Black Confederate soldiers overlooked during Black History Month

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.

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Confederates and other historical facts in the last five years whose comments were only heard by the attendees and went unpublished.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."

"Funny the southerners, in the entire decade leading up to Lincoln's election, didn't complain about tariffs." (LS) Allowing for the possibility that you have read the debates in Congress for the entire decade, etc., you conveniently leave out of the equation the fact that both the Pierce and Buchanan Administrations were very friendly to the South. They did not have that much to complain of, except the fact that mobs in the North were interfering with Southern rights in some areas, and that the Abolitionist influence was on the rise in the new Republican Party. So you have conceded LS' point that the "intolerable taxes and tariffs" were, in fact, not too intolerable after all, and that this alleged Southron casus belli was/is a red herring?

It wasn't about slavery per se. It didn't matter what the particular precipitant was. The fact was that the South was being smeared in the North, and in the four way division at the polls in 1860, a purely sectional party--entirely non-Southern had captured the Federal Executive. What were the "smears" against the South, that the plantation owners held slaves? That the slaves who refused to accept slavery were often treated with incredible cruelty? I daresay that if I held you in the kindliest form of slavery imaginable: requiring little or no work from you, feeding you "three squares a day", seeing to your health and welfare, allowing you to go where you please, and demanding only that you acknowledge my ownership of your person and the "fact" that all your "privileges" have been granted by me, you would find that situation truly intolerable and rebel. Haven't you seen the pictures of slaves with there backs covered with layer upon layer of scars, or the photographs of slaves shackled and collared for the hideous offense of attempting to run away to freedom? Or are you a Holocaust denier in your spare time?

If you are not aware of the viciousness of the Abolitionist assault on their fellow Americans, read Daniel Webster's comments on the same: Webster Address. I am surprised that you cited this Webster extemporaneous speech, not because Webster was pro-abolition "Yankee" (in the original sense of that word), but because it defeats more of your argument (i.e. that the looming Civil War was not primarily about slavery) than it supports. Yes, as a stickler for law and Constitution (as then construed), Webster was not happy with the "illegal" excesses of the abolitionists. When we read the rest of the speech, however, we learn that when the Constitution replaced the Articles of Confederation, Southern lawmakers unanimously agreed on the principles of no extension of slavery North of the Ohio, elimination of the slave trade and no expansion of slavery into the territories (all of which would in Webster's time become the very "bones of contention" for Southron hotheads who believed that the aforementioned principles had been "imposed" on them by Northern abolitionists). Indeed, Webster in this speech you so happily cited speaks of a new wave of Southern enthusiasm for slavery which coincided with the a massive increase in the popularity of cotton fabric in the US and other countries, and the resultant expansion of the plantation system to meet the higher demand for Old King Cotton. (Parenthetically, for the longest time it was an article of faith amongst the Henry Steele Commager-era historians that had it not been for the Yankee ingenuity of Eli Whitney in inventing the cotton gin, slavery might have died in the South long before the Civil War.)

Now, since you choose to use the words of the consummate Yankee to bolster your arguments, I will go you one better as to your contention that slavery was not at the root of the Civil War. The citation is from the Mississippi Declaration of Secession: Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. How anyone can read this, or any of the other Confederate state declarations, for that matter, and conclude other than that slavery was (at the very least to the Confederate States) the "root" cause of the Civil War, defies logic as the ancient greek philosophers taught it.

If you cannot appreciate the distinction between the precipitant of a conflict and the actual conflict, I am sorry. The distinction is vital.

Yes the South talked about the slavery issue, in seceding. That was because it was attacks on them over the slavery issue, that led to their perspective--and I believe correctly--that the Abolitionist fanatics had induced a sizeable group in the North to turn their back on the fraternal affection that had brought the new Americans together originally, and that that group were ready to betray an honorable commitment to the principles of the Union. [The compact had taken slavery off the table as an issue. But suddenly there were those who insisted on putting it back on the table.]

The angry Southern rhetoric--angry in that it ignored the deep philosphic question, that had been freely discussed in the South in earlier generations--was in response to dishonorable behavior on the part of many Northerners--not a majority, by any means, but a loud and growing minority. As Webster explained, in the speech, I gave you the link for; that actually strengthened the institution in the minds of the men who were being insulted.

And some of those insults were in the form of deliberate violation of Federal Law, adopted pursuant to the Constitution, to protect Southern rights.

The test is not whether you or I agree with the institutions in another State. The test is whether you or I keep our honorable commitments. And the South had some reason to believe that the North was not going to continue to do so. Were they right? We will never know now, but the 600,000 brave Americans (on both sides) taken out of the American gene pool, was a terrible ongoing price to pay for fanaticism.

William Flax

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