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By MATT MAY, Staff
Posted on 04/18/2003 6:53:53 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
latest update: Friday, April 18, 2003 at 08:36 AM EDT
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click photo to enlarge By MATT MAY, Staff |
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By PETER GUINTA
Senior Writer
Most Civil War histories usually ignore the more than 70,000 African-Americans who served with Confederate armies.
People know little about them, but in 1861, noted black abolitionist Frederick Douglass said, "There are many colored men in the Confederate Army as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops and doing all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government."
Black soldiers' contributions to Union armies are already well known, popularized in Hollywood films such as "Glory" with Denzel Washington and Morgan Freeman.
However, suggesting that Southern blacks fought and died for a government that condoned and supported slavery is politically incorrect nowadays.
Nonetheless, at least three black Confederate veterans are buried in San Lorenzo Cemetery on U.S. 1 -- three of only six documented in the state.
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 click photo to enlarge By MATT MAY, Staff |
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Their memories -- and the memories of 46 white Confederate soldiers who died during that war -- will be honored Saturday, when Nelson Wimbush of Orlando, grandson of a black soldier who rode with Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, speaks at 10 a.m. at the Plaza de la Constitucion.
Wimbush is coming to St. Augustine to mark an early observance of Confederate Memorial Day by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, Gen. William Wing Loring Camp 1316, St. Augustine.
According to Jim Davis, a U.S. Army veteran of Vietnam and adjutant of the Loring chapter, the observance was moved from April 26, the anniversary of Gen. Joseph E. Johnson's surrender, to avoid conflict with Flagler College's graduation.
"After the speech, the names of all veterans listed on the Confederate Monument will be read aloud," Davis said.
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 click photo to enlarge Special to The Record |
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Loring, a veteran of the Seminole and Mexican wars, was raised in St. Augustine and accepted a commission in the Army of the Confederacy in 1862. His ashes are buried under a monument in the west Plaza, Cordova and King streets, raised in his honor in 1920 by the Anna Dummett Chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy.
"All of our veterans ought to be honored for the sacrifices they gave," Davis said. "This is our way of honoring the sacrifices of our Confederate veterans."
After reading the names, participants will be invited to San Lorenzo Cemetery to place flags on the graves of the 160 Confederates -- black and white -- buried there.
John Masters of St. Augustine, a retired U.S. Army colonel with combat service in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, has documented 9,000 Confederate graves in Florida. Only six of them are black, he said, because most records of the time did not list race.
"Graves of black Confederate veterans are scarce as hen's teeth," he said.
Most black Confederates worked as cooks, drivers or musicians, but at least 18,000 served as combat troops, Masters said.
"Black people don't want to believe that, but it's true," he said. "Nobody wanted to be a slave, but this was their home and the North was an aggressor nation."
All St. Augustine black Confederates survived the war.
Osborn was born here in 1843, the son of freed slaves. He was 18 when he enlisted in 1861 as a musician in Capt. John Lott Phillips' Company B, 3rd Florida Infantry Regiment, called the St. Augustine Blues.
He served in St. Augustine, Fernandina Beach, Tallahassee, Mobile, Ala., and Chattanooga, Tenn., fighting in the Battle of Perryville.
He was discharged in 1862 after his one-year enlistment ended and due to his ill health. He died in 1907.
In St. Augustine National Cemetery is buried a Samuel L. Osborn Jr., private in Company D, 33rd U.S. Colored Troops, who died in 1890. Masters believes this may be Emanuel's brother.
Welters, who served in the same company as Osborn and Papino, was also known under other names, such as Anthony Wetters, Tony Fontane and Antonio Huertas. A former slave, he was born in 1810 and enlisted as a fifer in 1861, when he was 51 years old.
He participated in the battles of Perryville, Murfreesboro, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Atlanta, Franklin and Nashville.
Returning to St. Augustine, after the war, Welters lived at 79 Bridge St. and became active in politics and with the E. Kirby Smith Camp, United Confederate Veterans. He died in 1902 at 92 years old.
Only a few facts are available about Papino. He was born in 1813 and enlisted as a musician and mechanic in 1861 at 48 years old but was discharged in November 1862.
His burial place is not precisely known, but a stone in San Lorenzo stands near his comrades' graves in memorial of his service.
Many blacks who fought for the Confederacy drew pensions for their service after the war. Arkansas, the only state which identified these individuals by race, documented 278 blacks who received such pensions.
Masters said Confederate Gen. E. Kirby Smith, who was born and raised in St. Augustine, had a black orderly, Alex Darns. After the war, the general paid for his former orderly to attend medical school.
Darns later became a successful doctor in Jacksonville.
"St. Augustine was occupied by the Union in 1862," Masters said. "Smith's mother was a Confederate spy. She and someone else cut down the flag pole in front of the arsenal (now National Guard headquarters) so they couldn't fly the Union flag on it."
1) In today's military, although service arms and combat arms are both important tasks, all service members today receive basic training and weapons. Black teamsters and cooks in the CSA army did not receive combat training or weapons.
2) Nevertheless their service was essential to the CSA army, and they would be remembered in pensions, memorials, etc. as such. Their service was so essential, the Union government offered emancipation in many ways to hurt the productivity of the CSA army, the same way Royal governor Dunmore offered emancipation in 1775 to hurt the revolutionary cause.
3) Between 1776 (when all southern states except SC had black soldiers and 1861, the attitudes about armed slaves changed drastically.
4) This drastic change was due to slave rebellions. In 1831 Nat Turner struck fear into Virginia. Slaves codes in this period made it difficult for blacks to own and use firearms.
5) Turner's rebellion, along with John Brown, made white southerners fearful of being killed due to the growing (although not a majority) northern abolitionist movement.
6) It is legitimate to surmise that poor white southerners who would never own slaves would defend slavery because they feared freed slaves would murder their families.
7) I have stated all known documentation of black confederates. I have stated that they may have exisited but the records are scanty. They are heresay...that blacks served the CSA even willingly is possible...even probable but its hard to prove they did in large numbers.
8) Nevertheless, by overemphasizing the black confederates you may fall into the trap of accepting multiculturalism to try to defeat the left. One major tenet of being anti-Confederate is that they were evil white males. So because Confederates were white males does that in and of itself make the Confederacy wrong? The Founding Fathers were all white men. The left also attacks them. By trying so hard to make the CSA multicultural you implicitly accept that anything all-white is wrong because it is white. Accept or reject the Confederacy based on their merits or faults of their day, not ours.
9) Even if we accept as fact that blacks served the CSA in large numbers, do you expect many African-Americans (who usually vote liberal) or the white McPhersonites (which I am not) to care? They will simply denounce them as Uncle Toms.
10) If black soldiers were so significant to the CSA why is it that white southerners only started celebrating them in the last 10 years? I agree that here and there Forrest and others mentioned them. It seems though that black confederates only came up as a response to Civil Rights leaders successfully attacking Confederate symbols. Why not defend Civil War history by avoiding presentism and judge or defend people by the standards of their time?
11) I reject the cultural attack on southerners by liberals. I defend the right to have these monuments. However, I advance that the black confederate myth cannot help that cause.
12) We should deplore slavery as wrong and recognize the achievements of black southerners in the past and the present. We should renounce segregation. Yes we should admit that bad things were done in the south as anywhere in the world. Racism is a world phenominum and is not exclusive south of mason-dixon. Many Americans of the past would be racist by our standards; that still does (or should) not lesson their achievements in history.
IMHO
YH
YH
When I first corrected your assertion on this unit your mistake could be classed as innocent error. However, since you persist, it qualifies as an outright lie. For those who missed it, this clown got his "info" from a reenactor website that contained NO source. Is your book this full of the same sort of material? Give us a real source for this claim or desist.
The Army ORs, ser. I, v. 44 show the unit served in the 17th Corps during the entire March to the Sea, most often as a lead element. MG Frank Blair, commander of the 17th Corps reported 16 killed, 73 wounded, and 19 missing from the 1 AL Cav for the campaign. (I, 44, 148). Doesn't sound like what you'd expect from a cushy assignment like HQ guard. You're not informed enough to understand how suspicious it sounds to claim an entire regiment was utilized as an HQ escort. Even more unlikely when the ORs show 7th Co. Ohio Sharpshooters as Sherman's HQ Guard (OR I, 44, 19). Do you know something Sherman's staff missed - like the presence of several hundred cavalrymen?
Here's what the 1 AL Cav was up to early in the campaign as described in correspondence from the 17th Corps AAG to George Spencer, Col of the 1st AL:
The major-general commanding [Blair] directs me to say to you that the outrages committed by your command during the march are becoming so common, and are of such an aggravated nature, that they call for some severe and instant mode of correction. Unless the pillaging of houses and wanton destruction of property by your regiment ceases at once, he will place every officer in it under arrest, and recommend them to the department commander for dishonorable dismissal from the service. (Or I, 44, 504-5)
Now tell me, do you believe a corps commander is going to give direct orders to a unit serving as his boss' escort. Not possible. Ever hear of chain of command?
So, you see, all you have backing you up is your persistence and your casual aquaintance with the facts. Still waiting on that source.
" There were never 70,000 African-Americans who served. They were never even able to get one battalion of negro soldiers together."
The number may have been as high as 90,000, but you keep on spinning your Yankee myth. You sound just like Baghdad Bob ... " There are no Americans in Baghdad, they are lost out in the desert!" You obviously know nothing of the culture of the Antebellum South, nor of the relationships between black and white Southerners before Lincoln's invasion. You take all of your opinions from the shrill parrots of the Yankee Abolition movement (Harriet Beecher Stowe comes to mind), whom I might add, knew nothing of Southern culture other than that they hated Southerners. Before you start spewing the racist inuendos, I will state for the record that I am not a racist, I am a historian who seeks truth, and for every story there is always two sides. You need to develope a little common sense to figure out who has nothing to hide, and who needs to put a slant on things to justify their own moral high ground. Do some digging into hard facts, what you find might change your perception of historical events.
1.manumission contingent on honorable service.... 2.to ingratiate themselves to whites in case the South won.... 3.revenge; their families suffered at the hands of the Union Army too..... 4.adventure and travel; same as today's recruits... 5.patriotism; blacks have fought in all our wars...
"....but its hard to prove they did in large numbers."
agreed
lol, and it never matters what the real topic is...As I posted once before, I truly believe that when Walt enters Heaven (I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt), the first thing he'll do is demand to know why the Almighty is sitting on old Abe's throne.
Don't tell that to Company K of the 15th Illinois Cavalry. Sherman didn't think very much of the 1st Alabama US Cavalry. One time during the Georgia campaign he actually ordered one of his commanders to have them move their camp so he wouldn't even have to look at them as he passed through the Army on his route. He complained about their loitering and appearance, making it clear that even the sight of them upset him. The 1st Alabama US Cavalry was an unattached unit mostly serving in Slocum's Left Wing at that time.
And ya know,,,,I don't think anything will.
This might surprise you, but I grew up knowing this. I always heard it was brother against brother and father against son. There were many Southerners who didn't resign from the US Army at the outbreak. One of the most notable is the Rock of Chickamauga, George H. Thomas. No ground breaking revelation here.
What most fail to take into account when looking at slavery as the cause of the WTBS (and it was A cause), is the depth of the potential economic upheaval. Although the leading Southerners' (politicians/plantation owners) arrogance and rush to rebellion was the main catalyst for firing on Ft. Sumter, their mindset must be considered. What was the plan for emancipation of slaves? What would become of their investment. Slaves were property and there was much invested in their upkeep and maintenace. Who would share the monetary loss if their property (slaves) was liquidated by federal mandate (federal subsidies?)? The nonslave holder had equal concerns that had to be addressed...a potentially flooded job market, by skilled and unskilled laborers, most likely willing to work for much less. This is where this issue isn't just about slavery, but economics. Answers to these questions would have been interesting, but both the CSA and the USA took the road to war before alternative solutions were found.
The social issues resulting from a caste-like society were complex. The country had been segregated (for the most part) since its inception. The forced and rapid desegregation of the South after the war was the main reason Reconstruction was so bitter. Probably the reason that it stayed segregated into the 1960s (still that way in many places throughout the country...North and South). Its a shame that these issues weren't worked out peacefully, 600,000 dead is a high price for poor communication and arrogance (on both sides).
The WBTS was a watershed event in OUR history. Trying to paint it as black and white (no pun intended) is an oversimplification of the most complex event/era in OUR history. It also keeps US from learning the causeS of the event, and robs us of the insight to better understand ourselves as a county. Blacks served on both sides, I'm sure. Blacks were kept at arms length by both sides, too. What was true then is still true today...you can make people live together, but you can't make them accept each other or get along, unless there is a co-willingness to try. Hopefully, we'll get there some day.
Negative. There were free blacks serving in these positions, too. Contrary to popular myth, not all blacks in the South were slaves (cruise through New Orleans sometime and vist the historical markers around the city, free blacks were well established). Again, trying to frame this complex event in black and white is a drastic oversimplification of THE most complex event in OUR history.
My gg grandfather's slave Bas went to war with him. I don't know if he was officially "on the strength" but he was there and he at least at times carried a rifle. After the war he stayed with the family and then started his own business. His wife Emily was my gg grandmother's lady's maid until the day she died, some time in the 'teens.
This is all anecdotal, but there you are.
They fell out favor with Sherman for following his order to destroy everything in the army's path on the infamous March to the Sea?
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