Posted on 07/27/2008 7:52:45 AM PDT by cowboyway
MONROE – At first glance, it’s an unlikely combination. A black family seated under a tent facing a line of Civil War re-enactors, proudly holding Confederate flags and gripping their weapons.
But what lies between these two groups is what brought them together: An unmarked grave about to get its due, belonging to a slave who fought for the Confederacy.
Weary Clyburn was best friends with his master’s 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.
On July 18, the city of Monroe proclaimed Weary Clyburn Day; an event that coincided with the Sons of Confederate Veterans convention in Concord.
The N.C. Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans (James Miller Camp 2116) honored Clyburn, who died March 30, 1930, with a memorial program at Hillcrest Cemetery in Monroe and unveiled a new headstone for his unmarked grave.
“It’s an honor to find out we have a gentleman who served ... with loyalty and devotion to his friend,” said Commander Michael Chapman of the local SCV chapter.
“I’m happy to be here. It’s a glorious day,” said Mary Elizabeth Clyburn Hooks of New Jersey. “I just think it’s beautiful these people chose to celebrate my grandfather’s bravery and courage. It’s just overwhelming.”
Missing from the event was the woman who helped bring the pieces together, Mattie Clyburn Rice of High Point, who remembered the stories her father shared with her as a child.
Rice was hospitalized the morning of the ceremony.
Rice remembered being at her father’s funeral, said Earl Ijames, a curator at the N.C. Office of Archives and History. “He told her stories, and being able to verify those stories brought this event together,” he said.
Ijames met Rice when she was at the state Archives Office looking for her birth certificate in August 2005. She was in the wrong department and he struck up a conversation with her. Ijames asked Rice her name and upon hearing Clyburn, asked if she had ever heard of Weary Clyburn.
“She looked straight at me and said, ‘That’s my daddy,’“ he said.
Ijames has been researching “colored Confederates” for the past 14 years. According to Rice, he said, Clyburn’s father sharecropped and painted after the war. He moved from Lancaster County, S.C., and eventually settled in Union County. Rice moved away but relocated to North Carolina three years ago to take care of her nephew.
An impressive crowd gathered at the gravesite to pay tribute to Weary Clyburn. Civil War re-enactors, dressed in full regalia, came from overseas and states as far away as California and Pennsylvania to the program.
“We’re here to honor Weary Clyburn, but really, the honor is ours,” said N.C. SCV Commander Tom Smith. “The Sons of Confederate Veterans honors our own and he’s one of our own. We need to do more of what we’re doing now."
Weary Clyburn was one of thousands of slaves who served in the Confederate Army, Ijames said. There’s no way to quantify the number of slaves who served. “But it’s in the thousands, easy.”
People today often wonder why slaves fought for the Confederacy. Ijames said the only course they had to freedom was through the Confederate Army. “Why not go and defend what they know versus running away and going to the unknown,” Ijames said. “A lot of us automatically assume the war started to free slaves. That’s not true. It was a war to preserve the Union as the way it was.”
Slaves were not allowed to fight in the federal army, Ijames said. Those that made their way behind Union lines were still considered slaves.
Clyburn escaped the plantation and made his way to Columbia, S.C., where he met up with Frank in boot camp. “They were best friends,” Ijames said.
Felicia Bryant, Clyburn’s great-granddaughter, agreed. “They were really good friends and that trumped everything else.”
Yeah, it’s pretty much all over for me! ;) I did find out that not only is a good portion of my grandmother’s side of the family from the South (Greeneville, TN was where they lived for much of the 19th Century), but my dad’s side of family had family that lived in Freeport, Illinois in the late 1850s. Strangely enough, Freeport was where one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates occurred.
But yeah, it’s pretty much all over for me, I’m now hooked. :)
There were probably more than that. The confederate army needed a lot of cooks, servants, laborers, and the like.
Why thankee, Yankee.
Sounds better than way. I'm a poet, and didn't know it.
...AND troops.
So...you were proud of the fact that you could have a Confederate relative UNTIL, you found out that he was in fact a Unionist.
Sounds kinda two-faced to me NS.
I found out that US Grant was an Uncle. That didn’t make ME want to go out and disavow my Confederate relatives!
Never said I wasn't proud of him. He was murdered by a band of thugs for supporting his country. Very typical of the rebel leaders of the time.
By law, that excluded blacks then. Until March 1865.
Officially, yes, but not all things were as they seemed.
Than my work here is done.
-btw Have you read anything else by Burke Davis? His book entitled "Grey Fox, Robert E. Lee and the Civil War" looks interesting
No I haven’t but considering the time that he was writing in he may have actually interviewed some veterans of the conflict for some eyewitness accounts. I’ll check some of my favorite used book stores for some more of his works.
Nope, it was 1861 in teh family Bible.
The revisionist historians will never accept anything that doesn't fit their politically correct, liberal agenda.
Is serving in the military as "cooks, servants, laborers, and the like" dishonorable in your eyes, NS?
“so much for that ‘heritage not hate’ ya’ll spout”
That just applies to Blacks, not yankees.
No, but the implication you all are trying to make is that there were tens of thousands of blacks in combat roles in the confederate army, serving side by side with their white comrades as brothers in arms and valued fellow soldiers, blah, blah, blah. Nothing could be further from the truth. Tens of thousands of blacks served the confederate army in support roles. A certain percentage probably did so willingly. Blacks did not serve legally in combat roles until March 1865.
Support roles are often in the line of fire and serve a very important role in keeping the military machine running.
Does a cook, which is an important part of the machine ("An army marches on its stomach." Napoleon Bonaparte), on a submarine escape unharmed if said submarine is torped?
Your original statement was to imply that "cooks, servants, laborers, and the like" were unimportant, less than honorable roles and now you're trying to weasel out of it with this typical NS rhetoric. Pathetic.
A certain percentage probably did so willingly.
Can you be specific about this "certain percentage" or is this just more of your biased conjecture.
Blacks did not serve legally in combat roles until March 1865.
By that statement, you're admitting that the Confederacy was, indeed, legal?
After all, an illegal entity can't grant legality.
How many times have you blathered that the Confederacy never existed because it was illegal to secede?
You can quit these threads now. You're busted.
Bye-bye, NS. We're gonna miss you......................NOT!
Hardly.
Can you be specific about this "certain percentage" or is this just more of your biased conjecture.
More than zero and less than a hundred. It disputes those who would claim that, being slaves, none of the blacks supporting the confederate army could be considered to be their willingly, and disputes those like you who apparently think they all were.
By that statement, you're admitting that the Confederacy was, indeed, legal?
No. Legally based on what passed for law in the confederacy.
How many times have you blathered that the Confederacy never existed because it was illegal to secede?
Quite a few. How many times have you insisted that it did because the folks down there believed it did?
You can quit these threads now. You're busted.
ROTFLMAO!
Careful. They'll put in that straight jacket again...........
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.