another fact-FREE,self-serving & pointless post!
IF what you said were TRUE, rather than FALSE, we southerners would not have had over 100,000-150,000 Black volunteers to fight for dixie freedom. do you REALLY think that those brave volunteers were TOO DUMB to know what they were fighting FOR??? (see BLACKS IN BLUE & GRAY by the late H R Blackerby,PhD of Tuskegee University for more data)
free dixie,sw
I've read his little book. Not to bad for a neo-confed, but, ultimately, not very reliable (as is most neo-confed crap).
First, don't ever, EVER, confuse "served" in the Confederate Army (or Navy) with serving as an actual soldier. As Blackerby tries to obscure, but eventually admits, the vast, vast, vast majority of blacks were never given a weapon. To say that 100,000---the highest number Blackeby accepts---"served" means that, at the utter, utter high end, perhaps 4,000-5,000 "fought." It's not clear that all of those were ever intended to fight by the CSA, or whether some, when, say, lines were overrun, picked up a weapon on the spur of the moment.
We do know that Confed propagandaizing of blacks was relentless, telling them that the Yankees were coming to kill them and rape them. Most, I'll admit, didn't believe this, because they had their own "information highway" and that's why they knew what was happening in the war.
He seeks to emphasize a handful of (unproven) reports of "black snipers" and a few (very few) instances of black volunteers who actually saw combat in a Confederate uniform---but has no reliable statistics on how many were truly "soldiers" (ie, were trained with weapons and expected to fight.
He ignores ALL evidence of Confederate military people and civilian leaders terrified of arming blacks.
He grudgingly admits that the overwhelming number of these "troops" were laborers, diggers, cooks, and musicians. I don't have the book---sent it back to the library---but as I recall he even had the actual occupations of many of these "troops" listed, and only one or two were even remotely likely to have a weapon.
But since you're so fond of numbers, how about this: in the North, 178,000 black troops enlisted---half of them from seceded states. Large numbers of them had weapons and training, and many regiments saw combat.
Equally important, however, is the fact that 100,000 WHITE southerners, including the 1st U.S. Alabama Infantry, the 1st U.S. Mississippi Mounted Rifles, the 4th U.S. Arkansas Infantry, the 2nd U.S. Florida Cavalry. It's worth noting that not only did more blacks in the North actually fight (again, most coming initially from seceded states) but about ten times more southern WHITES actually fought for the North than blacks held a weapon for the CSA.
Now here's the cherry on top of the whipped cream: neither the Southern whites nor the northern blacks fighting for the North received anything more than their monthly pay---but ALL (repeat, in case you Rebs have trouble with the truth, ALL) blacks serving in the CSA in ANY function were given promises of emancipation for their service. That's a no brainer if I'm a southern black, no matter how much I hate the Rebs, cause I can at least be free to leave later . . . if they planned to keep their word. (I certainly don't think they would, but that's just me.)
