Posted on 11/15/2013 11:16:55 AM PST by nickcarraway
central_va: "How do you explain the numerous first hand accounts from Yankee Officers and others of black rebel troops? Were they lying?"
I said, "occasional reports", and that's all you have.
Of course, we would expect that masters would bring their slaves with them, and some would even be trusted to fight -- especially, as donmeaker points out, many slaves were brothers & cousins of their masters.
My point remains valid: there were no Confederate colored troops remotely equivalent to those 178,000 (most from slave-states) who served & fought in the Union Army.
Thanks for the link, still hoping to remember if I've seen that term before, but can't.
Indeed, it makes you wonder if a major reason for the oft-reported ferocity of Confederate troops was increased ruthlessness of their file-closers?
Someone said it the knowledge you were to be shot in the morning was a marvelous thing for concentrating your attention.
The Confederate Generals probably labored at some point in time under the idea that they would be shot at sunrise if they lost. I don’t know about you, but I think I might have been more ruthless in that case.
File closers did what the commander wanted them to do.
The mercy and generosity of the victorious US government still amazes me.
I will also note that Confederates had Hardee, who wrote the drill manual used by both sides.
Confederates tended to wait a little longer to install their bayonet. That gave them a bit higher rate of fire at some key portions of a close fight, that might have helped a lot. Without antibiotics, cutting your finger on the bayonet could lead to an infection, so with bayonet installed your loading was slowed significantly.
Upton is thought to have considered that when he developed the fast moving assault tactics used in the Mule Shoe during the overland campaign. His idea was to move quickly through the enemy fire, and at very close quarters, the remaining US soldiers would have their bayonets fixed, and the Confederates would be reaching for theirs.
Per Wikipedia re: Spottsylvania Court House
“Grant used Upton’s assault technique on a much larger scale on May 12 when he ordered the 15,000 men of Maj. Gen. Winfield S. Hancock’s corps to assault the Mule Shoe. Hancock was initially successful, but the Confederate leadership rallied and repulsed his incursion. Attacks by Maj. Gen. Horatio G. Wright on the western edge of the Mule Shoe, which became known as the “Bloody Angle”, involved almost 24 hours of desperate hand-to-hand fighting, some of the most intense of the Civil War.”
Yes we’ll rally round the flag, boys, we’ll rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom,
We will rally from the hillside, we’ll gather from the plain,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
(Chorus)
The Union forever! Hurrah, boys, hurrah!
Down with the traitors, up with the stars;
While we rally round the flag, boys, rally once again,
Shouting the battle cry of freedom!
(Chorus)
That’s surprising, and very cool. I learn something new every day.
Thank you.
Did you ever see “The Long Riders”?
“You’ve got nice hands. You wanna keep ‘em?”
North Carolina fielded mixed race units. The most rural of the original colonies, the tar heels had a long tradition of miscegenation. They had permitted freedmen to vote until 1835, and were much less enthusiastic about the rebellion than South Carolina. yet their units were most effective at Chicamauga, Gettysburg and Franklin. Lee sent Pickett to buck up the cause, and Pickett has a fair number of captured US soldiers from NC hanged. Pickett was well known as the ‘goat’ of his class as West Point.
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