Posted on 07/27/2008 7:52:45 AM PDT by cowboyway
Dixie ping, NC ping.
This event was practically in my back yard, but I didn’t see the information in the newspaper until the day after. I should have read Friday’s newspaper on Friday!
I mean, black slaves volunteering to fight for The Cause? That can't be true, can it?
Will be back later to ping the cavalry
Not in the fantasy world of those who have rewritten our history, no. There were no free blacks, either, and no blacks who were slaveowners. Everything's about the "white guilt" of people who probably aren't even descendants of slaveowners, at least not for a thousand years.
Our local independent weekly news, "The County Edge," put this event on the front page, but the kids took it and I didn't see it until too late. It was in the Monroe daily, too. History hasn't been changed much around here :-).
Since by definition slaves don't have a choice, perhaps they fought because they were told to?
A great many societies have used slave soldiers, with some major empires, such as the Mameluke and Ottoman, having been based on the institution for centuries.
Curious statement.
The historical truth is that about 210,000 black men fought in the Union Army. About half were escaped or ex-slaves. Apparently these 100,000+ men weren't aware they were still considered slaves or that they weren't allowed to fight.
I know what you mean. I lived in Lucia for about 5 years. Got a friend of mine that's been in Mt. Holly most of his life.
"Weary Clyburn was best friends with his masters son, Frank. When Frank left the plantation to fight in the Civil War, Clyburn followed him."
"He fought alongside Frank and even saved his life on two occasions."
Typical yankee response. You guys have one version of antebellum South and that is of beatings, rape, inhumane labor, lynchings, etc.
It just doesn't fit your narrow minded views that blacks and whites were actually getting along just fine.
Answer this; once Weary was on the front lines, why didn't he run over to the yankees to be 'saved' from the terrible bondage and beatings that he must have been getting on a daily basis?
The historical truth is that the union didn't allow for the enlistment of blacks until the war was well under way and Lincoln was in a panic because things weren't going very well for the union.
The historical truth is that it took union congressional legislation to allow blacks to enlist.
Custer must have had an 'ethnic group' jinx. :~)
Did I say he was beaten? I said he had no free choice. That's what slavery is, by definition. The removal of free choice from a human.
Perhaps the "good master" is kind and asks the slave what he would prefer to do. If so, the asking of opinion and the granting or not of the slave's wish is still the master's choice. It can be revoked at his whim with no recourse to the slave.
Even when the slave loves his master, which many down through history indisputably have, there can be no argument that their free will, the indispensable characteristic of a fully human person, has been stolen from them.
"Weary Clyburn was best friends with his master’s son, Frank.
Quite possibly a true statement, although it would have been a rare southerner who would have publicly claimed a slave or any black man as his best friend. The southern obsession with keeping them in their place was with regard to intimations of social equality, not physical contact.
When Frank left the plantation to fight in the Civil War, Clyburn followed him.
Was Weary a true volunteer? Was it possible for Weary to be a true volunteer? If Frank told him to go to war, could he decide to stay on the plantation? If Frank told him to stay home, could he decide to follow Frank anyway? Was it possible for Weary to make a free choice about anything in his life?
And the confederacy didn't allow for the enlistment of blacks as combat troops until March 1865. Talk about too littl, too late.
The historical truth is that it took union congressional legislation to allow blacks to enlist.
No sh*t, Sherlock. All legislation is congressional legislation.
I'm gonna call 'Southron fairy tale' on that one. Got any details?
As it did in the Confederacy.
Union legislation to this effect - July 1862.
Confederate legislation - February 1865.
At which point things weren't going very well for the confederacy. There is very thorough documentation that Confederate enlistment of black soldiers was proposed and finally accepted only as the utter last gasp of desperation.
You seem to be suffering from the common delusion that anyone who thinks the Union cause was on balance the better must also believe that cause to be one of utter and complete goodness, with no racism or other unpleasant factors mixed in. Au contraire, I am fully aware that most whites of the time, north and south, were highly racist by today's standards.
I do not demonize the South. As Lincoln himself said, if I had been in their shoes, I would have not known how to get rid of slavery either. But I wouldn't have started proclaiming a great evil to be a positive good.
The Union was simply less racist than the Confederacy because it fought a great war, one of the causes of which was slavery and one of the consequences of which was the freeing of those slaves. One of, not THE cause.
Read the book “Nine April Days”.
I've read several books on the period. The fact of the matter is that the confederacy didn't enlist more than a handful of blacks for combat duty, a few hundred at most. There weren't enough of them to give Custer, or any other Union cavalry division, their "worst whup'n" of the war.
It actually passed a few weeks later, on March 13, 1865.
Mt. Holly is a really nice area. I’d like to move out to Gaston County, but it would be a long, long commute for my husband.
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