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Re State Militias:
Not true that both north and south were militia on loan to central governments.

The southern confederacy was just that - Texas troops fought as Texas troops etc. The north drew locally but was far more centralilzed in all other regards.
The southern states largely maintained control over who commanded the individual units, how they were armed, and what kind of training they had...piecemeal.

I believe the states could recall their forces at any time and I believe that many state troops enlisted in "the Confederate Army" only after completing their state enlistment.

"States Rights" is not just some cracker excuse for not going along with Washington's whims - it was in the core of Confederation and had been the original intent in the American revolution. It took ten years for the US to morph from confederation to union and that change, including the ability of the federal government to tax and redistribute those revenues, was one of the causes of the war between North and South.

(As best I can tell, I had a very early relative - not in the south - who was so unhappy with that change that he picked up and returned to England.)

It's possible to say that the South lost because of adherence to the original tenants of America's revolution.
It's also true to say that the original big state/small state, industrial/agrarian split (that gave us a senate and a house of representatives) was only decided in the war between the small(area)/dense(population)/industrial northern faction and the large(area)/thinly populated/agrarian south. The north had people, tax dollars, and armories, the south had land, revenue from sales of crops more than goods, and relied on import or local small manufacture.

As to black troops and service workers in the southern forces:
Remember that slave could earn freedom, many had done so before 1862 and many were emancipated during the fight. Either serving someone in the army or serving as a member or in support of the army was probably a means to free status long before Lincoln's effort to start a slave revolt.

Furthermore; some of our commentators might take note that it was only 1947 when blacks in the US military were allowed into non-service units and given access to rank and honors. (The guy in the Pearl Harbor story was a steward and several medals were NOT awarded because of race during WW2 and as late as Korea.

Remember that slave could earn freedom, many had done so before 1862 and many were emancipated during the fight.

You won't show that by appeal to the record.

Meanwhile, the Alabama constitution of 1861 FORBADE the freeing of ANY slaves, and that sentiment was common in the so-called CSA.

"The main excitant impulse was fear, and they wanted to protect the institution, not to penalize the individual. It was because the free Negro menaced the institution, because manumission undermined it, because all self-help systems for the slave corroded It, that pro- slavery men urged new legislation. Their object was not to surround slavery with an atmosphere of terror. It was to shore up an institution built on quick- sand and battered bv all the forces of world sentiment and emergent industrialism.

Ruffin was personally the kindliest of masters. The unhappy fact was that it had become impossible to safeguard slavery without brutal violence to countless individuals; either the institution had to be given up, or the brutality committed.

The legislators of Louisiana and Arkansas, of Alabama and Georgia, with humane men like Ruffin and the Eastern Shore planters of Maryland, had faced this alternative. They had chosen the institution. The Richmond Examiner stated their choice in unflinching language:

It is all an hallucination to suppose that we are ever going to get rid of slavery, or that it will ever be desirable to do so. It is a thing that we cannot do without;that is righteous, profitable, and permanent, and that belongs to Southern society as inherently, intrinsically, and durably as the white race itself. Southern men should act as if the canopy of heaven were inscribed with a covenant, in letters of fire, >that the negro is here, and here forever—is our property, and ours forever—is never to be emancipated—is to be kept hard at work and in rigid subjection all his days.

This has the ring of the Richmond publiisher Fitzhugh, and would have been repudiated by many Southerners. But Jefferson Davis said, July 6, 1859, "There is not probably an intelligent mind among our own citizens who doubts either the moral or the legal right of the institution of African slavery." Senator A. G. Brown said September 4, 1858, that he wanted Cuban, Mexican, and Central American territory for slavery; "I would spread the blessings of slavery . . . to the uttermost ends of the earth."

Such utterances treated slavery as permanent, and assumed that it must be defended at every point."

-- The Emergence of Lincoln vol II, by Allen Nevins

See Moosefart. Ignorance and misinformation abounds.

Don't you want the straight scoop?

Walt

The guy in the Pearl Harbor story was a steward and several medals were NOT awarded because of race during WW2 and as late as Korea.

As late as Korea, and Vietnam. And of those that were deservedly awarded, there are some stories both tragic and disgusting that go with them. That of Dwight Johnson from B company of the Forth Infantry Division's 1/69th Armor comes to mind.

Anyone know if there were any black recipients of the Southern Cross of honour, the Confederacy's MOH equivalent? I would expect not, but certainly couldn't back that SWAG up.

-archy-/-

Remember that slave could earn freedom, many had done so before 1862 and many were emancipated during the fight. Either serving someone in the army or serving as a member or in support of the army was probably a means to free status long before Lincoln's effort to start a slave revolt.

Whoa there, sunshine. I'm going to have to ask for some evidence to support those claims, from the emancipation issue clear through the slave revolt charge.

Furthermore; some of our commentators might take note that it was only 1947 when blacks in the US military were allowed into non-service units and given access to rank and honors. (The guy in the Pearl Harbor story was a steward and several medals were NOT awarded because of race during WW2 and as late as Korea.

Nonsense. Black combat units existed in the U.S. Army from the Civil War clear through the Second World War. Following the Civil war, there were the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry which served on the frontier, in Cuba and in Mexico with Pershing. During WWI, the 92nd Infantry Division was all black, and black American regiments were attached to French divisions and served with the French Army. During World War II there were two or three black divisions, as well as black battalions, regiments, and squadrons in the Army. Your claim is wrong.