Posted on 05/02/2011 5:37:11 AM PDT by flowerplough
Please confirm that you're not too dense to understand that were never any CONFEDERATE state pension boards.
...YOU have shown zero evidence to dispute Jordan's claims except the "fact" that racist Confederates would in fact deny rights to blacks (even if soldiers).
Nonsense. I have presented nothing to support the conclusion that there was a racist conspiracy to deny black confederate soldier their pensions. In fact I was quite clear in stating my belief that the records of the state pension boards are accurate. It is you and your proxy Jordan...bending over backward to invent a multicultural confederacy... who are making that specious claim.
And since you cannot apparently do history in any fashion---accepting Confederates' word at face value, but not testimony of black soldiers---then I have to assume you are clueless about how to do history . . .
Lol! You are either amusingly ignorant of the history of the CSA pension system or willfully so. I suggest you do some homework.
What cannot be disputed in your brief is the glaring hypocrisy of a southern culture which... according to you and muppets like Jordan... embraced black confederate soldiers as brothers in arms, then denied them their pensions a couple of decades later.
Well, that's the thing about the imaginary units. Nobody really says how large they are. I suspect most people assume they were brigades or regiments, since those units figure most prominently in the battle histories. Of course Black Confederate brigades and regiments aren't mentioned in those histories, and it's hard to believe that there could have been battlefield groups of a thousand armed and uniformed African-American Confederate troops that nobody noticed. Maybe those who say that the CSA had Black units mean battalions or companies or platoons or artillery batteries, but the ambiguity is what keeps the Black Confederate story or myth alive.
I think you will find that Southerners of the period knew that slavery couldn’t expand within the US because outside of the South the conditions for plantation agriculture didn’t exist. So, even if slavery were permitted in a new state, they knew that the slave economy and culture wouldn’t take hold.
Look at the articles in magazines like DeBow's Review. There was much support for expansion beyond the boundaries of the US, for annexation of Cuba or parts of Mexico or Central America. Plantation economy and culture probably couldn't survive out on the Great Plains or in the Rockies, but many slaveowners were committed to expansion. If the legislation was in place, uses would have been found for slaves in agriculture, ranching, and mining.
The abolition movement was viewed as extremist even in the North, and I don’t believe it was growing at all prior to the war. I also don’t think that there was a growing proslavery movement. I would agree that those involved in the controversy over slavery became more intransigent in their views after 1830 or so.
I don't think it's so much that the movements on the extremes were growing, but that the center was fracturing into a Northern and a Southern consensus that had little in common with each other.
The Corwin Amendment addressed the slavery issue squarely and would have resolved the issue in the strongest possible way to protect slavery forever. Lincoln and the North (except for abolitionists, who were few) supported it. I glad that the South rejected it.
George III and Lord North could have offered the colonists in 1776 everything that they'd wanted in 1774 or 1775 and more and it wouldn't have convinced the Continental Congress to accept their rule. Things had gone too far. It was too little too late.
So it was with the Corwin Amendment. The secessionists were already on their way out the door and any concessions the government offered wouldn't be accepted.
Also, the Corwin Amendment didn't address the question of slavery in the territories which had been so important. It implied that the North had won that battle . For Southerners to accept the amendment would have meant settling for less. To be sure, seceding states would have lost their claim to the territories -- or had to fight for them -- but independence would have been compensation for that loss.
What's more, if Southerners believed everything they said about Lincoln and the Republicans, it's clear that they wouldn't have been able to trust the federal government to honor the amendment. The idea of an unamendable amendment was pretty dodgy and might not have stood up in the courts anyway.
“Maybe those who say that the CSA had Black units mean battalions or companies or platoons or artillery batteries, but the ambiguity is what keeps the Black Confederate story or myth alive.”
When I first noticed articles on this subject the only claim was that blacks served as soldiers, including in combat. Nothing that I have seen goes beyond that. The response from the left was there were none at all. It appears to me now that the evidence is pretty clear that there was a significant number of blacks (including mixed race individuals) who served in the CSA. But while it may be that a few 10s of thousands served scattered throughout the CSA, I have seen no evidence that there were black regiments, brigades, divisions, or corps (the divisions or corps claim, if anyone were to make it, could be dismissed out of hand). So, it seems to me that it is no myth that blacks served in the CSA in significant numbers. If they served as units, however, it was most likely at the level of gun crews or squads.
“There was much support for expansion beyond the boundaries of the US...”
There was support for this - although I don’t think I would call it “much” - which is why I limited my comment to the US. The history of the filibusterers such as William Walker is quite interesting. I don’t think that you will find anyone from the period suggesting that black slaves would be useful in Colorado, for example, as miners, etc.
Although this is going far afield, I don’t agree that if in, say, 1774, the colonial leadership had gotten satisfactory action from Britain on their petitions and remonstrances that the War would have occurred. Even as it stood, only a minority supported the War. In particular, if the issues that led to the Fairfax Resolves had been handled properly by Britain, Washington, Mason, and others would probably not have become “radicalized” (from the British POV).
As for the Corwin Amendment, I believe it is clear that the reason it wasn’t accepted by the South was because there were other overriding issues. Those who want to place slavery at the center of the controversy ignore the fact that slavery was far more secure in the Union than outside. Why? Because of the Fugitive Slave Laws that seccession rendered ineffective for retrieving escaped slaves. In fact, had the South succeeded in seceding it is reasonably certain that slavery would have disappeared before long in the states bordering the North because slaves, as property, would have become too insecure to merit the initial capital investment (a true case of it being “cheaper to rent than to own”)
The scoffing, I think, had more to do with the notion that Blacks who found themselves working for the Confederacy signed on freely out of a pro-confederate spirit. Now if the conversation has shifted to drivers, diggers, haulers, cooks, personal servants, rather than to volunteers at arms and official Black units you'll naturally see the response adapt to new claims. 0
Those who want to place slavery at the center of the controversy ignore the fact that slavery was far more secure in the Union than outside. Why? Because of the Fugitive Slave Laws that seccession rendered ineffective for retrieving escaped slaves.
Some clever people came up with that interpretation over the last 20 or 30 years. I'm not saying that nobody in 1860 might have thought that way. There were clever people then too. But that notion was very far from what most people, gripped by the passions of the day, would have said or thought. It's like one of those political paradoxes today that charm ironists but don't influence partisans in the least.
Some clever people came up with that interpretation over the last 20 or 30 years.”
I think that it’s more a matter of this fact having conveniently being left out in most 20th Century treatments of the War. That is the only reason it seems new. The people in the Antebellum US, both North and South, were keenly aware of this, which is why the Fugitive Slave Laws were such an issue.
“The scoffing, I think, had more to do with the notion that Blacks who found themselves working for the Confederacy signed on freely out of a pro-confederate spirit.”
Look for yourself, but I think that you will find the standard response was that it was entirely a fabrication. I would also add that the blacks who fought had reasons for having loyalty to the South. For one thing, the free blacks (some of who owned slaves, by the way) knew how freedmen were treated in the North and that the overwhelming majority of Northerners wanted nothing to do with blacks, even to the point of passing laws to keep blacks out of their states.
We need to rid ourselves of the Uncle Tom’s Cabin caricature of race, race relations, and slavery in the Antebellum period. It was a far more complicated and interesting set of relationships and attitudes than the race hustlers have led people to believe. Given your interest in the period, you might enjoy reading the Slave Narratives.
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