A black fighting for the Confederacy is like a rich person fighting for Communism-it plain does not make any SENSE!
Perhaps illogical, but that does not make it untrue. Most of the people who are fighting for Communism are rich people.
Consider just the examples of Senators Kennedy, Kerry, and Clinton.
It's an historical fact that blacks did fight for the South. They didn't have them at division strength as did the North, but they served none-the-less.
As for sentiment, Shelby Foote tells of a slave that accompanied Lee's army into Pennsylvania that thought PA looked like a nice place, but he preferred "home."
The Civil War was as complicated as are human beings, a blending of meanness and greatness as Bruce Catton described.
Really? I am not sure that the outcome of the Civil War actually advanced the cause of Blacks in America. Remember the Army was segregated as late as 1948. I firmly believe that slavery as an instituition was moribund and the Civil War aroused animosities and hardened positions.
Slavery may have been the moral motivation for Northern troops. But there were many dynamics in that war.
It doesn't make sense in today's mentality BUT I can easily see how a slave would fight for the Confederacy, something they're familiar with than the Union side.
Although this account of black slave-soldiers is really grasping at straws, it is true that free blacks in the south fought for the Confederacy. I still remember a news report that featured a very dark black man who was quite furious when the State of Mississippi was considering getting rid of the Confederate flag which made up part of the state flag. His great-grandfather had served with distinction in the Comfederate Army and he was every bit as angry as the white descendants of Confederate soldiers.
A number of free blacks owned slaves themselves, of course. Half of the free blacks in the US in 1860 lived in the South. The first person to die during John Brown's takeover of the Harper's Ferry arsenal in 1859 was a free back telegraph operator who was killed by Brown's followers for attempting to notify Washington DC of the siezure.
Sounds like the limosine liberals I know. They are legion.