[WhiskeyPapa]

The four million blacks in the South who remained under CSA control were SLAVES.

So?

Slavery is wrong.

"There seems to be no evidence that the Negro soldiers authorized by the Confederate Government (March 13, 1865) ever went into battle. This gives rise to the question as to whether or not any Negroes ever fought in the Confederate ranks. It is possible that some of the free Negro companies organized in Louisiana and Tennessee in the early part of the war took part in local engagements; but evidence seems to the contrary.

(Authors note: If they did, their action was not authorized by the Confederate Government.) A company of "Creoles," some of whom had Negro blood, may have been accepted in the Confederate service at Mobile. Secretary Seddon conditioned his authorization of the acceptance of the company on the ability of those "Creoles" to be naturally and properly distinguished from Negroes. If persons with Negro Blood served in Confederate ranks as full-fledged soldiers, the per cent of Negro blood was sufficiently low for them to pass as whites."

(Authors note: Henry Clay Warmoth said that many Louisiana mulattoes were in Confederate service but they were "not registered as Negroes." War Politics and Reconstruction, p. 56)

--p. 160-61, SOUTHERN NEGROES, Wiley

"The slave's alleged contentment in slavery and loyalty to the Confederacy, so elaborately celebrated on the political stump during the years after the overthrow of Reconstruction, had not quite convinced their masters during the war."

Genovese, "Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World The Slaves Made", 1974,p. 128

"Under prodding from General Lee, President Davis and his government finally decided to face up to a hopeless situation and to reach fro the dreaded expedient (authorizing black soldiers). But the decision came too late for implementation and for the historic test it would have created. The howls of rage from Davis's opponents, even faced with the annihilation of their dreams, remain revealing both for their implicit fears and for the tenacity of the dying order's central myth.

Roared Howell Cobb: I think that the proposition to make soldiers of our slaves is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. . . You cannot make soldiers of slaves or slaves of soldiers. . . The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.

The Richmond Examiner joined the assault:

"We have been accustomed to think in this Southern country that the best friends of the Negroes were their own masters. . . But now the President of the Confederate States opens quite another view of the matter. According to his message it is a rich reward for faithful services to turn a Negro wild. Slavery, then, in the eyes of Mr. Davis, keeps the Negro out of something which he has the capacity to enjoy. . . If the case be so, then slavery is originally, radically, incurably wrong and sinful, and the sum of barbarism."

ibid, p. 129

Ask yourself why these folks were so upset, if as you say Negroes had been fighting as soldiers in the armies of the CSA all along? They were there, how did they miss it? -- From the ACW moderated newsgroup

There is no credible evidence of more than a handful of black rebel soldiers.

Walt

[4CJ]

There is no credible evidence of more than a handful of black rebel soldiers.

I'll stick with "Black Confederates in Grey", the "Official Records" and other such evidence instead of AOL forums. What is the limit to what would be recognized? 10,000? A thousand? 100? Ten? 1? You can choose to dishonour their service, I'll commemorate it.

[safisoft]

There is no credible evidence of more than a handful of black rebel soldiers

There is no credible evidence that "slavery is wrong". We may not like it. We may find it ethically unsupportable, but to say it is "wrong" implies a moral backdrop. Look to the moral standards that define our laws and you will find no support for your statement. You see, you can blow on and on about your opinion - cut and paste etc. But your statements are just as subject to your own pretexts. In this very thread you said that anything can be proven from the Bible. Can you prove your absolutist statement that "slavery is wrong" from the Bible? I'll be interested to see if you can cut and paste from the Bible. If not the Bible, is there some other (if there is such a thing) document that supports your statement? Maybe you didn't mean "wrong" - maybe you meant "not nice".

There were many slaves and freed blacks that fought. That you deny it means nothing to the fact. That you can find some textual "evidence" means nothing to the fact - you discount any evidence other than what you cut and paste. You yourself said that one can prove anything from your Lincoln's statements, yet you do not afford the same right to those who argue against your drivel. The fact that the Northern "liberators" never fought side by side with blacks and considered them "unequal" means nothing to you. The fact that the same great "liberators" who you laud as heroes went on after the war to indulge in an orgy of destruction in the West that cannot be characterized as anything less than the genocide of a race means nothing to you. Too bad your heroes only considered "blacks" as people and not Native Americans... Fire away with the cut and paste.