"Seventy 'patriotic free Negroes of Lynchburg' proffered their services to Governor John Letcher 'to act in whatever capacity they may be assigned to them' in defense of Virginia. Even blacks in Vicksburg, Mississippi held a fundraiser for 'de boys in Virginny' which netted one thousand dollars. Norfolk blacks voluntarily erected breastworks while Charles Tinsley, spokesman for a group of black volunteers from Petersburg, vowed they would gladly serve their native state in her hour of trial and stood ready to obey any and all orders. An October of 1861 illustration in Harper's Weekly of a Confederate recruitment parade in Woodstock was led by a public-sprited black man bearing a Virginia state flag.
And how did the Southern papers see the blacks who were fighting and helping the Confederacy?
In paying the negroes at work on the fortifications, we understand that most villainous abuses have been practised. The paymaster requires them to be identified by their overseers, and we are informed that it has been a practice for some of the overseers to charge these poor people ten per cent of their pay as fees for their identification. Who are these overseers, and who is responsible for their conduct? ....In the name of God, is there no justice to be found in the courts of human justice for iniquities like this?---Richmond Examiner, 1862Both quotes taken from Ervin L. Jordan's, an African-American professor, essay Different Drummers:Black Virginians as Confederate Loyalists
Of course articles like this and the treatment of African Americans were quite different than what we have been taught in schools(government controlled by the winner of the War). Maybe LLAN could explain anecdotal evidence from Union soldiers after the war that witnessed Confederate black and white soldiers together at troop reunions, why the South paid their soldiers of any color the same pay rate(Confederate Congress,1862).
In Charleston, 75 whites rented homes from blacks. By 1860, there were 26 free black residents of Nashville, who with not property in 1850, had managed to accumulate net assets of $1,000. Free blacks prospered as bricklayers, barbers, machinists, carpenters, and in many other professions....About 25% of all free blacks owned slaves. A few of these were men who purchased their family members to protect or free them,but most were people who saw slavery as the best way to economic wealth and independence for themselves. In South Carolina, John Stanley owned 163 and William Ellison owned 97. The Metoyer clan of Louisiana owned nearly 400. By 1860, so many black women in Charleston had inherited or been given slaves and property by white men, and used their property to start successful businesses as caterers, dressmakers, and other small busineses that they owned 70% of the black owned slaves in the city---Black Southerners in Gray, Richard Rollins
Yes there are nine things. Nine things that the north continues to sell as the lie while more and more evidence comes through the cracks from brave African-Americans who are just researching their family history.