states....

From the Virginia articles of secession: "The people of Virginia in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty- eight, having declared that the powers granted under said Constitition were derived from the people of the United States and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slave-holding States."

Mississippi: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin..."

South Carolina: "A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that 'Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction. This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety."

State after state, in their official organs, and the Vice President of the Constitution, and Confederate military leaders, all said the same thing: the war was about slavery.

Problem: slavery is evil. Once the South lost, the efforts to obfuscate the truth and change the subject to anything else other than what the Confederacy actually stood for have gone on and on. But the truth remains in those Confederate Founding Fathers' own words and official pronouncements and enactments of the time: the Confederacy was singularly devoted to the institution of slavery. That's why they seceded. That's what they fought and died for.

And that's why the Confederate Flag is so very divisive today. It's the flag of rebellion against the national government, in a war that left a million dead, fought to secure the independence of a country that seceded from the United States over the "right" to have slavery.

The Stars and Bars are not a swastika, to whites. But they're not the lovely dove symbol of a peaceful republic formed to protect God and apple pie either.

To blacks, the Confederate Flag is like a swastika flag to Jews. And the blacks are not even slightly wrong in this assessment either.

For after slavery came segregation, and that endured to our own lifetimes. The economic overhang of all of that still blights blacks to this day.

Confederate apologists seek to change the subject into something else, something noble. But fundamentally, the Confederacy was not noble at all. It foundation was based upon exactly what the CSA's Vice President said it was: "it's foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth".

That was the moral truth for which the Confederate States of America was formed, for which it seceded, for which it fought, and for which it died. And that is the principle for which the Confederate Flag stands in the mind of every black, and most whites who don't live in the South.

A white racist photographed himself with that flag, went into a Black church, sat there for an hour, and then systematically blew away the people there for the "cause" that flag has come to represent.

Nothing is going to take the taint of slavery out of the Confederate Battle Flag, because that taint is THERE, and it cannot be washed out.

And THAT is the insurmountable problem that those who would defend it face.

My view? Fly it if you want to, but get it off of the state flags and monuments. The Christian Cross may or may not belong on state houses, but the flag of bloody rebellion in the cause of slavery doesn't belong on ANY state emblem. The Confederacy lost. All of its veterans are gone. It's time for that flag to retire to museums, not to remain an active open sore on race relations today.

Strike those colors and put them to bed. They cause was wrong, and it lost, and the flag merely reminds everybody of that.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-23   18:20:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Vicomte13, GarySpFC (#3) (Edited)

I don't get why Gary is refuting the scholar's charge that Blacks did not fight for the Confederacy by bringing up how Nathan Bedford Forrest was kind to his slaves? I am sure NBB thought he was a kind slave dealer. The slaves probably thought otherwise.

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-23   19:18:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

The Civil War was fought over slavery.

One of these days you are bound to be right about something.

This ain't the day,though.

Abraham Lincoln,the man that started the war is on record as saying it had nothing to do with slavery.

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

sneakypete  posted on  2015-06-23   19:22:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: sneakypete, Vicomte13 (#5)

Abraham Lincoln,the man that started the war is on record as saying it had nothing to do with slavery.

No, the south said it was about slavery, Lincoln said he would not end slavery if they ended the rebellion. They did not so Lincoln ended it for them.

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-23   19:25:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Pericles (#4)

I don't get why Gary is refuting the scholar's charge that Blacks did not fight for the Confederacy

Because there were black Confederate soldiers,and there are even black Confederate graveyards.

There were even blacks fighting for the Americans during the Revolutionary War. One was captured and tortured by the British in an attempt to get him to tell them about his master's battle plans (his master was a General in the Continental Army),and not only did he resist without giving anything away,he even escaped and told his master about the British battle plans he had heard them discussing.

As a reward he was given his freedom,a medal for courage,and farmland with animals and equipment.

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

sneakypete  posted on  2015-06-23   19:26:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Pericles (#6)

No, the south said it was about slavery, Lincoln said he would not end slavery if they ended the rebellion.

Where was the school that taught you all this "history". Berkley,or Moscow?

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

sneakypete  posted on  2015-06-23   19:27:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: Vicomte13, Pericles (#1)

The Civil War was fought over slavery.

Had the Union won a total victory on day one, how would that have enabled the Union to free the slaves?

If a total victory in one day could not enable freeing the slaves, what was the goal of the war when it started?

nolu chan  posted on  2015-06-23   19:38:28 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: sneakypete, Pericles (#7)

Because there were black Confederate soldiers,and there are even black Confederate graveyards.

You left out the thousands of documented black confederate pensioners after the war.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-06-23   19:39:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: nolu chan (#9)

what was the goal of the war when it started?

The industrialists of the north wanted to take over the cotton trade,and they wanted the cheap labor newly freed slaves would provide them because the Eastern European and Irish immigrants they were employing in their factories were starting to get uppity and demand shorter hours,shorter work weeks,better working conditions,and to get paid in actual money they could spend anywhere instead of in company script that could only be used in company stores.

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

sneakypete  posted on  2015-06-23   19:47:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: nolu chan (#10)

Because there were black Confederate soldiers,and there are even black Confederate graveyards.

You left out the thousands of documented black confederate pensioners after the war.

For them to be Confederate pensioners after the war,they had to have been Confederate soldiers during the war.

What isn't often mentioned is their widows and children who also received pensions for life.

All this may seem to be a bit much for some,but the times,the weapons,and the economic conditions were very different back then,and many of the soldiers from both sides suffered from horrendous and painful wounds in a time where almost all jobs required the employee to be physically fit,and there was no such thing as welfare or social security for people too crippled up to work.

Even the ones who came home healthy often found the yankee carpetbaggers had already conspired to sell off their farms and businesses for back taxes to each other,and the appointed yankee sheriff had already forced their wives and children off the land.

Why is democracy held in such high esteem when it’s the enemy of the minority and makes all rights relative to the dictates of the majority? (Ron Paul,2012)

sneakypete  posted on  2015-06-23   19:52:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: nolu chan (#9)

Had the Union won the battle on day one, the slaves would not have been freed.

The South seceded over the issue of slavery. They believed that Lincoln was going to trample their rights to slavery, so they went for the door. That was their motivation.

Lincoln's motivation at the start of the war was to preserve the Union. He rejected any notion of a unilateral right to secede, and refused to pull forces out of the South.

The Southerners fired on Fort Sumter, starting the armed rebellion. Lincoln responded in kind by sending in the forces to suppress the rebellion.

Bull Run was a terrible shock, followed by others.

America itself was not a good country. It had slavery and fugitive slave laws.

God saw to it that the war was prolonged sufficiently to exhaust the original purpose. To maintain the momentum to win the war, it had to be broadened to the issue of slavery. That, then, caused the end result that neither party intended at the outset of the war.

The South, in its own declarations, seceded to preserve slavery as the pillar of Southern society. Besides land, slaves were the single greatest property value in America.

The North's goals changed as the war progressed and deepened. Lincoln's simple suppression of rebellion became immensely complicated because the Southerners were full of fire and ready, willing and eager to fight for their country and its slave culture. "Preserving the Union" wasn't enough. To really harm the South, the slaves had to be freed, so they were as those lands were liberated, or conquered (depending on your perspective).

By the end of the war, it was about abolition. Lincoln made the point of refusing to negotiate with the Southern peace feelers until he got his amendment.

Once it came to the end and it was clear that the Union would win, Lincoln went all-in to formally abolish slavery, and succeeded in doing so. His war aims increased as the war went on.

So, the South started wrong and stayed wrong and was destroyed. The North started wrong and gradually found its way to the right answer, which was to destroy slavery completely and for good, and to change the Constitution itself to end the debate.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-23   22:13:24 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: nolu chan (#10)

Nolu, you seem like a bright guy. Are you really going down the spider hole of believing that the Civil War was not caused by slavery and wasn't about slavery?

Are you really going to deny what the South was?

Come on. You're smarter than that.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-23   22:15:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: Vicomte13 (#14)

The Confederate Battle Flag is not the real issue, rather it is being used by the Left for political purposes to demonize conservatives. Removing this flag will not change anything.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-23   23:19:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: GarySpFC (#15)

Removing this flag will not change anything.

Yes it will. It will embolden Americas enemies within. They will use it as proof that we white people are racist.

They will say things like you white racists aren't in charge anymore. That racist America doesn't exist anymore.

A K A Stone  posted on  2015-06-23   23:35:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: A K A Stone (#16)

Removing this flag will not change anything.

The Left will simply attack another American institution. It will never end until they have turned us into slaves.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-24   0:26:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: Vicomte13 (#1)

Levine says the Confederate army had a strict policy that if you were not certifiably white, you could not be a soldier in its ranks. However, in the early years of the Civil War, many slave owners did bring their servants into the Confederate army to carry equipment for them, and clean and take care of their clothes and horses. In addition, the Confederacy forced many slaves and free blacks in the South to labor for the war effort, building rail breastworks, driving wagons, burying the dead, and serving as nurses.

Here is another bald faced lie. Forrest is but one example.

When the Civil War began, Forrest offered freedom to 44 of his slaves if they would serve with him in the Confederate army. All 44 agreed. One later deserted; the other 43 served faithfully until the end of the war.

Though they had many chances to leave, they chose to remain loyal to the South and to Forrest. Part of General Forrest's command included his own Escort Company, his Green Berets, made up of the very best soldiers available. This unit, which varied in size from 40-90 men, was the elite of the cavalry. Eight of these picked men were black soldiers and all served gallantly and bravely throughout the war. All were armed with at least 2 pistols and a rifle. Most also carried two additional pistols in saddle holsters. At war's end, when Forrest's cavalry surrendered in May 1865, there were 65 black troopers on the muster roll. Of the soldiers who served under him, Forrest said of the black troops: Finer Confederates never fought.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-24   0:37:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: Pericles (#0)

Levine says the Confederate army had a strict policy that if you were not certifiably white, you could not be a soldier in its ranks.

The Union army had a strict policy that a woman could not be a soldier in the ranks. That did not stop anything.

Re the Confederate navy, when the CSS Hunley was raised several years ago, the DNA of one of the crew members was confirmed to be African-American.

For that matter, until recent years, the U.S. armed forces had a strict policy that homosexuals could not be service members in the ranks. Policy, meet reality.

Let's try Richard Rollins, Black Confederates at Gettysburg, in Black Southerners in Gray, Rollins Ed., at pp. 129-30.

Scholars writing on black life during the war also have usually ignored black Confederates. [Bell] Wiley again serves as a useful spokesman. "There seems to be no evidence thatthe Negro soldiers authorized bythe Confederate government ever went into battle," he wrote in 1938, and added that if any other black Confederates ever saw battle "the per cent of Negro blood was sufficiently low for them to pass as whites."5 Both of those statements are incorrect.

In fact some black Confederates did "see the elephant" with the support of the Confederate government. Even more to the point, thousands of black Southerners found their way into battle beneath the "starry cross" of their own volition, in spite of being officially prohibited by the Confederate government.6 Despite being enslaved, or severely discriminated against when free, there were many whose motivations were strong enough to propel them to overcome major obstacles and fight for the South. Some clearly must have had the support of the white Southerners who served with them in locally-raised companies and regiments. And, judging by the letters preserved in the Official Records, many more would have joined them had they the opportunity.7 They became an integral, important part of Southern armies. An English observer estimated there were 30,000 black servants in the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862.8 Dr. Lewis Steiner, a member of the Sanitary Commission who happened to be in Frederick, Maryland, in the days just before Sharpsburg, noted their presence in the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862. The description he recorded in his diary probably could have been written in June of 1863. According to Steiner, about 5% of the combat troops were black.

Next Rollins quoted Steiner, which I provide here directly from Steoner's report.

From Report of Lewis H. Steiner, inspector of the Sanitary Commission: containing a diary kept during the rebel occupation of Frederick, Md., and an account of the operations of the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the campaign in Maryland, September, 1862.

The full report is available for reading or download.
https://archive.org/details/reportlewissteiner00steirich

Wednesday, September 10.~At four o'clock this morning the rebel army began to move from our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The movement continued until eight o'clock P.M., occupying sixteen hours. The most liberal calculations could not give them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 negroes must be included in this number. 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, sabres, bowie knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapaacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confedcracy Army. They were seen riding 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. 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.

Hand Grips, The Story of the Great Gettysburg Reunion, July, 1913, at 66-67.

By Comrade Walter H. Blake, Compiled by Frank E. Channon, Vineland, N. J., G. H. Smith, Publisher, Published December 1913.

It was a pretty spectacle, and typified the whole spirit of the great Reunion.

There were colored men on both sides of the lines. The Commission had made arrangements only for negroes from the Union side, forgetful of the fact that there were many faithful slaves who fought against their own interests in their intense loyalty to their Southern masters.

Some of the colored boys from the Southland drifted into camp on the second day, but found no tents provided for them. They were given straw beds in the big tent, and there, later, some of the big-hearted Tennessee delegation discovered them. It didn't take those warm-hearted Southerners long to shift their colored brethren. They took them away into their own tent and saw that their wants were attended to, a special tent being reserved for them.

Mention of the colored comrades recalls a very pretty little incident that occurred on a New Jersey camp street one day. It was an incident that made some of the Northern boys sit up and take notice.

A giant of an old negro, Samuel Thomp­son, from Mount Holly, was resting under some shade trees, when along came a crowd of old Confederates.

66

- - -

"Howdy do, Boss!" saluted the old col­ored man.

Of the score of Johnny Rebs every one returned the salute of the old negro. Then one gaunt boy in gray went up and ex­tended his hand frankly.

"We-all are glad to see you," he prom­ised, "an* we-all want to shake hands with you, nigger, an' to say as we have some niggers at home just as big as you."

"'Deed you has, Boss,' deed you has," laughed the old darkey, and EVERY ONE of the Southerners stepped up and followed the example of their comrade, shaking hands with their dark-skinned brother, and slapping him with a kindly slap. No color line here.

- - - - -

The Myth of the Black Confederates is a relatively new phenomenon, arising after the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, Levine says.

This hardly considers the Confederate pensions awarded to black applicants after the Civil War.

It would be nice to have see someone try to source this fiction to a black author.

From Blacks in Blue and Gray, Afro-American Service in the Civil War, by H.C. Blackerby, First Edition, 1979, pp. 101-102:

THE LOUISIANA BLACK NATIVE GUARDS

When the Civil war began, the sight of parading black soldiers was not new to the people of New Orleans. Organizations of Louisiana black militia had been present for most military ceremonies, and had participated in the earlier wars with the French and with the Spanish. The Battalion of Free Men of Color defended New Orleans from the beginning of the colony. While the name suggested the blacks were free, slaves were also enlisted to fight the Natchez and the Chickasaw Indians. Many slaves were freed as a reward for their service as soldiers. During the American war with Great Britain in 1776, the Spanish organized black militia companies that fought the British. Ironically, the same black militiamen were employed during peacetime to capture runaway slaves.

In 1812 a black battalion was augmented by a second force inducted into federal service and fought with Andrew Jackson in the Battle of New Orleans. General Jackson praised the fighting by the black soldiers and the men were awarded state and Federal pensions, together with bounty-land-grant certificates. The descendants of the black soldiers who [*102] were in the earlier wars owned thousands of slaves in 1861 at outbreak of the Civil war.

While the Native Guards numbered only a few of the Louisiana blacks who volunteered to be soldiers of the Confederacy, this organization named "The First Native Guards, Louisiana Militia, Confederate State America."

The names that follow are those who served the Confederacy. I have attempted to identify all the blacks who changed from gray uniform to wearing the Union blue. We know that many of the blacks who were first uniformed in gray later wore blue. Officers who changed color uniforms included Alcide Lewis, H. Louis Rey, Eugene Rapp, Charles Sentmanat, Andre Cailloux, and Alfred Borgeau. Some officers of lower rank also changed uniforms. No doubt some officers who had worn the gray served in the ranks as enlisted personnel of the black Union regiments. Almost all the names that follow are from Microcopy No.3; Compiled Records of Confederate Soldiers who served in organizations from the State of Louisiana, Roll No. 94, First Native Guards, Militia A-G, from the National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration, Washington, D.C.:

The follows on pages 102-113, a two-column roll of the officers and men of the First Native Guards.

http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1382601/1/398925.pdf

318 pp.

Wearing The Gray Suit: Black Enlistment and the Confederate Military

Frank Edward Deserino
University College London
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment to the
Degree of Doctor of Philosophy
at the University of London

Department of History
University College London
July, 2001

At 215:

In August of 1861, a Federal officer observed a group he called the "Richmond Howitzer Battery" near Newport News, Virginia that was manned by blacks.95 A correspondent from the New York Times riding with Ulysses S. Grant reported in 1863 on a black artillery crew in Tennessee. "The guns of the rebel battery were manned almost wholly by Negroes," he noted, with "a single white man, or perhaps two, directing operations."96 An Indiana private wrote in a letter to his hometown newspaper about an exchange of fire with a group of black Southerners in the fall of 1861:

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, aimed with muskets. This is, indeed, a new feature in the war. We have heard of a regiment of Negroes at [First] 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. One of the lieutenants was shot in the back of the neck and is not expected to live.97

95 Austerman, "Virginia's Black Confederates," p. 50.

96 Obatala, "The Unlikely Story of Negroes," p. 99.

97 Quoted in Blackerby, Blacks in Blue and Gray, p. 5

Blackerby cited a Union soldier's letter to the Indianapolis Star (December 23, 1861; reprinted in the New York Tribune in 1862.

From Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, (1995), 4th Ed., 1999, at 219:

Certain free Afro-Virginian men, like other Southern males, seemed eager to prove their bravery and patriotism against the Yankee hordes. There were reports of local Confederate commanders in Virginia who armed and equipped free blacks and slaves in anticipation of attacks due to manpower shortages and despite well-grounded fears they would turn their weapons against Confederates when Union forces arrived. Another example of the Confederacy's painful drift toward a limited biracial society was in pay equity for African-Americans in its armies. Black musicians employed in Confederate regiments received the same pay as white musicians as of 15 April 1862; one of them, Jacob Jones, enlisted on 14 May 1861 at Salem, Roanoke County, as a drummer for the 9th Virginia Infantry. A Baltimore newspaper announced the arrival of black regiments at Richmond during February 1861 and described the conscription of slaves for service.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-06-24   0:42:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: nolu chan (#19)

This does not contradict the article which stated there were a couple of cases of black militia and in the case of the New Orleans one they went over to Union side.

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-24   0:46:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#21. To: Vicomte13 (#13)

Had the Union won the battle on day one, the slaves would not have been freed.

How can the alleged purpose of a war not be achieved by immediate and total victory? The alleged purpose is not possible.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-06-24   0:58:49 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#22. To: Vicomte13 (#14)

Nolu, you seem like a bright guy. Are you really going down the spider hole of believing that the Civil War was not caused by slavery and wasn't about slavery?

Are you really going to deny what the South was?

Come on. You're smarter than that.

I'm denying the alleged nonsense claim of what the war was started to achieve.

On the Civil War, I will take Black historians over certain mythmakers.

I will believe this war was initiated to exterminate slavery when you explain why it started with Union forces returned escaped slaves to their Southern masters.

Or why a war was being fought by Union forces to exterminate slavery while there was slavery in the Union states until after the war was over, and there was slavery in Washington, D.C. until a year after the conflict at Fort Sumter.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21093/21093-h/21093-h.htm

[Pg 239]

The Journal of Negro History

Vol. IV—July, 1919—No. 3

THE EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES AS SOLDIERS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMY

At 240:

It may be recalled that during the opening days of the war, slaves captured by the Union forces were returned to their disloyal masters. Here there is sufficient evidence in the concrete that slavery was not the avowed cause of the conflict. [3]

- - -

[3] General W. S. Harney, commanding in Missouri, responded to the claims of slaveholders for the return of runaway slaves with the words: "Already, since the commencement of these unhappy disturbances, slaves have escaped from their owners and have sought refuge in the camps of the United States troops from the Northern States, and commanded by a Northern General. They were carefully sent back to their owners." General D. C. Buell, commanding in Tennessee, in reply to the same demands stated: "Several applications have been made to me by persons whose servants have been found in our camps; and in every instance that I know of, the master has removed his servant and taken him away." William Wells Brown, The Negro in the Rebellion, pp. 57-58.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-06-24   1:01:27 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: Pericles (#20)

This does not contradict the article which stated there were a couple of cases of black militia and in the case of the New Orleans one they went over to Union side.

[Article] LAS professor rejects myth that blacks fought for rebels in large numbers.

How many will satisfy you. Name a number.

I take a Union report of 3,000 at one battle to be significant.

Here is from a noted Southern propagandist /sarc

http://cdm16694.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/fullbrowser/collection/p15109coll7/id/120/rv/compoundobject/cpd/136

The link displays a page image and text.

Frederick Douglass, Douglass' Monthly, IV, Sept. 1861, pp 516 (page 4 of issue)

It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still.

nolu chan  posted on  2015-06-24   1:31:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#24. To: Pericles (#0)

The Myth of Black Confederates

The biggest myth of all was the myth of white confederates. Fifty percent of Southern white men refused to sign up for the confederate army. They said it was a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight and they didn't want any part of it. Get the meticulously documented Ked Burns disk set.

rlk  posted on  2015-06-24   2:28:21 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#25. To: rlk (#24)

The biggest myth of all was the myth of white confederates. Fifty percent of Southern white men refused to sign up for the confederate army. They said it was a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight and they didn't want any part of it. Get the meticulously documented Ked Burns disk set.

That is true - there were whole counties that refused to be part of the confederacy and many Southeners left to fight for the union - also the vote to leave the union was far from democratic or representative.

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-24   3:03:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#26. To: nolu chan (#23) (Edited)

Frederick Douglass can be said to be exaggerating the numbers to get blacks into Union uniform. We have a good understanding of the Civil War, but the black confederate soldier is a myth - and we are not counting cooks or slaves that may have shot at some union soldiers in the heat of the moment either.

https://civilwargazette.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/did-blacks-fight-in- combat-for-the-confederacy/

...an honest look at the historical record leads one to the conclusion that as little as under a hundred to as many as several hundred blacks may have actually engaged in combat for the South during the Civil War by actually carrying and discharging a weapon. ...

CWG asked Professor and Civil War historian-author Steven Woodworth about the number of blacks who fought for the Confederacy:

“It would be hard to prove that absolutely zero blacks fought in the Confederate army, but I think it must have approached that level. I wonder if “non-white” includes American Indians. I suspect it does and further suspect that American Indians would have been much more prevalent than blacks in Confederate ranks. I haven’t kept a count of how many Civil War soldiers’ diaries and letters I’ve read–I guess it has been quite a few–but I’ve never come across a single instance of a black serving in the Confederate army. Whatever may have been the number of blacks serving and actually fighting as soldiers in the Confederate army, it must have been a minuscule percentage–completely insignificant for anyone trying to make the argument that blacks saw the conflict as a war of Yankee aggression, felt it was their war too, and joined up to fight for the Confederacy. That’s just a fairy tale.”

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-24   3:10:01 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#27. To: nolu chan (#23)

https://civilwargazette.wordpress.com/2008/03/13/did-blacks-fight-in-combat-for-the-confederacy/

While large numbers of black men thus accompanied every Confederate army on the march or in camp, those men would not have been considered soldiers. Only a few black men were ever accepted into Confederate service as soldiers, and none did any significant fighting. – Encyclopedia Virginia – Black Confederates

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.”

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.“

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-24   3:11:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#28. To: nolu chan (#23)

http://militaryhistorynow.com/2012/06/20/black-in-grey-did-african-americans-fight-for-the-confederacy/

In a 2011 article in The Harvard Gazette, Corydon Ireland interviews John Stauffer, a historian with the noted university who estimates that a fraction of 1 percent of the Confederate army might have been black.

Stauffer described the case of a slave named John Parker who was forced by his owner to man a field gun that was firing canister shot into the Federal line. Parker remarked years later that he feared for his life that day and prayed for a Union victory, all the while helping to load the gun and fire it on his liberators.

“His case can be seen to be representative,” Stauffer told The Gazette. “Masters put guns to the heads of slaves to make them shoot Yankees.”

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-24   3:14:59 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#29. To: GarySpFC (#15)

The Confederate Battle Flag is not the real issue, rather it is being used by the Left for political purposes to demonize conservatives. Removing this flag will not change anything.

You are right. And conservatives are rising to the bait like the Southern Fireaters did. And they're going to get destroyed on the issue just like the Southern Fireaters did.

Suppose the historical Southerners did not rise to the bait. Suppose, instead, they had grimly hunkered down, accepted Lincoln as President, and resisted him politically. The country would have remained politically divided, practically paralyzed, and slavery would have rolled on.

But they went nuts over a symbolic office. Lincoln was elected, without a majority, and would have presided, under the old Constitution, as the figurehead of a divided government, with the Supreme Court against him.

The Southerners could not accept the SYMBOL. They could not accept an abolitionist "in charge". They feared that he would do what he could to limit slavery in the Territories - and they were right, he was going to do that, and they were going to lose on that issue.

But then Lincoln would have been out in four years, and somebody more practical would have been in office, and Southern life, Southern cities, and Southern slavery, would have rolled on as before. The eventual end would have been on the hazy horizon.

But instead of settling down, the Southern Fireaters rebelled over a symbol. It was UNACCEPTABLE that the PRESIDENT, symbolic and weak office that it was in 1861, should be in the hands of an abolitionist. THEREFORE, secession. And then, the thought that the government refused to acknowledge their secession, and kept the forts in place and kept the US flag flying over them - that was unacceptable! So at Fort Sumter, they attacked a SYMBOL. They went berserk and fired on a federal fort. And THAT unleashed the power of the federal government on them to destroy them.

Within four years, hundreds of thousands of them were dead, the cities were destroyed, the train tracks torn up, the politicians in chains, the plantations destroyed and all the slaves freed...and all over a SYMBOL.

The Confederate Battle Flag is not the real issue. That is true. It is being used by the Left for political purposes, to demonize conservatives. But removing that flag WILL change something: it will remove a lighting rod. The flag is Fort Sumter - fight over it, and you unleash hell on yourself and lose.

The better answer is to haul down the obnoxious symbol on public ground, relegate it to museums, and focus on the issues.

For many blacks, the flag is a real issue. For people who believe in equal rights, it's a real issue. It's also a real issue for those people who lost family on the Union side in the Civil War. The Union took casualties as heavy as the South did, and the feelings there are as deep and as sore as on the Confederate side.

The Confederate Battle Flag is a foolish symbol to hoist over the conservative movement. Northern conservatives reject the Confederacy and its ideals, and will not become Neo-Confederates. They see the war as having been about slavery, and that flag as the flag of the Confederacy, and of the Ku Klux Klan, and the segregationists. You cannot hold a national conservative movement together on THAT symbol, and Northern conservatives - white ones - will never, ever stand and fight for that flag.

Removing the flag will change something. It will remove a lightning rod of attack on the conservative movement. It will allow Northern and Southern conservatives to see eye to eye, looking forward, and not divide by looking backwards.

The Lost Cause was lost, it should have lost, it's going to stay lost. And if that flag gets hoisted, it's going to be divisive TODAY - and that IS something.

A bunch of black Christians got shut up in a Charleston church by a white racist nut who depicted himself with the flag of the Klan and the Segregationists - for the Stars and Bars is NOT simply the flag of the old Confederacy, it is ALSO the flag of choice of Klansman and segregationists and racists for a century.

The killer used that flag to make a point. And he made his point. Getting that flag on the monument to half mast, at least, or taking it down "for cleaning" to remove the visual irritant, would have been smart.

But people don't seem to want to be smart. They seem to want to be Fireaters. Ok, then, the Flag becomes another Fort Sumter moment, and those who would wave it lose AGAIN.

The Confederate Battle Flag is the flag of one defeated, disastrous, wrongheaded cause after another. It's not a symbol worth sacrificing a movement over. The conservatives are not going to crucify themselves to that rag. The Left is trying to crucify them with it. The answer is to fold it and put it away. It ain't MY symbol. It's not Reagan's symbol. It's not Walker's symbol, or Sarah Palin's. It's a symbol of the Lost Cause, and various lost causes since. It is, itself, a lost cause. Don't go die on that battlefield. You're being lured onto it. Do not fight for that symbol. The Left is right on this one. It needs to go.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-24   9:34:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#30. To: rlk (#24)

Fifty percent of Southern white men refused to sign up for the confederate army.

Fifty percent of Southern white men were smart.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-24   9:36:17 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#31. To: nolu chan (#22)

I will believe this war was initiated to exterminate slavery when you explain why it started with Union forces returned escaped slaves to their Southern masters.

Had I stated that, you would be right to deny it. But I didn't.

The war was initiated by the South, because the South felt threatened by the election of a Northern abolitionist as President, even though Lincoln campaigned upon the notion of only closing the Western Territories to slavery.

Once he was elected, before he even took office, the South seceded, and as they did, they recorded forever in their legal documents, in their separate articles of secession and the debates in the state legislatures, and in the Constitution of the Confederacy itself, that THEIR issue was slavery.

The war was INITIATED by the South. The Southerners fired upon a federal fort in Charleston harbor.

The South seceded over slavery, and the South opened the war to make their secession good. The war was fought because the South seceded and opened fire to make good their secession.

The North reacted to the secession by dithering, but they reacted to the attack on federal forces by sending in federal forces to suppress a rebellion. Lincoln said that he would preserve the Union without freeing a single slave, if he could, but that if it required freeing all of the slaves, he would do that too.

By seceding, the South removed itself from the political process. THAT meant that Northern abolitionists, once a minority in Congress, were now unopposed in Congress by any countervailing slave forces.

As the rebellion grew and the war became more and more destructive, deadly and desperate, the hard-line Northern abolitionists solidified their power in Congress. Northern attitudes hardened, and the war became more and more about conquering the South utterly - and because the South's declared cause was the preservation of slavery, the enemies of the South - the Northerners and their politicians in Congress, became aggressive: THAT became their target - destroy slavery BECAUSE it's the South's cherished cause and the heart of their culture and economy.

The North didn't start the war. The South did. The SOUTH seceded over slavery, and started the war.

The Union reacted to the war first by trying to suppress a rebellion, and failing, and suffering a lot of disasters. THEN the war ceased to be Union versus South, as the departure of Southern politicians made it NORTH versus South. No longer forced to compromise, and developing an intense hatred of the South for all of their boys killed in the conflict, the NORTH turned hard abolitionist (the Midwest was not so convinced, but it was also smaller in population), and the North then made the war about slavery too: to rip it up BECAUSE the South cherished it. The abolitionist movement that gelled during the Civil War was formed in hatred of the South.

When the South seceded and started the war, the only people who really cared about slavery were the Southerners and a fringe of Northerners. But with the South gone and the war going hard, the North crystallized its hatred for the South, and put a bead on slavery specifically BECAUSE the South cherished it so much.

Reconstruction was, in part, about Northerners rubbing Southerners' noses in an imposed equality that even Northerners didn't believe in.

It was only thanks to real moderates like Lincoln and Grant, and Andrew Johnson, the leaders, that the radical Northern abolitionists at the end of the war didn't succeed in hanging a bunch of Southern leaders for treason.

Maybe they should have.

But God, in his Providence, gave America Lincoln and then Andrew Johnson to stand in the way of that. The destruction of war was vengeance enough.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-24   9:49:51 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#32. To: Pericles (#25) (Edited)

The plight of the average white man as a serf under Southern feudalism was often worse than blacks. A black slave sold for $1,200 dollars at Nathan Monsanto's slave auction and represented considerable investment. A typical white man was worth nothing to anybody.

rlk  posted on  2015-06-24   10:05:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#33. To: nolu chan (#21)

How can the alleged purpose of a war not be achieved by immediate and total victory? The alleged purpose is not possible.

You're too smart to be playing such games. Stop it.

The PURPOSE of the war was for the South to secede from the Union and become an independent nation.

The South started the war by firing on a federal fort and calling up an army to resist the national authorities.

The Union did not initiate a war, but was flying its flags over its territories, and replenishing its forces. The South wanted them gone and attacked, so that the South could escape Union control, so that the Southerners could live the way they wanted to, specifically, to preserve slavery intact and untrammeled.

That was the PURPOSE of the war. The war was started, by the South, to get away and preserve slavery.

The Union fought the war, at start, for the same reason that the police fight gangs during riots: the re-establish government control. The South claimed they had seceded, but the Federal government did not accept that. It was simply a political posture UNTIL the South started shooting at federal officials, THEN it was a real insurrection which had to be put down by the authorities.

The Union at the start of the war was intervening in an insurrection zone to maintain the authority of the government. But then the government lost, battle after battle. Things went badly and the South became a real power, with a chance of actually pulling off a secession.

The Union's goal was always the same: end the insurrection and re-establish government control over all United States territory - to defeat the Southern rebels who started the war.

But the means by which this was to be accomplished changed as the war expanded and became longer and deadlier.

Because the PURPOSE of the war was for the South to GET AWAY, the only way that purpose could be achieved was for the South to actually get away. The Union's goal was to stop that. The means of stopping that became more and more aggressive, and with the hardening of political attitudes in the North - the only people left in the federal government - the Northern politicians made it a point to rip up slavery by the roots because the South had rebelled over it. Remove slavery as a cause, and the South will never rebel again.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-24   10:07:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#34. To: Vicomte13, nolu chan (#33) (Edited)

Once the war started and all those slaves started heading for Union lines the idea they would return the slaves back into the slave holders who were rebelling was untenable. Also, even if north and south did not go to war, what were the slave holders thinking? The blacks would have have an even greater reason to escape north because if the confederacy split off from the Union the north would not return the slaves back. The south would have had to become one large armed slave camp to keep slaves from fleeing north to freedom.

Pericles  posted on  2015-06-24   10:25:55 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#35. To: GarySpFC (#17)

The Left will simply attack another American institution. It will never end until they have turned us into slaves.

The reason that nobody here is a slave anymore is BECAUSE the federal government attacked the country that was flying that flag and ended it.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-24   10:30:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#36. To: Vicomte13 (#29)

The Confederate Battle Flag is not the real issue. That is true. It is being used by the Left for political purposes, to demonize conservatives. But removing that flag WILL change something: it will remove a lighting rod. The flag is Fort Sumter - fight over it, and you unleash hell on yourself and lose.

Yes, and a compromise was reached in 2000, when the flag was removed from the capital building and placed on a war memorial. Additionally, a memorial was created for race relations. That was to be the end of the issue.

The Battle Flag isn't the issue. The real goal is to destroy American's heritage, and to remake it into the Left's vision of their god. We can rest assured that America's Founding Fathers are on the Left's target list. Some men will stand up and others will sell their souls.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-24   11:14:13 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#37. To: Vicomte13 (#35)

The reason that nobody here is a slave anymore is BECAUSE the federal government attacked the country that was flying that flag and ended it.

There is more than one type of slave.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-24   11:15:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#38. To: Vicomte13 (#33)

The Union's goal was always the same: end the insurrection and re-establish government control over all United States territory - to defeat the Southern rebels who started the war.

The Southern States thought they had the right to leave the Union. The North was determined to force their view on them.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-24   11:25:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#39. To: GarySpFC (#36)

The real goal is to destroy American's heritage

The heritage of that particular flag is slavery and segregation, a war to save the first and governors standing in college doorways and police dogs and firehoses to block the second.

This is not a battlefield to die on.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-24   11:44:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#40. To: Vicomte13 (#39)

The heritage of that particular flag is slavery and segregation, a war to save the first and governors standing in college doorways and police dogs and firehoses to block the second.

At every turn you attribute evil motives to those in the South.

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver refined* in a furnace of clay, purified seven times. Psalm 12:6

GarySpFC  posted on  2015-06-24   11:53:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#41. To: GarySpFC (#37)

There is more than one type of slave.

Yes. And the particular Southern variety, of men who were bought and sold as property, and tortured if they got out of line, or killed, and women who were used sexually by their masters and master's sons and their friends, and children of white men bought and sold as slaves too - that particular variety of slavery - was fought for under that flag, and a million lives were lost on battlefields and in disease and starvation wrought under that flag, to preserve that particular type of slavery.

And then, men carried that flag to ride around in the night to make damned sure that "uppity niggers" were kept down, and then that flag was prominently displayed as crosses were burnt and towns locked arms to keep the blacks from using the same facilities.

That flag has flown in the cause of the particularly American form of slavery and segregation. That is that flags history and legacy. Yes, it has flown over the corpses of hundreds of thousands of men who gave their last full measure dying for a cause that had that particular kind of slavery as its crown jewel, as the REASON for secession and the willingness to start a war.

The particular kind of slave we're talking about is the American heritage kind, the kind that has caused us such terrible national grief.

The time has come to let the past go. The symbol belongs in a museum. It's not a godly symbol or a good one. Excluding the Confederate Flag from the state house does not equate with excluding references to God. Slavery - our kind - was not godly. It was evil, pure and simple.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-06-24   12:04:44 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  



      .
      .
      .

Comments (42 - 55) not displayed.

TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Mail]  [Sign-in]  [Setup]  [Help]  [Register] 

Please report web page problems, questions and comments to webmaster@libertysflame.com