Then you shouldn't have any problems posting some of them.
I'll wait.
I cannot discover exactly when it was that the idea of enlisting negro soldiers in the Confederacy was first broached, but I find the Mobile Register, before the middle of October, 1864, claiming that "a year ago" it had referred to the important reserve power of resistance which the Confederacy would be able to call upon in the last extremity, in the persons of its slaves. The Register says the subject "is now actively discussed." It does not consider that the time has yet arrived for such a step, and, anyhow, it was too late in the season to undertake such a thing then. But the policy of the government ought to be settled in regard to the matter, and preparations made for the next campaign. And from the date of this article the matter came to be generally discussed, and there was a rapid revolution of public feeling on the subject. At first everybody was extremely hostile to such a movement, and the soldiers particularly. But three or four circumstances combined to make a rapid change in the public sentiment. In the first place, by an act of the Confederate Congress, approved February 17th, 1864, there were some thirty thousand or forty thousand slaves drafted into the army as cooks, teamsters, trainsmen and the like, and the soldiers found that they -not only got along very well with Cuffee, but that he saved them no end of work and trouble, was handy, amiable, liked the service well enough, and was not without a spirit of adventure. Some of the negro teamsters did a little amateur fighting now and then, and they showed themselves very skillful in plundering a battle-field.
Slavery, too, was on its last legs as October rolled by. The enemy had possession of more than half the Confederate territory, and wherever they marched they set the negroes free. Slaves had lost their market value even in Richmond, where, when sugar was selling at from eight dollars and a half to eleven dollars and eighty-seven cents per pound, coffee at twelve dollars, tea at forty-two dollars, bicarbonate of soda at five dollars and thirty-seven cents, flour at three hundred and fifty dollars, and a china dinner and tea set brought two thousand four hundred and fifty dollars at auction, good, likely negroes brought only from four thousand five hundred dollars to six thousand dollars. (Richmond Sentinel, October 28th, 1864.) This, in gold rates, and estimating flour at six dollars per barrel, would make negroes only seventy-five dollars to one hundred dollars apiece, or about one-tenth their price at the beginning of the war. People saw from this heavy discount that slavery was doomed, and a good many patriotic planters were quite willing to sell their slaves to the Confederate Government, and take their chances in Confederate States bonds in preference to negroes. Another thing was that of the Confederate Congress that met at Richmond for the last time in the second week of November, 1864-(it adjourned sine die on the 17th of March, 1865)-more than half the members represented constituencies in which slavery was practically rubbed out by the war process. The Senators and Representatives of Missouri, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Florida, and parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, knew that their constituents' slaves were gone, and they had no particular reason for wishing to save the slaves of other sections yet uninvaded by the enemy.
Still, although the question began to be debated actively, and the army showed itself in favor of the movement, there was no concerted serious attempt to concentrate public opinion in regard to it until the latter part of October, 1864. Two events at that time suddenly waked the Confederates to the gravity of their situation. Sherman began his march to the sea, and the elections in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania showed the rebels that McClellan was certain to be defeated for the Presidency, and that Lincoln would give them four years more of war unless they surrendered. The Confederates hoped much from McClellan's election; they were sanguine that be would be elected, and their disappointment was proportionately great. The march of Sherman in the same way showed them what Grant had several times insisted upon, that the Confederacy was like an empty egg-shell-all its powers of resistance had been drained to keep the frontier line strong.
From this time forth, then, even the most sanguine began to lose all hope, and those who still believed in a successful resistance knew that it could only be made by a consecration of every possible resource of the country to that one object. Hence the idea of employing slaves as soldiers immediately began to take shape and proportion, and the agitation of it became active and unremitting. The people of Richmond had become acquainted with the negro in a semi-military capacity since the passage of the act of February 17th, 1864, 46 to increase the efficiency of the army by the employment of free negroes and slaves in certain capacities." Under that act there had -not only been large enlistments of negroes for camp duties and cooks, teamsters, etc., but there were also heavy requisitions made upon the surrounding country for slaves to work upon the fortifications. These, when drafted, were organized into large gangs, and quartered in and around the city, under military discipline. In the early morning these gangs used to be marched through the city on their way to their work on the fortifications, shouldering their picks and shovels, and trotting along at a regulation step. They are fat and saucy and greasy, full of laugh and song, and they kept step instinctively as they sang their own versions of "Dixie" and "John Brown's Body," rapping, castanet-wise, upon the pavements with the wooden soles of their huge and shapeless canvas shoes. Many a Richmond mother, as she heard the bacon-colored gangs clatter by her door, thought of her own ragged, half-starved boy in the trenches at Petersburg, and said to herself : "If the cause demands him as food for powder, why not send out these for the Yankees to shoot at, also?"
Butler, at this very time, had ten thousand -Virginia negroes at work cutting his Dutch Gap canal, about which the Richmond people gave themselves much needless excitement, since they might have known that the more nearly the doughty General's works approached the point of completion (and of danger) the more it would be sure to flag. But the thought must have occurred to many at Richmond that, if Butler could employ these ten thousand negroes to cut a way into Richmond for him, what sort of paralysis was it that prevented the Confederate Government from equally employing ten thousand or fifty thousand negroes to keep him out of that city? A sure sign that this question had then begun to ferment actively in the public mind, may be got from the fact that at this time "the opposition " opened fire against the enlistment of negroes. The Holden party in North Carolina, and their Raleigh organ, the Standard, the ultra States' Rights party, represented by the Richmond Examiner and Charleston Mercury, by Wigfall and obstreperous Congressmen like him, and the pure obstructionists, like Henry S. Foote and Governor Brown, of Georgia, and, in a lesser degree, Alexander H. Stephens, began to murmur and denounce. If the Confederacy, they said, could not be saved except by much means as these, it was not worth saving. To which the natural reply of the administration party was that, if the Confederate people preferred to give up their liberties sooner than give up their slaves, the cause was practically hopeless. The enlistment party, in fact, as the opposition knew, contemplated a step further. They were willing, sooner than be subjugated, to abolish slavery entirely, and ask to be restored to the old colonial relationship to England, provided that country could not otherwise be induced to recognize the Confederacy. This, probably, was a dernier resort, which President Davis would have unflinchingly contemplated; but he had no sooner broached the subject in the Richmond Sentinel than the storm of indignation with which it was received showed him his mistake, and no more was said about it, except by the anti-enlistment party in the Confederate Congress, who made use of it in their steady antagonism to the administration policy.
It must be said, however, in justice to the Confederate people, that the social difficulties of the negro enlistment problem engaged their attention much more deeply than the probable monetary losses. An article on this subject in the Sentinel of November 2d, copied from the able Lynchburg Republican, put this side of the case very strongly. We cannot ask these negroes to fight for us, it in substance said, unless we give them their freedom; but that involves the freedom of their children and families also, and so we not only abolitionize the country, but convert it into a sort of free-negro paradise, with the bottom rail on top-for the negroes, if we succeed, will be the saviors of the country. "Instead of being a war for-the freedom of the white man, it will degenerate into a war for the freedom and equality of the slaves." It would be better, the Republican argued, to accept Lincoln's than this sort of abolition.
Nevertheless, the die was cast. The army could not be recruited any more, owing to the apathy and discontent of the people, and General Lee, it is now known, said the cause was lost unless he was efficiently reinforced before the winter ended. The Confederate Congress met on Monday, November 7th, at noon, and as soon as it was organized the message of President Davis was received. In this paper, admirably written, with characteristic courage and directness he met and stated the question of the hour. Referring to the act of February 17th, of the previous Congress, which, he said, was less effective than it was expected to be, he remarked: "But my present purpose is to invite your consideration to the propriety of a radical modification in the theory of this law." The slave, he said, was to be viewed, not only as property, but as a person under the law. His services to the State increased in value in proportion as he became a veteran. For this lie should be rewarded, as well as his master. He would not advise anything further just now than the equitable determination of these relations. He was opposed, at present, to the general levy and arming of slaves as soldiers. "But should the alternative ever be presented of subjugation, or of the employment of the slave as a soldier, there seems no reason to doubt what then should be our decision." In the meantime, he would recommend the training of forty thousand negroes for duties under the act of February 17th. This message, in which the duty of the State to the slaves as persons was fairly, and fully, and ably stated, opened the whole question at once, and henceforth the history of negro enlistments is recorded in the proceedings of the Confederate Congress and the State Legislatures. The soldiers in the different camps, as soon as the question was agitated among them, gave it their hearty approval, and adopted resolutions to that effect. The poor fellows were so hard bested that they welcomed any measure which Promised them a modicum of relief.
Hon. James A. Seddon, Secretary of War, in his report, supplemented Mr. Davis' message with some still stronger recommendations of his own. The slaves, he said, had even a stronger interest in the victory of the Confederates than the white people. The latter risked their political independence, but the former their very existence as a race. If the cruel enemies of the South should triumph, they would extinguish the negroes in a few years, as they had already extinguished the Indians. He recommended that the States which had absolute and exclusive control of the matter, should legislate at once with a view to the contingency of negro enlistments. On the next day, in the Confederate Congress, Senator G. A. Henry, of Tennessee, and Representative Wickham, of Virginia, introduced bills to extend and perfect the operations of the act of February 17th, 1864.
The opposition now began to take the field, alarmed at the progress which the matter had already made in public opinion. The Raleigh Confederate, in a dispassionate article, praises the proposed enlargement of the teamster enlistment, temporizes in regard to the constitutional and organic question, but opposes peremptorily the negro soldier enlistment programme. Governor Vance, of North Carolina, in his annual message to the Legislature of that State, took strong ground in opposition to the measure. The thing was totally inadmissible, be said. It was opposed to the theory of the Southern government, and was inexpedient and unwise beside. It may be remarked here, that there were, all along, in the South, two parties, and two sets of opinion in regard to the war, and the conduct of it-one party, of which Mr. Davis was the representative and leader, looking upon it as a social revolution and a struggle for existence; the other, represented by Mr. Stephens, Mr. Henry S. Foote, Mr. Vance, and many others, regarding it rather as a political movement. In the view of the former party, any means to promote the success of the cause which was so vital, were admissible; but the latter party were disposed to measure the means they employed for resistance by the rule of expediency. The former, as soon as the case grew to be desperate, wanted to arm the slaves, or resume colonial dependence; the latter, as soon as independence eluded their grasp, proposed negotiations, and wanted to "settle" the thing by peace congresses, or even by submission according to protocol. The distinction here made should be carefully noted, for the Confederacy was finally broken to pieces upon this rock. Mr. Davis carried his point of war at any price, and his opponents henceforth bent their united energies to paralyze his exertions. He was not the wisest of politicians, nor the best of generals; but his sincerity and intensity of purpose elevated him far above the half-hearted people around him as a promoter of vigorous, and, consequently, successful war. In spite of his patronage of Bragg and Hood, and his opinionativeness generally, it is tolerably certain that, if Davis had made himself dictator, he would have been able to carry on the war for still another year.
There had. been already, some weeks before the meeting of the Confederate Congress, an important conference of the governors of the different States, at Augusta, Georgia, October 17th, at which the subject under consideration had been freely discussed, but without positive action. Governor Smith, of Virginia, in his message to the Virginia Legislature, December 7th, now took the ground that the time had come to put the slaves in the field, and to sacrifice slavery to the cause of independence. The slaveholders should take the initiative in this, in order that people might no longer say, as they had been saying, that this "was the rich man's war;" and Governor Smith gave plenty of other good reasons why the negroes should be made soldiers of. The Sentinel of the 10th quotes, with approval, the remarks of the St. Louis Republican upon the language attributed to Lincoln, that the war could not be carried on "according to Democratic arithmetic," "then, if the rebels put two hundred and fifty thousand slave negroes in the field, they cannot be conquered, according to Mr. Lincoln's arithmetic." Senator Hunter, of Virginia, who was constantly and throughout opposed to the policy of negro enlistments, introduced a bill into the Confederate Congress, on December 9th, to regulate impressments. On the same day, Governor Bonliam, of South Carolina, sent his message to the Legislature of that State, in which lie denied the authority of the Confederate Government to enlist slaves, as well as the expediency of such enlistments. The "reserved rights of States" played a big part in these last days of the Confederacy, when all who valued their persons or their property more than they did the "cause," were sedulous to contrive means to save them.
Events, public opinion, and the newspapers, meantime, moved much more swiftly than the Confederate Congress. The limits of the Confederacy were being narrowed continually by the Federal arms, and there were great and bitter dissensions at Richmond, and throughout what was left of the Confederacy. The politicians wrangled, the contractors robbed, the government was helpless, the soldiers starved. The columns of the Sentinel, for six weeks from December 13th, are doleful reading indeed. During this period, Congress approached the matter of negro enlistments in many ways, but never had the courage to grapple with it. There were bills to pay for slaves, to regulate impressments, etc., to create negro home guards, but the bull was never taken resolutely by the horns. But, in the meantime, the dissatisfaction grew, the pressure from the camps increased, the area of the Confederacy diminished, and with the appreciation of slavery as a money interest. On the 28th of January, 1865, the Confederate House, for the first time, went into secret session on the subject of negro enlistments and there the discussions formally began. The proposition was, at first, to impress forty thousand negroes for menial service in the army. On the 30th a proviso, offered by J. M. Leach, of North Carolina (one of the obstructionists), that none of the negroes so impressed should be put in the army, was voted down.
On February 2d, Gholson, of Virginia, in the House, and on the 4th, Orr, of South Carolina, in the Senate (both of them obstructionists), tried, but failed, to carry propositions to the effect that the enlistment policy was disheartening and demoralizing, and would divide the Confederacy. On the other: hand, Conrad, of Louisiana, and Brown, of Mississippi, both introduced propositions which recited the contrary. In fact, as has been said before, the representatives of invaded States were generally for arming the negroes, those of States not overrun for the contrary policy. These propositions were duly referred, and I find that the subject was actively discussed in secret session of both houses on the 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th. On the 9th, the Senate rejected Senator Brown's enlistment proposition. On the 11th of February there was a great public meeting in Richmond, at which Secretary Benjamin and Senator Henry both spoke in zealous and earnest advocacy of the enlistment programme, and on the 13th, there were two new bills introduced by Mr. Oldham, of Texas, and Mr. Barksdale, of Mississippi, looking to negro enlistments. Senator Oldham's bill was offered in the Senate, and was not heard of again. In the House, a motion to reject Barksdale's bill was defeated by a two-thirds vote. This bill provided for the enlistment of slaves by their masters, and did not reward them with their freedom for volunteering-in fact, there was no volunteering about it. They were to be sent to fight the Yankees as they had been sent to work on the defenses.
On the 15th, the subject of enlistments came up in the Virginia Legislature, which, on the 17th, adopted resolutions recommending the enlistment policy. It was not, however, until the 27th that this Legislature voted to instruct its Senators to vote for the measure in the Confederate Congress. The subject was ardently discussed in secret session of that Congress from the 17th to the 25th. In this interval, the soldiers from Mississippi, Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, and elsewhere, declared in favor of the new policy, and a letter of General Lee's was published looking to the same end. In that letter the illustrious commander-in-chief said that he considered the measure "not only expedient but necessary." If the Confederates did not make use of the slaves the Federals would. The Confederacy was too weak in men to stand long the pressure of war waged in its present tremendous shape. The negroes had the physical powers and the habits of discipline to make good soldiers, and, with proper training, their efficiency would be unquestionable. They would make willing soldiers, provided emancipation was their reward.
In spite of this letter, however, the Senate defeated the measure again on the 25th, but on the 1st of March, Barksdale's resolution, materially amended, came up in the House and was passed. Wigfall, Hunter, Caperton, Miles, and other leaders opposed the enlistment policy savagely, but, still, when the bill of Barksdale finally came up in the Senate, Hunter and Caperton voted for it, even while speaking against it. The vote in the Senate on the final passage of the bill, March 7th, 1865, was as follows:
YEAs-Messrs. Brown, Burnett, Caperton, Henry, Hunter, Oldham, Semmes, Sims, and Watson--9.
NAYS-Messrs. Barnwell, Graham, Johnson (Ga.), Johnson (Mo.), Maxwell, Orr, Vert, and Wigfall--8.
Thus, the instructions of the Virginia Legislature, by compelling Hunter and Caperton to vote contrary to their opinions, carried the bill through.
This bill enacted that in order to secure additional forces to repel invasion, etc., the President be authorized to ask for and accept from slave owners, the services of as many able-bodied slaves as he thinks expedient; the same to be organized by the commander-in-chief under instructions from the War Department, and to receive the same rations and compensation as other troops. If a sufficient number of troops cannot thus be secured, the President is authorized to conscript three hundred thousand men without regard to color. There is no provision for emancipation or for volunteering, except that the last section says:
That nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners, except by the consent of the owners and of the States in which they may reside, add in pursuance of the laws thereof.
This measure was, of course, ineffective. It did not embody the views of Mr. Davis, nor of General Lee, nor of the Virginia Legislature. It was comparatively useless as a means to reinforce the army immediately, and this was the more singular, since it was now well known in Richmond that General Lee had told the Virginia Legislature that, unless he was reinforced he could not maintain the struggle any longer than the opening of the spring campaign. Nothing can reveal more forcibly the selfish narrow-mindedness and jealousy of the slave-holding interests than this bill.
Still, if there had been time to do it, Jefferson Davis would have, doubtless, conscripted the three hundred thousand negroes which the law empowered him to call for. But there was not time. The House concurred in the Senate amendments on the 9th, by a vote of thirty-nine to twenty-seven, and the bill was promptly approved on March 18th. On, the 15th, the Adjutant General's office gave authority to Majors J. W. Pegram and T. B. Turner, to raise a company or companies of negro volunteers at Richmond, and muster them into the service. These volunteers were called for under the several acts of the Confederate Congress and the Legislature of Virginia, and every man was called upon to constitute himself a recruiting officer. The rendezvous was established at Smith's factory, Twenty-first street, between Main and Carey streets. But this call was only made on the 10th of March, and Richmond was evacuated on April 2d, while Lee's surrender took place on the 9th. The Confederate Congress adjourned sine die on the 17th, and the last issue of the Richmond Sentinel, my authority in these matters, is dated April 1st, when Sheridan had already forced Lee's lines. Mr. Lincoln, apparently, did not think much of the impressment and enlisting of slaves. He said, in a speech made at Washington on the 17th of March, that the negro could not stay at home and make bread and fight at the same time, and he did not care much which duty was allotted to him by the Confederates. "We must now soon see the bottom of the rebels' resources."
We hear not much more of the negro enlistment question. The papers urge the importance of dispatch, patience, discipline. The Twenty-first street recruiting office -apparently got on well, and another office was opened successfully in Lynchburg. A portion of the recruits of Messrs. Pegram and Turner went into camp on the north side about the 27th of March. The Lynchburg papers published a circular of citizens of Roanoke county, pledging themselves to emancipate such of their negroes of the military age as would volunteer to enlist, and, on the 28th, the Adjutant General's office at Richmond published its regulations in regard to negro enlistments. The provisions were merely formal, and did not vary, from the regulation orders except in one particular: the negroes, as enlisted, were to be enrolled only in companies, under the control of the inspector general, as the government did not contemplate at that time the formation of either regiments or brigades of negroes.
The Confederate negro soldiers never went into action. On March 30th, 31st, and April 1st, the Sentinel reports the enemy "massed in heavy force on our right," cavalry skirmishes at Dinwiddie Court-House, heavy fighting on our right, tremendous artillery firing, pertinacious assaults upon Gordon, a great battle with no particulars, and then-the curtain descends for good and all, and there is no more Southern Confederacy, much less enlistment of negro volunteers and conscripts to do battle for it.
Would they have fought for it? If enlisted six months earlier would they have been able to turn the tide of defeat? Who knows? Who can tell? People have before now both fought and voted to enslave themselves-people are doing the same thing every day. It is, perhaps, fortunate that the negroes were not enlisted in time to prolong the long agony of the Southern Confederacy.
Source: "Annals of the War" article by Edward Spencer
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