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.
No anyone who actually read morth then 3 books on the Civil War know this. Mush to do about nothing
Perhaps you should study a little of history. Are you aware that in 1832 the federal government sent warships into Charleston harbor and that it had nothing to do with slavery. It had to do with "nullification" theory. The South was extremely upset and ready to fight over the preferential tariffs. Had a compromise not been reached that year, the war of northern agression would have been fought 30 year earlier than it was.
With that said, slavery was an important component of the war. To deny that is to deny the writings of the men who fought the war. However, I think of it as the spark that set off the powder keg. The civil war was going to be fought, slavery was the spark that set it off. In 1832, the spark was tariffs, but the federal government managed a compromise to put out the fire before it exploded. In 1861, they couldn't put out the spark.
"There's a good military reason why Southern slaveowners rejected the idea...in addition, of course, to their racism and refusal to even consider putting blacks on an equal footing with themselves."
Commically implying that northerners were without racism and did place blacks on equal footing. LOL!!!!!!!
"Blacks did not exactly have it easy in the North either, however. Let us not forget that fact."
No, they didn't, but it was of a different quality.
In the South, you had legal subjugation of the black race to the white.
In the North, you did not.
And in the South, starting at the end of the 19th Century, you had a terrible series of lynchings, almost every other day. There was a lot of emigration of blacks to the North at that time. Of course, there were also more jobs in the North.
Why?
Why were factories mostly built in the North, but not in the South? Factories finally did get built in the South, starting in the 1960s and 1970s, after desgregation.
Why did the EP make a difference if slavery had nothing to do with the war?
In Davis's message to Congress in November 1864, he suggested that slaves who worked for the southern army be emancipated. He also stated that if it became militarily necessary--i.e., if the Confederacy had to choose between defeat and arming the slaves, he would endorse arming the slaves.
This wasn't that much of a change in Davis's long held beliefs. He had held off on black soldiery because the Confederacy didn't have enough to properly equip its white soldiers, plus he didn't want to take such a revolutionary step until all sources of white manpower had been exhausted. By Nov. 1864, that was clearly the case. The move had little or nothing to do with Lincoln's reelection.
yep....
but I find it interesting that the Euros stayed out because of Slavery mainly (they wanted the South to win one more battle) and the North was about the slavery but that wasn't the Southern cause of the war.
I think that just illustrates what caused the war overall. A lack of communication by BOTH parties.
South Carolina had a slave majority. Do you really believe that they would have fought and died for a country that freed those slaves?
South Carolina had a slave majority. Do you really believe that they would have fought and died for a country that freed those slaves?
Quite so. If you arm slaves, with the promise of freedom, then why fight the war at all? It would have made a mockery of "The Cause."
How could it be a revolutionary step if their already tens of thousands of blacks supposedly loyal but unofficial Confederate soldiers? Such a large number surely were not unnoticed by the Confederate government.
Would anyone know if the North used the immigrants from Ireland, Italy, etc to build factories ie "slave labor"? You can see I do not know my Northern history.
Without slavery, there wouldn't have been an American Civil War.
You're right, There would have been a War Between the States,Since 60% of the exports came from the South,thus taxes,most of the agriculture,and DC was screwing the South out of the Revenue,there would have still been War.Taxation Without Representation comes to mind.
My new book, "America's Victories" also has some interesting data, which I'll share some: more than 80,000 southerners fought for the Union, including 40,000 Tennesseans. There were regiments sporting the names First Alabama Infantry, First Mississppi Mounted Rifles, and an Arkansas Cavalry regiment in the Union Army.
I don't know, but what does that have to do with anything? Had the Confederacy coupled its secession with emancipation, the war by the North would have collapsed. The South was not willing to end slavery at that time, so it fought. Or if you prefer the states rights formulation, white southernors believed they had the God-given right to determine whether blacks would be free or slaves, and they didn't want any yankees telling them otherwise.
I would love to read a novel where the South won the War and developed as a separate nation. A "history" of "what might have been" could be very interesting. Anyone know a good book along those lines?
Top 3 reasons for the conflict between the Union and the Confederacy (in order)
Tariffs
States' rights
Slavery
People forget that the slavery abolition movement was very unpopular before the war started. The North was not particularly bothered about slavery. In fact, after the fall of Richmond, VA, to the Union Army, the only slaveholder in the entire city was Gen. Grant's wife.
Additionally, as another poster pointed out, the EP released slaves in all states NOT controlled by the Union. Slavery was allowed to continue in the pro-Union "border" states.
I think MikeinIraq got it right with his earlier post on the lack of communication between both sides.
States rights? A primary complaint of the seceders was that the Northern states were exercising their "states rights" via personal freedom laws.
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