""However, do you contest-----" ===>YEP, i do, as the censuses of the 18th/19th centuries were AT BEST "educated guesses" & at worst, FRAUDULENT. may i offer the following evidence:
1. census "data" from 1890 stated that John Henry Barefoot & James Haley Barefoot (identical twins from Delaware County) were:
a. married to the SAME woman in 1890 & that BOTH men had six adult children with the same EXACT names &
b. John's wife is listed as a "spinster", even though she had been married to him for over 15 years & had had 3 sons & 4 daughters by him (the First Methodist Church office has the marriage certificate from 1874. = i happen to know about that particular bit of NONSENSE by the "enumerators" as a friend of mine is a descendant of John Barefoot & used his father's CSA service/pension record as proof to join the UDC.),
c.James was listed as a full-blood Seminole &
d.John was listed as a HALF-breed Cherokee! (fwiw, the twins were PROBABLY really Choctaw - nobody living is SURE, but they certainly were NOT of two different tribes! ===> note: there are MANY such RIDICULOUS claims in the 19th century censuses.)
2. at least three major genealogical societies (DAR, Aztec Club, UDC) that will NOT accept "family information" based on census data, absent REAL proof of the authenticity of the census information.
another comment that i've covered previously on these threads: the census of 1860 was SO BAD that, due to flooding of the Red & Trinity Rivers, the "census takers" said that NOBODY lived WEST of the Trinity. (can you say DALLAS & FT WORTH, children??? SURE, you can.)
next: (one more time!) slaves WERE NOT & COULD NOT be CS soldiers,sailors,marines. only FREE men could take the oath of enlistment (YES, SOME slaves were freed to enlist in the forces, but not nearly enough to make up a regiment, much less 100,ooo-150,ooo volunteers.). further, there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of CSA service records/pension records at the US Archives in DC & in many state archives as well (do you suggest that, like SOME DUMB-bunnies here do, that the US Archives are "in the hands of the neo-confederates" and/or that "somebody just went over & changed everything in the veterans files"?).
finally, MANY Black CSA veterans were active members of the United Confederate Veterans (do you believe that the WHITE members of the UCV would have accepted Black members, who were NOT really veterans??? OR, for that matter, that today's UDC/SCV would accept as members persons who are descendants of persons who did NOT serve???).
Sherman, the FACT is that you NEED to go to the archives with my friend & SEE for yourself what i'm talking about. then you won't have your "blinders on", as all too many of the LEFTIST/nit-witted/REVISIONIST/"useful idiots" of "the DAMNyankee coven" DO! (fwiw, i've offered numerous times to take off from work, go to the Archives with any/several of the DYs to show them the PROOF that they've been LIED TO, provided that they promised that, after i had done that, that they would come on FR & ADMIT the TRUTH, that they had seen with "their own eyes". NONE of the DYs want to KNOW the TRUTH and/or they want to HIDE the FACTS that prove that they are LYING! = fwiw, that is called: WILFUL IGNORANCE & intellectual DISHONESTY.)
free dixie,sw
So you reject all census data, but anything in the US or state archives is beyond question? Was there some sort of national conspiracy to not count hundreds of thousands or millions of free blacks? Are you aware of the difference between a census getting one family’s records wrong and claiming that the cumulative record is therefore equally wrong?
According to this article from the UK, http://www.americancivilwar.org.uk/news_those-confederate-states_42.htm, there were 133,000 total free blacks in the CSA. That would equate to a potential military force of perhaps 15,000 or so volunteers, if every potential soldier wanted to fight for the slaveocracy.
I do not doubt that blacks served informally in the CSA armies, although I’m not clear how any, with possible exceptions of the Marines, were able to take the oath since the CSA Congress specifically prohibited blacks serving in the army before 1865.
When Lincoln began accepting black recruits, Davis gave birth to an entire herd of cows. Don’t you think his expressed outrage would have been considered a little odd if blacks were legally serving in the CSA already?
Since Congress prohibited black enlistment prior to passing a bill allowing it on March 13, 1865; how did all these blacks get into the army? Did the army just ignore the laws?
In early 1864 Patrick Cleburne, a rising star general, proposed recruiting black soldiers. It caused a major uproar and destroyed his chances of advancement. Why, if blacks were already serving? http://www.thewildgeese.com/pages/clebprop.html
As late as the end of 1864 a great many prominent southerners apparently were under the impression there were no black soldiers. When the bill to allow their recruitment was presented to Congress, here are a couple of reactions:
Howell Cobb of Georgia: “Use all the Negroes you can get, for the purposes for which you need them. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” He was apparently ignoring the considerable evidence from the Union armies that slaves could indeed make good soldiers, which meant that his whole theory of slavery was indeed wrong.
Virginia Senator R.M.T. Hunter, president pro-tempore of the Confederate Senate: “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” Meaning the two-legged variety. Interestingly, he doesn’t mention tariffs.
Finally, do you really believe that slaves could be volunteers?
In 1860 the population of Dallas was 678. The population of Ft. Worth was only a few hundred.