You forgot to quote anything or identify the famous author who is your source of authority.Why would I? Everything is at the link. Unlike you, I don't feel the need to flood our generous hosts' resources with tons of spam repeating what can be found simply by clicking on the link and reading.
Here I come to save the day!You would do better to save FR some bandwidth by just making your point without spamming the forum with other people's writings that happen to agree with you.
Actually, I quoted YOUR source, something you had failed to do.
Your quote is not from my #479 which starts:
https://cwmemory.com/2006/06/08/blacks-in-gray-or-enough-is-enough/Blacks in Gray or "Enough is Enough""Just because someone can publish their beliefs in a book doesn't mean the rest of us have to accept their conclusions. It wasn't 300,000. It wasn't even near the 100,000+ slaves that escaped to join the Union Army.
Your only exalted source is this tripe from your progressive Bostonian Kevin Levin. Let us examine what you dragged up and brought in here. You are free to attempt to pass off this radical partisan as a serious scholar, whose words carry significant weight.
The above pertains to the hiding of your liberal source Kevin D. Levin, the radical progressive liberal from Boston.
It is woodpusher #480 (23 Oct 2021) which starts as below, and pertains to your other hidden, unidentified source of authority, Sam Smith.
Black Confederates: Truth and LegendYou forgot to quote anything or identify the famous author who is your source of authority. Here I come to save the day!
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/black-confederates-truth-and-legend
Black Confederates: Truth and LegendThe Civil War was a fiery prism at the center of American society. Every life entered the prism at its own angle and was refracted in its own way.
By Sam Smith
All together now. Who the heck is Sam Smith?
Sam SmithA native of Nashville, Tenn., and a graduate of the University of North Carolina, Sam Smith worked with the Civil War Trust’s K-12 educational programs. An award-winning board game designer, Smith has also written or co-written more than 50 articles on Civil War subjects, and is a frequent lecturer at the National Museum for American Jewish Military History.
As you quoted nothing from your appeal to authority, I shall quote from what he had to say.
And I proceeded to illuminate the discussion by quoting what YOUR SOURCE had to say in the article for which you provided a link, but withheld the name of the author and the entirety of the contents.
You did not even reference anything Sam Smith claimed. Let us try a Sam Smith claim.
After the Proclamation, the refugees in the contraband camps, along with free black people throughout the North, began to enlist in the Union Army in even greater proportion than Northern white men.
The operative word here is enlist. It seems many whites were engaged in the largest mostly peaceful protest in American history — against the draft. They were even hanging strange fruit from the lamp posts. Large numbers were being conscripted, because as Frederick Douglass put it, "they were willing to fight for the Union, but that they were not willing to fight for the freedom of the negroes; and thus it was made difficult to procure enlistments...."
Frederick Douglass, The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass From 1817-1882 (1882), Chapter XII, HOPE FOR THE NATION.
The Proclamation itself was like Mr. Lincoln throughout. It was framed with a view to the least harm and the most good possible in the circumstances, and with especial consideration of the latter. It was thoughtful, cautious, and well guarded at all points. While he hated slavery, and really desired its destruction, he always proceeded against it in a manner the least likely to shock or drive from him any who were truly in sympathy with the preservation of the Union, but who were not friendly to emancipation. For this he kept up the distinction between loyal and disloyal slaveholders, and discriminated in favour of the one, as against the other. In a word, in all that he did, or attempted, he made it manifest that the one great and all commanding object with him, was the peace and preservation of the Union, and that this was the motive and main spring of all his measures. His wisdom and moderation at this point were for a season useful to the loyal cause in the border States, but it may be fairly questioned, whether it did not chill the Union ardour of the loyal people of the North in some degree, and diminish, rather than increase, the sum of our power against the rebellion: for moderate, cautious and guarded as was this proclamation, it created a howl of indignation and wrath amongst the rebels and their allies. The old cry was raised by the copperhead organs of “an abolition war,” and a pretext was thus found for an excuse for refusing to enlist, and for marshalling all the negro prejudice of the North on the rebel side. Men could say they were willing to fight for the Union, but that they were not willing to fight for the freedom of the negroes; and thus it was made difficult to procure enlistments or to enforce the draft. This was especially true of New York, where there was a large Irish population. The attempt to enforce the draft in that city was met by mobs, riot, and bloodshed. There is perhaps no darker chapter in the whole history of the war, than this cowardly and bloody uprising in July, 1863. For three days and nights New York was in the hands of a ferocious mob, and there was not sufficient power in the government of the country or of the city itself, to stay the hands of violence, and the effusion of blood. Though this mob was nominally against the draft which had been ordered, it poured out its fiercest wrath upon the coloured people and their friends. It spared neither age nor sex; it hanged negroes simply because they were negroes; it murdered women in their homes, and burned their homes over their heads; it dashed out the brains of young children against the lamp posts; it burned the coloured orphan asylum, a noble charity on the corner of Fifth Avenue, and scarce allowing time for the helpless two hundred children to make good their escape, plundered the building of every valuable piece of furniture; and coloured men, women, and children were forced to seek concealment in cellars or garrets, or wheresoever else it could be found, until this high carnival of crime and reign of terror should pass away.
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We all know there were blacks who served in the confederacy in various roles and for various reasons. The problem is you haven't posted anything to substaniate your 300,000 estimate.
We all know I made no such estimate. I shall now make an estimate. I estimate that your level of desperation is about to break all bounds of reason.
Richard Rollins, in Black Confederates at Gettysburg, noted,
This lack of interest in black Confederates began to change just a few years ago. Two scholalrly articles have appeared, the best of which, Arthur W. Bergeron's "Free Men of Color in Gray," graced the pages of Civil War History.12 A few articles have also been published in magazines aimed at a larger general reading public.13 One book has alread been written and at least two others are in the works.One scholar [woodpusher: Ervin L. Jordan, Jr.; see footnote 15] has estimated that up to 25% (65,000 out of 261,000) of free negroes in the South and 15% (600,000 out of 4 million) of slaves sided with the South at one time during the war.15 Whatever the actual figures, it will be difficult to conclusively prove any estimate.
12. Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr., "Free Men of Color in Grey," Civil War History XXXII (1986), 247-255. See also Mary F. Berry, "Negro Troops in Blue and Gray: The Louisiana Native Guards, 1861-1863," Louisiana History 8 (1967),165-190. Most of the latter is devoted to the Native Guards who were Union troops, not the Confederates. Alexia J. Helsley, "Black Confederates," South Carolina Historical Magazine 74 (July, 1973), 184-187.
13. J. K. Obatala, "The Unlikely Story of Blacks Who Were Loyal To Dixie," Smithsonian 9 (1979), 94-101; Wayne R. Austerman, ''Virginia's Black Confederates," Civil War Quarterly VIII (1987), 46-54; Greg Tyler, "Rebel Drummer Henry Brown, Civil War Times Illustrated February, 1989, 22-23; Scott E. Sallee, "Black Soldier of the Confederacy," < i>Blue and Gray 1990, 24-25; Greg Tyler, "Article Brings Notice To A Unique Rebel, Civil War Times Illustrated May/June 1990, 57,69; Edward C. Smith, "Calico, Black and Gray: Women and Blacks in the Confederacy," Civil War XXIIl (1990), 10-16; and Jeff Carroll, "Dignity, Courage and Fidelity," Confederate VeteranNovember/December 1990, 26-27.
14. H. C. Blackerby, Blacks in Blue and Gray: Afro-American Service in the Civil War (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: Portals Press, 1973); Ervin Jordan, Jr., is working on Black Confederates in Virginia and Charles K. Barrow, of Atlanta, is researching a wider topic.
15. Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., quoted in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "Virginia' section, November 5, 1990, 1,7.
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. made an estimate, as noted by Richard Rollins.
Blackerby is further cited at footnotes 16, 20, 47 and 50.
Arthur W. Bergeron, Jr., is Historian for the Louisiana Office of State Parks and formerly served as Curator at the Port Hudson State Commemorative Area. A native of Louisiana, he received an M. A. and Ph. D. in American History from Louisiana State University. He is a member of several professional organizations and was the recipient of the Charles L. Dufour Award of the New Orleans Civil War Round Table in 1993.
Dr. Bergeron is the editor of The Civil War Reminiscences of Major Silas T. Grisamore, C.S.A (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993), and author of Confederate Mobile, 1861-1865 (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1991) and Guide to Louisiana Confederate Military Units, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., is the Associate Curator of Technical Services, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library. He specializes in Confederate history and is the author of The 19th Virginia (1987), Charlottesville and the University of Virginia In The Civil War (1988), and Black Confederates, Afro-Yankees: The History of the African-American Experience in Civil War Virginia (forthcoming). He earned a Bachelor of Arts cum laude from Norfolk State University and was a three-time recipient of the Floyd W. Crawford Award for Distinguished Historical Scholarship. He received a Master of Arts from Old Dominion University.
Richard Rollins is Vice-President of MidRange Software Solutions and Editor of Rank and File Publications, Redondo Beach, California. He received a Ph.D. in American Intellectual History from Michigan State University and taught at Michigan State, Ohio State University, Carroll College, and the University of Southern California. He is the author of The Long Journey of Noah Webster and The Autobiographies of Noah Webster (1989), and editor of Pickett's Charge: Eyewitness Accounts (1994) and A Day With Mr. Lincoln: Essays in Honor of the Lincoln Exhibit at the Huntington Library (1994). His essay on “Black Confederates at Gettysburg” originally appeared in Gettysburg Magazine in 1992.
I'm not sure how that measures up to your invoked authority of the famous and renowned Kevin D. Levin and Sam Smith.
H.C. Blackerby, Blacks in Blue and Gray, 1st Ed., 1979, in Appendix C at page 121.
Records indicate that 300,000 or more blacks served with Confederate armies part of the time. Some were soldiers. Others served in many ways, from horsehoers to guards.
H.C. Blackerby at 39:
A single volume can tell but little of Confederate black heroism, most of it living only in tradition. The honor roll is long, while torn and tattered, in bits and pieces, here and there, hidden in musty archives, in diaries, in family records, in old cellars and attics.Memorials honoring the war service of blacks to the Confederacy can be found in Virginia, in Mississippi, in South Carolina, and elsewhere.
The loyalty of blacks to the Confederacy continues to embarrass blacks and whites. It was only natural that blacks reacted to the war as whites did, and if history is told as it was it will be recorded (if we dismiss the technicalities) that there may be as many black sons and daughters of the Confederacy as there are whites. But if it be insisted that only those duly enrolled and armed blacks qualify as Confederates, there are tens of thousands of Negroes who are living descendants of blacks in gray.
Blackerby at 40 makes an interesting point:
That most blacks supported the Confederacy is apparent if we count the number of memorials honoring blacks’ service to the Confederacy standing in the former slave states as contrasted with no monuments in the Lincoln states extolling Union black soldiers. The granite and marble shafts pointing heavenward to the angels while paying homage to the blacks who served the Lost Cause are in their rightful places.
As for documentation, apparently you have not bothered to look at Blackerby's book before dismissing it. For Louisiana Black Native Guards, see page 101 et seq. For Black Confederate Pensioners, see Appendix C.
See also, Ricardo J. Rodriguez, Black Confederates In The U.S. Civil War, A Compiled List of African-Americans Who Served the Confederacy, JAR Press (2010), pp. 2-224.
OK, I got him crossed with someone else. I stand corrected. At least the Confederacy didn't get hold of him or he would have been executed by order from Jefferson Davis.
The above pertains to the hiding of your liberal source Kevin D. Levin, the radical progressive liberal from Boston.
How am I hiding anything? I posted the link, and you figured out how to click on it to see who wrote it and what he said.
And I proceeded to illuminate the discussion by quoting what YOUR SOURCE had to say in the article for which you provided a link, but withheld the name of the author and the entirety of the contents.
How did I withhold anything? You clearly knew how to click on a link, so everything was there for you to read. Why to I need to flood FR's bandwidth when all you have to do is click on the link to see what's there and who wrote it?
You did not even reference anything Sam Smith claimed. Let us try a Sam Smith claim. "After the Proclamation, the refugees in the contraband camps, along with free black people throughout the North, began to enlist in the Union Army in even greater proportion than Northern white men."
What is it you think I need to reference here?
The operative word here is enlist. It seems many whites were engaged in the largest mostly peaceful protest in American history — against the draft. They were even hanging strange fruit from the lamp posts. Large numbers were being conscripted, because as Frederick Douglass put it, "they were willing to fight for the Union, but that they were not willing to fight for the freedom of the negroes; and thus it was made difficult to procure enlistments....The attempt to enforce the draft in that city was met by mobs, riot, and bloodshed. There is perhaps no darker chapter in the whole history of the war, than this cowardly and bloody uprising in July, 1863. For three days and nights New York was in the hands of a ferocious mob, and there was not sufficient power in the government of the country or of the city itself, to stay the hands of violence, and the effusion of blood.
This was in New York City. It proves what, besides that Frederick Douglas was disgusted at what he saw in New York City?
Anyway, let's look at some numbers. About 75% of military aged white men in the South served in the Confederate Army, while about 50% of military aged white men in the North served in the Union Army. For the Union, that came out to about 2.2 million. The Union Army wasn't hurting for white men, regardless of what happened in New York City.
All of the numbers on both sides are estimates.
About 100,000 whites from Southern states joined the Union forces.
Here are some links. Hint. If you click on them, there shouldn't be any problems with my sources being hidden from you.
CIVIL WAR SESQUICENTENNIAL: Unionism
Size of the Union and Confederate Armies
On a side note, both armies had to deal with desertions. The Union Army had a problem with desertions early on, due to its poor military leadership.
So you see, this is much more complex than just quoting what happened in New York City, or pasting numbers from a book you agree with.
This in no way meant to dimish Frederick Douglas' reporting on what he saw.
As for documentation, apparently you have not bothered to look at Blackerby's book before dismissing it.
I did read all of your post including that. I would have expected that my summarization and rebuttal on key parts would have made that clear.