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
> “Here’s a written copy, which he [Cleburne] addressed to several of his subordinates within the Army of Tennessee...”
Correction: Another site says that it was addressed to General Joseph E. Johnston (along with the subordinates listed at the first site). http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/Cleburne.html
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| Secession Timeline various sources |
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| [Although very late in the war Lee wanted freedom offered to any of the slaves who would agree to fight for the Confederacy, practically no one was stupid enough to fall for that. In any case, Lee was definitely not fighting to end slavery, instead writing that black folks are better off in bondage than they were free in Africa, and regardless, slavery will be around until Providence decides, and who are we to second guess that? And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists.] Robert E. Lee letter -- "...There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil. It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race. While my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more deeply engaged for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild and melting influences of Christianity than from the storm and tempest of fiery controversy. This influence, though slow, is sure. The doctrines and miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race, and even among Christian nations what gross errors still exist! While we see the course of the final abolition of human slavery is still onward, and give it the aid of our prayers, let us leave the progress as well as the results in the hands of Him who, chooses to work by slow influences, and with whom a thousand years are but as a single day. Although the abolitionist must know this, must know that he has neither the right nor the power of operating, except by moral means; that to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master..." |
December 27, 1856 |
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| Platform of the Alabama Democracy -- the first Dixiecrats wanted to be able to expand slavery into the territories. It was precisely the issue of slavery that drove secession -- and talk about "sovereignty" pertained to restrictions on slavery's expansion into the territories. | January 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln nominated by Republican Party | May 18, 1860 |
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| Abraham Lincoln elected | November 6, 1860 |
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| Robert Toombs, Speech to the Georgia Legislature -- "...In 1790 we had less than eight hundred thousand slaves. Under our mild and humane administration of the system they have increased above four millions. The country has expanded to meet this growing want, and Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, have received this increasing tide of African labor; before the end of this century, at precisely the same rate of increase, the Africans among us in a subordinate condition will amount to eleven millions of persons. What shall be done with them? We must expand or perish. We are constrained by an inexorable necessity to accept expansion or extermination. Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years. All just reasoning, all past history, condemn the fallacy. The North understand it better - they have told us for twenty years that their object was to pen up slavery within its present limits - surround it with a border of free States, and like the scorpion surrounded with fire, they will make it sting itself to death." | November 13, 1860 |
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| Alexander H. Stephens -- "...The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution." | November 14, 1860 |
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| South Carolina | December 20, 1860 |
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| Mississippi | January 9, 1861 |
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| Florida | January 10, 1861 |
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| Alabama | January 11, 1861 |
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| Georgia | January 19, 1861 |
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| Louisiana | January 26, 1861 |
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| Texas | February 23, 1861 |
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| Abraham Lincoln sworn in as President of the United States |
March 4, 1861 |
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| Arizona territory | March 16, 1861 |
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| CSA Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, Cornerstone speech -- "...last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the 'rock upon which the old Union would split.' He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact." | March 21, 1861 |
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| Virginia | adopted April 17,1861 ratified by voters May 23, 1861 |
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| Arkansas | May 6, 1861 |
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| North Carolina | May 20, 1861 |
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| Tennessee | adopted May 6, 1861 ratified June 8, 1861 |
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| West Virginia declares for the Union | June 19, 1861 |
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| Missouri | October 31, 1861 |
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| "Convention of the People of Kentucky" | November 20, 1861 |
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I’m not sure what that timeline is supposed to prove. My contention is that people on both sides fought in the war for various reasons (persons who were both good and bad, though I don’t deny that slavery itself was evil), and that something as complex as that major conflict should not be simplistically reduced to fighting for or against slavery.
Where did Lee write “And the only reason the masters beat their slaves is because of the abolitionists”? In my earlier post I myself provided a link to the letter from which my Lee quotation was taken, and it isn’t present there. I wouldn’t be surprised if he believed that abolitionists were contributing to the beatings, but I would be if he believed that they were the “only” reason masters beat their slaves.
I’m repelled myself by Lee’s references to Providence, and to his mentioning that the influence of the “mild and melting influences of Christianity” is slow (it having taken “nearly two thousand years to convert but a small portion of the human race”). I can understand some delay in the emancipation of the slaves, but to speak in those terms (when emancipation had already taken place in a good many places) is absurd.
Still, unlike Stephens, Lee wasn’t putting forward slavery as a natural state for blacks. He was condemning it as evil. Jefferson had done likewise, and a good many other Southerners, then and before.
Just wait till the Southern “War of Northern Aggression” guys see this.
The timeline shows that the secessions began before Lincoln was in office, and the reason for the secession was a perceived threat to slavery. The Civil War was fought over slavery, it was about slavery in the South before it was about slavery in the North. The main reason initially people volunteered in the northern states was because of the attacks on federal installations and the illegality of secession. In the South it was about slavery all the livelong day. There are those even today who argue that the war was about sovereignty, and yet there were no such issues, apart from slavery. The only threat to slavery (and to sovereignty for that matter) was the rather mild plank in the Republican platform of 1860, to prevent slavery’s further spread. The main threat to sovereignty prior to 1861 was the slavers’ armed invasion of Kansas territory.
Lee: for the abolitionist “to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master...” — so yes, Lee did indeed say that it was the abolitionists who made slaveholders angry enough to beat their slaves. Usually when that letter is quoted it is said to “prove” that Lee was against slavery, and of course, it shows exactly the opposite. My view is that he had a “wolf by the ears” attitude about slavery, a la Thomas Jefferson. But to say (as even Ken Burns does) that Lee was personally opposed to slavery is analogous to saying that Cat Stevens didn’t want Salman Rushdie murdered. During Lee’s invasion of Maryland he had blacks rounded up and sent south in bondage.
> “...so yes, Lee did indeed say that it was the abolitionists who made slaveholders angry enough to beat their slaves.”
No, not only did Lee not “say” that, but if that’s the passage you had in mind, I believe you’ve missed the point he was making. He’d just been speaking of ending slavery, and his point appears to be that abolitionist attempts to impose an end from the outside were likely to make the slaveholders angry, thus decreasing the number who would be inclined to emancipate slaves.
“While we see the Course of the final abolition of human Slavery is onward, & we give it the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power [a vague phrase, but he’s not just leaving it to “prayers”], we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences; & with whom two thousand years are but as a Single day. [I think his argument is fallacious there, because persons like Wilberforce, whom I would classify as abolitionists, did help speed its end in some other places by their efforts, despite the greater opposition that they may have aroused in some slaveholders.] Although the Abolitionist must know this, & must See that he has neither the right or power of operating except by moral means & suasion, & if he means well to the slave, he must not Create angry feelings in the Master...” Nothing about beating slaves, a lot about ending slavery.
> There are those even today who argue that the war was about sovereignty, and yet there were no such issues, apart from slavery.
I just quoted some of those issues from the speech by Stephens himself. Also they appeared in official documents such as the various secession declarations (which mention slavery too, of course, because as I said, more than one thing was involved).
Also Confederates had good reason to believe that they were fighting to defend their homes. The war was fought mostly in the South, and if the Confederates lost, there was a genuine risk that their homes would be plundered and their loved ones put at risk (as Sherman’s March demonstrated).
A minor scholarly note about Lee’s letter (which affects the exact wording but not the substance): I see two versions of your quotation on the net: “to benefit the slave he must not excite angry feelings in the master” and (the one I just quoted) “if he means well to the slave, he must not Create angry feelings in the Master”. Both have about the same meaning, but the latter is probably the correct one. It appears in full copies of the letter, and it’s the more common version in printed sources (Google Books).
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