[flying Elvis]

Human nature being what it is, there's always someone who wants to go against the tide. Last summer I worked at a national park where we had kids from the local junior high schools help us as volunteers. We had both Union and Confederate uniforms to supply the kids, and to avoid any controversy we allowed the kids to choose which uniforms they would wear. Being in the South, most of the white kids chose Confederate. All of the black kids chose Union uniforms except for one. That young man could not wait to get into a Confederate uniform and was very proud of it. So my guess is, that a small number slaves or freedmen went against the prevailing view among their race and sided with the Confederacy during the Civil War. I'm not basing this on any sources other than my observations of human nature.

[Scott Mahrle]

I don't think the slaves who fought in the war would have seen it that way--as a chance to buck the prevailing view of their group. More likely, their decisions (to the extent that they were voluntary) were made on narrower personal grounds. Someone like Mr. Winbush's grandfather, who was content with his conditions, might well have identified with his master--as his own family, even--and seen the war as a threat to himself and the people he knew, as well as to his master. I don't think you could expect someone in that position to think in idealistic terms like racial freedom, or to be particularly concerned with the plight of other slaves he did not know or hear too much of.

But someone in Mr. Winbush's position, who is not confined to such a narrow, personal view of the war, should, I think, be more sensitive to the concerns of others.