Posted on 07/10/2011 1:17:20 PM PDT by Colonel Kangaroo
On Thursday, July 14, at 10 a.m.. the Georgia Historical Society will be conducting a dedication service to unveil a marker commemorating Confederate Gen. Patrick R. Cleburne’s proposal to arm slaves in exchange for their freedom.
Cleburne’s plan was to provide manpower for the South to face the ever-increasing Federal Army which was beginning to recruit black soldiers and which continued to swell its ranks with immigrants, particularly from Germany and other parts of Europe.
It was becoming increasingly clear to Southern officers during the winter of 1863-64 that the South was fast running out of men to continue the war. After much thought and discussion among several like-minded junior officers, Cleburne wrote out his proposal while the Confederate Army of Tennessee remained in camps in and around Dalton. On Jan. 2, 1864, Cleburne presented it to Commanding Gen. Joseph E. Johnston and the Division and Corps Commanders of the Army of Tennessee during a meeting at Johnston’s headquarters, the Cook-Huff House at 314 N. Selvidge St.
This marker, along with Dalton’s key role in African-American Civil War history, provides tremendous irony. While the Confederate High Command in Richmond and in Dalton dismissed the proposal as outrageous, in 1864 U.S. armies were beginning to recruit and deploy black troops in mass. By the spring of 1864, Dalton had fallen into federal hands and, during the summer of 1864, many runaway slaves from Northwest Georgia found their way into Chattanooga to join the ranks of the 14th and 44th United States Colored Infantry.
Had Cleburne’s proposal been taken seriously and adopted in January 1864, it is possible that some of these men could have served for the South in exchange for their freedom. Instead, they fought for liberty on the side of the North for the liberation of all people, not solely for their personal freedom.
In August and October 1864, these two black regiments saw action in Dalton in two separate events, the only fighting in Georgia during the Civil War in which African-American troops were engaged. By war’s end, more than 200,000 African-Americans enlisted for the North.
Before the year was out, Gen. Johnston, who had commanded the Confederate forces in Dalton and who had dismissed the proposal, would be dismissed from command; Gen. Cleburne along with many of the persons who signed it, would be killed in combat; Gen. William Henry Talbot (W.H.T.) “Shot Pouch” Walker, who was the chief opponent of the proposal, along with many others who opposed it, would also be killed in combat, and a year later, and President Jefferson Davis, who was ultimately responsible for dismissing the proposal to free those in captivity in exchange for their Confederate service, was himself made captive (jailed) for two years for his Confederate service.
Ironically, the South eventually passed a bill to arm the slaves. In February 1865, Davis appointed Robert E. Lee as Commander of all Confederate Armies, not just those in Virginia, and Lee’s first act was to recommend Cleburne’s proposal to arm slaves in exchange for their freedom.
In March 1865, just weeks before the end of the War, the Confederate Congress passed legislation approving the use of slaves in the armies, but the bill did not promise freedom in exchange for service as had been recommended by Cleburne and Lee. While some have estimated the number of blacks who served in the Confederacy at 32,000, (a figure derived from post-war pension applications which likely included applications for servants and laborers as very few black Confederates were used in combat roles), it is clear that the decision to arm the slaves for the South came too little and too late and it failed to yield any measurable results for the Confederacy.
This article is part of a series of stories about Dalton and life in Dalton during the Civil War. The stories run on Sunday and are provided by the Dalton-Whitfield Civil War 150th Anniversary Committee. To find out more about the committee go to www.dalton 150th.com. If you have material that you would like to contribute for a future article contact Robert Jenkins at 706-259-4626 or robert.jenkins@robertdjenkins.com
The Fugitive slave act was the reason why abolitionists ran their underground railroad all the way to Canada, where the slave could get free papers, and then reentry the country and legally be free, and legally not be subject to the Fugitive Slave Act.
Alexander Hamilton also got passed in NY a law to take down the names and identifying characteristics of free blacks in an attempt to counter the illegal acts of southern bounty hunters who would kidnap free persons under color of authority, and attempt to use federal power to ship them south to be sold. When the Federal Marshall had been provided names of the free blacks in their area, that made the southern bounty hunter’s job less lucrative.
That is the kind of state interference with ‘southern rights’ that so offended the rebel leadership.
My understanding was that the average southern soldier was conscripted, so what he wanted would have been moot.
The south had recourse. The south took recourse with Ableman v. Booth which rebuffed Wisconsin's attempt at Nullification of the act. With legal options and alternatives available why did the south choose to go renegade?
> “My understanding was that the average southern soldier was conscripted, so what he wanted would have been moot.”
“Conscripts accounted for one-fourth to one-third of the Confederate armies east of the Mississippi between Apr. 1864 and early 1865.” http://www.civilwarhome.com/conscription.htm (I don’t know myself, but that’s the first source I came across). Both sides used the draft, of course, but I believe that it was in the North where you were more likely to see draft riots.
None among my Southern ancestors owned slaves at the time of the Civil War (though some branches had been slaveholders earlier in the century). In one branch of poor farmers, when news reached the family that an eighteen-old had died fighting for the Confederacy, his sixteen-year-old brother volunteered for service. They weren’t fighting for slavery.
I was referring to WWII.
During the Cold War the Soviets would have had my LRRP unit back in their rear, and their Airborne in ours.
The Soviets sure showed their take on “defense” with their numerous Airborne and bridging units.
> “...slaveholders had a substantial investment in an adult male slave, around $1000 each (comparable to a million dollars today).”
> “...the pay of a white private was only $11 a month, later going up to $18 a month.”
Substantial investment, yes, but I suspect that the estimate of a million dollars for a slave in today’s money is a great exaggeration. Do you have a source for that?
Here’s why I have my doubts. If it’s true that $1000 is equivalent to a million now (in other words, a thousand times more), then the white private’s initial pay of $11 a month would be equivalent to $11,000 a month ($132,000 a year) and the higher pay for a private later in the war would be $216,000 a year. Something’s wrong there. I can’t believe that they’d be paying privates that much in real value, not when many persons in the Confederacy were living hand to mouth, in some instances having to fight off starvation. Somewhere along the way those relative values went awry.
Yes, but the US has never been into the “cannon fodder” thing. We also don’t use captives to clear minefields, either.
You were not specifying the U.S., that is why I thought the Soviet example relevant, especially since it was on such a large scale, and is a famous recent example, I guess the Iranians would be a more recent example.
In the case of either the Soviet Union or Iran, it was still a poor strategy, especially in the age of the machine gun. Just a waste of potentially useful rear area support personnel.
I’ll note that even Union forces took former slaves as “contrabands” to put to work doing rear area hard labor. A lot more productive than throwing them at the enemy guns.
> “Problems with the Fugitive Slave Act have been offered before but although they make for a convenient excuse, they do not rise to the level of justification worthy of unilateral secession.”
Well, not in your judgment, but it seemed justified to them. There had been a continual pattern of refusal to enforce what at that time was the law of the land (instances of which were cited in the document itself), and when Lincoln was elected without the support of a single southern state, there was little hope that the federal government would look out for the interests of the South.
We know now that secession led to a devastating war, and set back the South for generations. In the context of the time, though, I think it was understandable. If the South had had the prudence to avoid being goaded into attacking Fort Sumter (when Lincoln chose to reinforce it, despite warnings that this would be resisted), it would have been hard for Lincoln to gain enough support to fight a war. Even after the war started, a few more early defeats might have been enough to cause the North to give up.
In retrospect we know how things turned out, but people back then couldn’t know that, not for sure. Some southerners were opposed to secession, but most had little idea of what was in store for them.
Who do you think was making everything for the Rebel Army and Navy?
Although not all were conscripted, southern states had a well developed system to coerce members of their militia.
Since the war was mostly fought in the southern states, the local militia would be called up, and though not counting against conscription numbers by the pretended confederate government, they were just as coerced as if they had been.
The south resorted to conscription earlier than the US, because they had to. Some men were double conscripted, being wounded, sent home on convalescent leave, and reconscripted first for state militia service, and then to satisfy new demands by the pretended confederacy.
> Although not all were conscripted, southern states had a well developed system to coerce members of their militia.
Well, if the earlier source that I cited is correct, only “one-fourth to one-third” were conscripted, so “not all” could be expressed more precisely as not even half. It’s hard to determine how much members of the Confederate militias were coerced. What’s evident, though, and easy to determine is that draft riots took place in the North and not in the South.
If you mean utilizing them agriculturally, then you are correct. The sordid truth is that the North, lead by New England, didn't really become 'abolitionist' until the British Navy effectively closed down the trans-Atlantic slave trade. That trade was quite lucrative for coastal New Englanders, and they didn't develop a distaste for the institution, until they could no longer profit from it...
the infowarrior
Of course in the south 40 regiments joined voluntarily and served the union.
Oh, I want to thank you for the figures on the conscription rates by the pretended confederacy. I thought the number higher, because the rebels had resorted to conscription earlier. Learn something every day.
I think that is unfair. The famous family of Captain Brown family made much money, and then had a severe family squabble over slavery. A grandson of Captain Brown won fame with his effective defense of free soil communities in Kansas (after his son wrote him about proslavery raids), and was later executed by Virgina for treason, though he had never sworn allegiance to that state.
> “If you mean utilizing them agriculturally...”
Yes, when I said “Slavery had never been profitable in the more northern part of the country”, I was thinking of slaves actually working within the states. I didn’t consider New England’s earlier involvement in the transatlantic slave trade.
> Oh, I want to thank you for the figures on the conscription rates...
You’re welcome. That’s just something I came across when I made a quick search of the internet, though, so you might need to confirm it in some other sources before putting much faith in it.
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