Posted on 02/21/2006 7:59:04 AM PST by stainlessbanner
Relatively few people are aware that during the Civil War, Confederate leaders put forth a proposal to arm slaves to fight against the Union in exchange for their freedom.
In his new book Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2006), UCSC history professor Bruce Levine examines the circumstances that led to this startling and provocative piece of American history. In the process, he sheds new light on a little-known but significant story of slavery, freedom, and race during the Civil War.
The idea for the book came to Levine in the late 1980s when he was teaching at the University of Cincinnati and working on another book about the origins of the Civil War.
"The more I read about this episode, the more I realized how important it was to our understanding of the war; it wasn’t just an interesting little footnote,” said Levine. "After all, how could the war be about slavery if the Confederates were willing to sacrifice slavery in order to win the war? And it turned out that there was a cornucopia of information on that and related subjects available in letters, government documents, and newspaper articles and editorials.”
Levine traveled throughout the South, combing through archives for newspaper accounts of the war, letters sent to Jefferson Davis and other Confederate leaders, diaries of officers and troops, and memoirs by and about former slaves. He spent time exploring the internal documents of the Confederate government, which were captured by the Union army and are now stored at the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Levine found that Confederate leaders had been receiving--and rejecting--letters from various Southerners suggesting that they arm the slaves since the very beginning of the war.
But it was only in November of 1864, after the Confederates were defeated at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and finally Atlanta, that Davis reversed himself and endorsed the proposal to arm the slaves. The result was a fierce public debate in newspapers, drawing rooms, army regiments, and slave quarters throughout the South.
The book shows how the idea was proposed out of desperation and military necessity--the Confederates were badly outnumbered, slaves were escaping and joining the Union armies, and the South was close to defeat and to the loss of slavery. But as Levine points out, "the opposition of slave owners was ferocious--even though they were facing defeat and the end of slavery, they would not face those realities. They would not give up their slaves, even to save the Confederate cause itself."
"Only a tiny handful of slaves responded to the Confederate proposal," Levine added. "They viewed it as an act of desperation and were skeptical of the sincerity of promises of emancipation. The reaction of the slaves generally was 'Why would we fight for the Confederacy; it's not our country? They were very well informed through the grapevine."
Levine noted that the book is designed to emphasize how important the slaves’ actions were during that period of history.
"The story of the Civil War is usually told as a story of two white armies and two white governments," Levine said. "The popular image is of passive, grateful slaves kneeling at the feet of Father Abraham. But in fact, the slaves were very active in shaping the war and its outcome.”
"There are a lot of revelations in this book," Levine added. "The proposals discussed here provided an early glimmering of how the white South would treat blacks for the next century."
Levine is the author, coauthor, or editor of six previous books, including Work and Society (1977), Who Built America? (two volumes, 1990, 1992), The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of the Civil War (1992), and Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War (rev. ed. 2005). He has been a professor of history at UCSC since 1997.
"Relatively few people are aware that during the Civil War, Confederate leaders put forth a proposal to arm slaves to fight against the Union in exchange for their freedom."
They are probably also unaware that the Union Army exempted blacks from the draft at first and massive riots broke out targeting blacks in the North.
Before the war was over, both blacks and whites were being forced to either become soldiers or civilians war workers, the blacks at reduced pay.
The reason it was not carried out was because Jefferson Davis was a very stubborn man, who did not do a very good job of managing the war.
I think it's time. Interesting read though!
Was it at Fredricksburg where the Union troops refused to fight with their black compatriots?
That begs the question: What is a nation?
One of the crucial tests, IMO, is whether a "nation" is recognized by other nations.
AFAIK, Except for a few minor German principalities and, arguably, the Vatican, the CSA was never recognized as a sovereign nation.
"Desperate times call for desperate measures." "Lincoln is going to free them anyway, so why not let them die to save our sorry asses"...comes to mind.
LOL
Watched "Reconstruction:The Second Civil War" on PBS last night and was surprised about how candid it was about Democrats, North and South, being firmly of one mind on keeping Blacks in 2nd-class status and out of power.
Never really changed, have they?
The best way to put it, I think, is that slavery was a necessary, but not sole, cause of the Civil War.
Booth, Stanton, Johnson and Grant; the men who changed the aims and outcomes of the war from those envisioned by Lincoln.
How different history might have been.
But that won't stop the Lincoln idolators from repeating the statement.
Right on.
I havent used a 5 dollar bill since the Summer of 1978--just on Principle!
That obviously doesn't mean that every southernor who fought was motivated by a personal desire to retain slavery. But if the Confederacy had fred its slaves at the same time it declared itself a separate country, there might not even have been a war. And certainly, the South would have gotten international recognition early on absent slavery.
Any specifics on the exact date of this? Specifically, was it after the election when the South's last hope, General McClellan, lost to Lincoln.
I don't know, but someone here can likely answer your question.
Thanks...I appreciate the reply.
I would have to look it up. Not sure if it was before or after the northern election. I think Cleburne's proposal was in 63 (could be wrong on this). W.C. Davis touches on it in "Look Away!" - it's hardly pro-southern, but even he admits blacks raised money and units of men to support the Confederate cause.
If the South had won the war, that might make sense.
Since they didn't, they weren't.
Virtually no one recognized them. Had that happened, it would have turned out differently.
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