Posted on 03/13/2017 10:30:29 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
The Confederate Congress authorized the enlistment of slaves into the Confederate Army.
Actually the southern black ferries that shod horses were very highly respected and needed.
I would have expected it on both counts, first that the blacks who were smiths would be more likes tradesmen even without their freedom, and that the whites who had been smiths were already having been forced into the infantry simply to keep the number of warm bodies up.
By the same token, a black who could smith would be the epitome of what Booker T. Washington would later have praised as the first step up from slavery, the man who had learned a trade that the white people needed to use and would be willing to pay for.
It could be said they were rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
These are to be taken very skeptically, like the #of “hits” dive bombers scored.
Historians have a hard time finding ANY photos of Black Confeds with guns. Too dangerous.
Yes there were black Indians as well ad Indian slaveholders as well as bkack slaveholders in the south.
The vast vast majority of black “soldiers” did not carry guns.
You bet they had a different view. Black Yankee soldiers were not to be treated as prisoners of war if, captured, they were to treated as if they were run away slaves. White officers in command of black units were to be shot. Yep a different view of blacks than the Union. Cite a source for all black confederate units and black officers and noncoms commanding white Confederate troops.
Blacks made ammunition, repaired guns, made guns and transported guns. They were around guns a lot.
The vast vast majority of black “soldiers” did not carry guns.
I have seen no “average” Confed soldier memoirs that ever mention black soldiers.
You can be around a garage but it doesn’t make you a car. I’m saying, we have almost no historical recollections, diaries, etc by Confederates of black fighting troops. Union claims would be seen through fog of battle. I know of no black SOLDIERS ever captured by federals.
This is true. Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, VA cast half of the cannon barrels made for the Confederate Army. Fifty percent of Tredegar’s work force were slaves. They were not only laborers, but molders, pattern makers, blacksmiths, etc. I would be willing to bet that many, many slave were employed by the Richmond Arsenal to roll & tie cartridges, swamp barrels, build gun carriages and limbers, make case fuses, etc. None of these make them soldiers. Most manufacturing operations in the South used slave labor to some extent.
Douglass was not at the front.
I’m talking about validated CONFEDERATE soldiers’/ifficers’ testimony. Honestly, it would help me a lot if we could find such substantition.
The “best” book is Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees” but even he shies away from claiming even a general # bore arms. As I recall, he “estimates” perhaps 10,000 did, but I find that way high.
Douglass was not at the front.
I’m talking about validated CONFEDERATE soldiers’/ifficers’ testimony. Honestly, it would help me a lot if we could find such substantition.
The “best” book is Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees” but even he shies away from claiming even a general # bore arms. As I recall, he “estimates” perhaps 10,000 did, but I find that way high.
No. There weren't. Only in your fantasy world. "All black confederate units" were slaves working on roads and bridges and fortifications.
Ok, so I called my co-author Dave Dougherty of “Patriot’s History of the Modern World.” If anyone would know, it would be Dave.
He said that in 1863, a Divisional commander submitted a letter to Jeff Davis and the CSA government recommending blacks be brought into the Army of Northern Virginia on condition of them being freed when their service time was up. Davis was so taken aback by the letter that he ordered all copies collected and destroyed. One was apparently discovered in about 1884.
In March 1865, the CSA Congress authorized raising 10 regiments (about 10,000 men) of black troops, but Richmond was evacuated and was so disorganized it is not clear if even a single soldier was enlisted with that order.
Dave suggests that even diggers and teamsters at the front lines were NOT in uniform and he thinks my estimate of perhaps 10,000 blacks in arms throughout the whole war is in fact too high. NEVER sharpshooters. The Sharps rifles were too expensive and dear to trust with black troops. He thinks Ervin Jordan (Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees) and his estimate of 100,000 throughout the entire war is probably too high-—maybe 60,000, none under arms except the rogue “onsies and twosies” that were in some frontier cavalry troops.
> There were several all black confederate units and occasionally, black officers and noncoms commanded white soldiers, something that would never happen in the Union army.
> No. There weren’t. Only in your fantasy world. “All black confederate units” were slaves working on roads and bridges and fortifications.
There were 2 First Louisiana Native Guards, one was Union and one was Confederate. Both were black units consisting of free persons of color. The Confederate unit split in half in 1862 and the splinter unit joined the Union.
I have read that Lincoln responded to Confederate proposals to enlist black soldiers with something like: Any black man who would fight for slavery deserves to be a slave. I did a quick google search but could not find this quote.
You don't really believe that, do you?
The first Louisiana Native Guard disbanded in Feb 1862 because the State Legislature passed a law that restricted militia service to “free white males, capable of bearing arms.” Some of those members would join the Union’s First Louisiana Native Guard formed by General Butler in Sept 1962.In April 1864 it was dissolved and some of it’s members joined the 73rd or 74th USCT.
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