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
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
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.
certainly in today's "PC-kulture" the LIBS of all sorts will not accept back CSA veterans, BUT that does NOT denigrate OR deny the honorable service of the many thousands of blacks/indians/asians/hispanics/jews, who wore the gray.
if you choose to believe the 1st-person accounts of NUMEROUS yankee officers who saw MANY armed black veterans, it is difficult to accept your contention that they were something other than soldiers, sailors & marines.
on the march to Gettsburg, a yankee COL of medical troops said that he saw "MANY (emphasis mine) stinking n______s in the rebel ranks, armed with the same weapons & wearing the same filthy gray rags as all the other damned rebels." HE estimated that the large unit he saw passing his location was between 20-25% black. ( i refuse to argue about what HE SAW, as i was not there!)
as to celebrating the service of black CSA veterans ONLY for the last 10 years, that is patently FALSE. no less a person than the CDR of the UCV in 1914 spoke at the dedication of the Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery about the service of black veterans; indeed he pointed out the figure on the monument of a uniformed, armed black rebel soldier! the city of New Orleans erected a statue to the black CSA veterans of LA in the 1920s, which was the height of membership, NOT coincidentaly, of the KKK.
it is only the racists, bigots,damnyankees & LIBs who deny/denigrate the service of NON-white Confederates! NOT southrons! ONE of the LIES of PC-scholarship is to say that no slaves wore the gray;this is a lie of omission, because most of the liars know full well that the veterans were FREEMEN (slaves, not being free persons, could not take the oath of enlistment).
BTW, at the 50th commeration of the battle of Gettsburg, the National Park Service attempted to stop the many black rebels who had come for the re-enactment of Pickett's Charge from participating; the WHITE rebels told the officials that if their black compatriots in arms were excluded from the "slow-motion charge", that the whites would also not participate!
FRee dixie,sw