Posted on 02/26/2005 9:53:22 PM PST by SmithL
The month of February has begun and so has the celebration of Black History Month in the nation, schools and communities. Throughout this time, many noteworthy leaders, citizens, scientists and soldiers who fought in wars and conflicts will be recognized.
However, there is one group of African Americans who will receive no recognition again this year during this month. I am speaking of black Confederates who served and fought to defend their homeland from what they believed to be an armed invasion.
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The South was home to some 4 million who lived there and had roots going back more than 200 years. Deep devotion, love of homeland and strong Christian faith joined black with white Confederate soldiers in defense of their homes and families.
A conservative estimate is that between 50,000 to 60,000 served in the Confederate units. Both slave and free black soldiers served as cooks, musicians and even combatants. The first northern officer killed in battle was Maj. Theodore Winthrop, who was shot by a black sniper of the Wythe Rifles of Hampton, Va.
The most amazing fact concerning black Confederates is that they served within the Confederate units alongside their white brothers in arms while their Union counterparts were kept separate in all-black units led by white officers (as portrayed in the movie "Glory").
In fact, it was not until 1950 that the U.S. military integrated its units at the start of the Korean War.
On Jan. 22, H.K. Edgerton, a former head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in North Carolina, was the keynote speaker for the annual Sons of Confederate Veterans dinner in Knoxville. Although his scheduled appearance to speak on southern heritage and black Confederates was published a week ahead in the local paper, not one representative of any established mainstream news media was present to record his comments.
Edgerton was the second African American to speak on black Confederates and other historical facts in the last five years whose comments were only heard by the attendees and went unpublished. Dr. Leonard Haynes, a professor at Southern University, stated: "When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South."
For those who have been taught or misled to think the people in the northern cities were more tolerant and supportive of their black population, look up the Draft Riots of 1863.
Maj. Arthur Fremantle of the British Army was an observer for Queen Victoria and spent three months with the Army of Northern Virginia and Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee. Freemantle kept a diary and had arrived in New York City just in time to personally observe and witness the worst riots in our history.
He included in his diary seeing gangs of white men chasing, beating and even hanging blacks. Some black men and women were even pulled from their homes and beaten. Police and militias were called out, and more than 1,200 people lost their lives during the three days of riots.
The rioters resented free blacks being excluded from the draft since they were not considered citizens. The motion picture "Gangs of New York" shows some of this violence.
In closing, I have written this article in the hope that it will ignite people to research, read, study and discover the true historical facts. For me to remain silent as an American citizen, Southerner, retired soldier and living historian and ignore the service and sacrifices of these forgotten soldiers is unacceptable.
I quote the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
And it does sound socialist when you put it this way:
Slaves had full time employment, were provided housing and (at minimum) necessary medical care. They were provided enough of the fruits of their labors to keep them fit enough to be productive workers, not starved generally, like people in slave labor camps of the Iron Curtain or Axis powers, whose purpose was the elimination of the slaves. Do not confuse this with the death camps. When a slave showed promise, they were frequently were educated--enough to increase the efficiency of the business, whether it be farming or another venture. On balance, slaveholders in the south were some of the most humane in history, despite the ardent villification of the abolititonist movement.
Slaves were considered more valuable than employees, after all, there was an investment there.
But freedom is largely illusory.
Do you work for a company which decides how you dress, anything you do (or don't) in your off time, whether or not you can smoke, etc?
Are you free? Or are you in thrall to banks and houses of credit?
Does the homeowner's association decide whether you can fly the flag you wave here? Or what colors you can choose from to paint your house?
If you do not have a homeowners association, can you add on to your structure without interference, fees, or legal permit?
Do you make payments to retain your property, even if you have clear title and live at the end of a dirt road you maintain and use no public services?
Are you told (under penalty of law) what you can and cannot own? How to raise your children? What equipment to use in your vehicle which you must pay a fee to use and in which you are required by law to bet sums of money against your ability to avoid an accident?
Do you work until mid May to provide for nameless others without choice in the matter, or, for all practical purposes, how the money you earned will be spent?
If so you are not free, you just feel like you are getting a bigger cut.
I'm a slave. I'm a slave to my village,county,state and US government! And Bank of America too! ;-)
The Louisiana Native Guards, formed by free blacks, offered their services to the Confederacy, but when the Confederates REFUSED to accept them, they immediately joined the Union Army under General Ben Butler. That's why their wearing Union Army uniforms in your photograph.
The Louisiana Native Guards, formed by free blacks, offered their services to the Confederacy, but when the Confederates REFUSED to accept them, they immediately joined the Union Army under General Ben Butler. That's why their wearing Union Army uniforms in your photograph.
I know that. But I believe that DixieOklahoma would like us to believe that the picture was of them in confederate service. Since the confederates refused their service then that couldn't be possible, could it?
I don't know but after he supposedly quit, years after, he wrote them a letter saying the KKK was as important then as before.
In South Carolina there is neither a free ballot nor an honest count, and since the election in 1874 the history of elections in the State is the history of a continued series of murders, outrages, perjury and fraud...
...Having perfect immunity from punishment, the encouragement, if not the active participation, of the State government, and the protection of the courts of the State, the rifle clubs committed their outrages without restraint, and the election officers their frauds without even the thin veneer of attempted concealment. Elections since then have been carried by perjury and fraud – two things worshipped and adored by the South Carolina Democracy...
...Many apologists for the rule of the minority in South Carolina assert that the negro votes the Democratic ticket, and that to form a majority from the census giving the entire vote to the Republican party is erroneous. There are colored men who vote the Democratic ticket, and I suppose that there are Irishmen in Ireland who act with the Tories of England...
....All persons desiring to vote the Democratic ticket are registered without personal application, and certificates are furnished them either before or on the day of election without even the formality of an oath as to eligibility. Registration the fountain-source of election, curtails Republican suffrage by the expense and inconvenience it entails upon persons not living at the county-seat, by refusal through willful neglect to register Republicans, and by fraud of the supervisor in making false entries; it adds to the Democratic vote through his fraud in unlawfully adding to the names on the registration-books those of all persons who are expected to vote the Democratic ticket....
....At a neighboring poll another scene is enacted. The polls are open, the boxes shown, the voters deposit their ballots, there is general levity, and everything appears to be fair. There are three hundred Republican voters; the Democracy have secured forty or fifty votes, and the polls close. The votes are counted; there are two or three hundred more ballots than names on the poll-list; instead of fifty Democratic ballots there are three hundred and fifty...
There's a sticker pasted on a stop sign up the road, says "Free The Slaves, Abolish The IRS".
Sometimes you don't know whether to laugh or cry.
bump
I'll see you all that and raise a dozen grandkids! (8^)
OMG you win. All I have a poddle :o)
I'm still working on it, but a few tears may be in order this year...I hate paying in even more...(especially when I had extra withholding, too.)
And when would it have been acceptable to put the issue of slavery back on the table?
It's amazing that Freepers and so-called "conservatives" would sit here and DEFEND the very party that ORIGINATED solely to protect slavery, the Democrats. That's why I'm a Republican and love the Republicans back to their origin: they were always, first and foremost, against slavery. Yes, they supported tariffs (bad, but a common view held by Madison, Washington, Adams and Hamilton). But their PRINCIPLE was one of freedom, and the Democrats' and their southern allies, no matter how they try to dress up their pig, was one of enslavement.
And why, exactly, did the Confeds REFUSE them? Because they were ARMED BLACKS. You must made our point.
You're exactly right. The Confederates did indeed refuse to accept the Louisiana Native Guards because they were armed blacks. After all, blacks were expressly forbidden to enlist in the rebel forces by Confederate law until March 1865.
And they were forbidden to do so because the thought of armed blacks was anathema to the South. That's why virtually all of the so-called "black confederates" were laborers enticed to work for their freedom . . . not the 'rebel cause.'
The closest that blacks ever got to actually carrying arms for their Confederate masters was in late March 1865 when some black laborers drilled in Richmond, but without weapons.
Yes, that matches what I've read of the Virginia blacks "drafted" into the Confederate army. Indeed, the CSA Congress debated the issue from 1864 onward and steadfastly refused to arm blacks.
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