Posted on 06/18/2002 8:36:27 PM PDT by ex-Texan
Edited on 07/12/2004 3:54:48 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Your contemptuous speech about "overriding fear of the black Yankee horde stampeding" suggests you've never lived in the South and wouldn't care to, no matter what. I'd take a look at that contempt, if I were you. The fact of entire divisions of black federal troops' service seems to corroborate the perception you despise, rather than your characterization of it.
You can't blame a fellow who's been electrocuted a couple of times for being jumpy around electricity -- it's cruel, and your willingness to be cruel absolves cruelty in others. It even provokes it.
Concerning the presence of black troops in the CSA requires evidence, and some people have made some submissions. Your argument a priori that to permit such formations to be recognized in the CSA, or individual blacks to be enrolled in some other units, is impossible because inconsistent with contemporary Southern hobgoblins, can't weigh more heavily in the scales than eyewitness evidence.
I've merely tried to formulate some sort of rationale to account for the presence of black soldiers in the CSA, which requires a recension or refinement of what I think Southerners' views were in 1862, about blacks serving under arms. I speculated that there were pathways of reasoning that might have sufficed to allow white soldiers to accept the occasional black soldier in the camp, or the white corps commander to accept a regiment or brigade of ex-slaves or freedmen, or free blacks, or whoever these people were that the eyewitness placed in Maryland, on campaign with Jackson, in 1862. I wouldn't have expected it, I wouldn't have looked for it, but now that someone has excavated a quote, it remains for us to ask for more evidence and to rethink if necessary, in order to account for their presence if shown to be historical.
That is most likely the reason why black Union troops fared so badly at their hands.
And conversely. They were pretty casual about taking prisoners, too.
My point was that everything you said that might explain the southern antipathy towards black Union soldiers would have to translate towards black soldiers of any type. I just cannot see how the fears you mention, which I don't doubt, could allow southerners to readily accept armed black confederate combat soldiers. In short, you explanation only reinforces my position that black confederate combat soldiers were almost nonexistent.
As I said, the matter wants more investigation. Grissom's argument about a baggage-train of porters and bottle-washers is halfway credible.....but it fails to explain why an army scrupulous about not accepting blacks to serve in arms, would be careless about letting them trail along behind the army in a group, on their own, with weapons. I don't get it. So they were carrying Massa's weapons? Well, just a second -- and he was at the head of the column, and his weapons were with his man, in the train? Doubt it! So whose weapons were they? If the Negroes seen with Jackson were carrying them for their own account, to protect themselves or for waging war or protecting the train, then their carrying raises a problem for people who, as you do, think that Civil-War era Southerners would have been as paranoid about the blacks' being armed for any reason, or in anyone's army. Your side has some 'splainin' to do. The inconvenient assertion is:
a) The were carrying weapons.
b) They were traveling with Jackson's Corps.
c) They were in a body, somewhere in Jackson's column.
d) They were black.
The comment about distinguishing European from Semitic Jews was odd -- it has a whiff of Neo-Nazism about it. I've seen an article somewhere on a DNA study involving Jewish populations or Israeli populations and Palestinians, and I don't remember what exactly it said. There was something about shared, or not shared, DNA between the European and Ashkenazic populations, but I don't remember what it was, and it was only mildly interesting at the time. Why Grissom should prick up his ears and make a big deal about such a distinction suggests he's been reading the wrong people -- IMHO. Since you asked.
"The fact was patent, and rather, interesting when considered in connection with the horror rebels express at the suggestion of black soldiers being employed for the national defense." Again, if black combat soldiers were common in the confederate army then why the revulsion at the thought of black Union combat soldiers? The clear explanation is the thought of any black combat soldier, North or south, was offensive. So the blacks Dr. Steiner saw were supporting the army, not a part of it.
You've inverted the meaning of his statement, by force majeure practically, to fit your a priori position that a) Southerners were (are) total racists and bigots (and fill in the rest), and so therefore b) they were incapable of doing/countenancing x. They can't have put up with x, and so therefore someone's direct observation of x must have been mistaken.
The quotation is, from your own post, "The fact was patent, and rather, interesting when considered in connection with the horror rebels express at the suggestion of black soldiers being employed for the national defense." Well, what fact is that? "over 3,000 negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie knives, dirks, etc. And were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army."
Doesn't get plainer than that, N-S. They were armed. They were traveling with the army, and they were armed as soldiers. How do you get to the idea that they can't have been soldiers because my a priori argument won't allow them to have been? That is what I read in your posts, over and over again. I think it tokens a major inflexibility in your thinking. AKA "bigotry" -- the unwillingness (per the dictionary) to reconsider opinions in the light of new evidence. I'm considering, but you refuse to.
And for the difference in Southern attitudes toward black soldiers, if that's what they were (and it sure sounds like it, from the good doctor's observation), there is the simple matter of the difference between our'n and Mr. Lincoln's army which, if it contained formations of black soldiers, would have replicated in fact, in cold hard concrete facts shod with steel, the avenging army that John Brown wanted to unleash on Virginia and the South when he seized the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, not to preoccupy it, but to arm the slaves for a bloody, Nat Turneresque, Dessalinesque mass rising that would sweep away slavery on a flood tide of major massacres of Southerners -- Haiti writ large. I would tend myself to rather disfavor that kind of outcome for the South.
How reassuring to the white Southerner, then, that his own Negroes (and we don't know whether these were slaves, freedmen, free blacks, or all three) would serve in the army, as servants or as volunteers, and not in that other army.
As I said before, I would like to see more recovered evidence. But your position would seem to be that you don't -- that you know the answers already, and that you would prefer not to be disturbed in your opinions about the South and Southerners. You'd rather stick with the political caricature Martin Luther King marketed about Southerners. You wouldn't believe a used-car salesman, but you'd believe a political agitator's "truth", his action message, over the evidence of your own eyes, or in this case the word of an eyewitness. The South wasn't what Martin Luther King said it was, except when you poked it with a stick and called it names. And yet you seem to require what King needed, that the South be all bad, all the time. That is a caricature, and a caricature is a kind of lie by exaggeration, like Michelangelo's "David".
Aside from accounts of captured/freed blacks REFUSING to serve the yankee armies - several state very vehemently that their only desire was to be fighting on the side of the Confederacy. Luminaries such as Booker T. Washington acknowledge the love and devotion shared by slaves and the masters - he cites this from personal experience.
The Slave Narratives have numerous accounts of "good" relations between slave and masters. One that I previously posted opined that she wished her master would buy hundreds more slaves. Others document their living conditions, Sundays off for church, a week off around Christmas, spare time one their assigned chores were done, etc. Anyone that has ever worked on a farm knows that a lot of the time you're standing around, besides planting and harvesting - there's a lot of slack time in between.
Sure, there were some that had bad conditions, just as there are people today that abuse their own children, ask anyone involved in fostering/social services. But today we have the stereotype of the abused slaves as being the norm. If all the slaves were so badly mistreated we would have suffered slave revolts long before. It's ludicrous to assume that if living conditions were so bad that blacks could not rise up in revolution (almost a 1:1 ratio). Poor whites were considered to be beneath most blacks.
What's more evident is that the South was much more integrated that the North. And I think this explains the difference in acconts of Northern/Confederate blacks serving. In the North, entire regiments were segregated and comprised exclusively of blacks. Yet in the South, due to integration, the blacks were spread out across the army. It's quite easy to pick out a regiment, yet when intermingled among an army the numbers just don't stand out.
How many more free blacks did serve the yankee armies- there was one regiment of free blacks from Louisiana who joined the Union army once they occupied New Orleans. Thousands of slaves followed the Union army when they came to their area, leaving their former masters. I would guess that most black "loyalty" to the Confederacy arose from fear of being on the unpopular or losing side- if the South had won, they could be reenslaved or worse. Once it became clear that the North was winning, most blacks in the South sided with the Union.
The Slave Narratives have numerous accounts of "good" relations between slave and masters. One that I previously posted opined that she wished her master would buy hundreds more slaves. Others document their living conditions, Sundays off for church, a week off around Christmas, spare time one their assigned chores were done, etc.
The narratives also have accounts of abuse and severe hardship suffered by slaves, which neo-Confederates like yourself tend to ignore or minimize. Even many of the slaves who had "good" masters tended to emphasize that their conditions were exceptional- that other slaves on other plantations were treated worse.
It's ludicrous to assume that if living conditions were so bad that blacks could not rise up in revolution (almost a 1:1 ratio).
The ratio of whites to blacks was 2 to 1, and while almost every white family had at least one gun, blacks were forbidden to own firearms. The slave holding South is a large land area, and it would be very difficult to overthrow as an unorganized group. There were slave revolts (including Nat Turner in 1831) but they were soon suppressed, which included the execution of the rebels as well as severe punishments for other non-participant slaves in order to "teach a lesson". In an slave society with different conditions, Haiti, slaves did successfully rebel with brutal massacres of the tiny white population. This event was not forgotten by Southern slaveowners, and they took steps to make sure that it would not happen here- including forbidding firearms. In such a society, it is unlikely that Southern whites would readily accept regiments of armed blacks.
Poor whites were considered to be beneath most blacks.
Where did you get this, Gone With the Wind? No poor white person would have trade their lot with that of a slave, and they certainly saw themselves as superior to even the wealthiest of free blacks. White Superiority was unquestioned in American society, both in the North and the South, and neo-Confederate attempts at PC does not change this fact.
I never said it didn't happen - I wrote that there are accounts of blacks being conscripted, or offered freedom in exchange for fighting against the south. Just as there are accounts of blacks being abandoned by the yankee armies. And those that wanted to fight for the Confederacy.
About fifty free negroes in Amelia county have offered themselves to the Government for any service. In our neighboring city of Petersburg, two hundred free negroes offered for any work that might be assigned to them, either to fight under white officers, dig ditches, or any thing that could show their desire to serve Old Virginia. In the same city, a negro hackman came to his master, and with tears in his eyes, insisted that he should accept all his savings, $100, to help equip the volunteers. The free negroes of Chesterfield have made a similar proposition. Such is the spirit among bond and free, throughout the whole of the State. Those who calculate on a different state of things, will soon discover their mistake.
The Vindicator, Staunton, VA, 3 May 1861, p. 2, c. 1 (as reported in the Richmond Dispatch.
The narratives also have accounts of abuse and severe hardship suffered by slaves, which neo-Confederates like yourself tend to ignore or minimize
Besides not being a "neo-confederate", I posted that sentiment as well. No minimalization. The point being made is that a account of good treatment is ignored, and an account of harsh treatment is deemed the norm.
The ratio of whites to blacks was 2 to 1 ...
Depending on the source. Using the 1860 US Census (pp. 598-599) - Out of 9 million southerners, 5.48 million were white, 3.52 million were black. Closer to 1.55 to 1 (not including approximately 133,000 free blacks in the 11 Confederate states).
... and while almost every white family had at least one gun, blacks were forbidden to own firearms. The slave holding South is a large land area, and it would be very difficult to overthrow as an unorganized group.
Wow! These same people - whose ancestors ruled an entire continent, and faced death on a daily basis from lions, leopards, crocodiles, hippos, snakes, elephants, hyenas and neighboring tribes - would just sit meekly on their collective arses and do nothing?
Where did you get this, Gone With the Wind? No poor white person would have trade their lot with that of a slave, and they certainly saw themselves as superior to even the wealthiest of free blacks.
"When I was a boy we used to sing, 'Rather be a [deleted] than a poor white man.' Even in slavery they used to sing that. It was the poor white man who was freed by the War, not the Negroes."
Waters Mcintosh, "Interview with McIntosh, Waters", Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938, Arkansas Narratives, Volume II, Part 5, p. 20.
What 4CJ is trying to point out is that the Harriet Beecher Stowe primer on slavery was a witting lie, based on her sampling error inherent in interviewing runaways, some of whom had had to try several times before successfully fleeing to the North. She was a typical liberal: if you own the truth, and of course liberals do (because their motives are so pure), then you don't need to be careful of the facts. She wasn't, she didn't care, and she made other people pay the price. Frederick Douglass did the same thing, amping up his story and defaming his former owners during his period of antebellum advocacy for abolition; many years later, he made public corrections to the impression he'd left of the Maryland family that had once owned him, and tried to square accounts. Give him credit, at least, for doing that -- but a lot of Northern apologists refuse to follow Douglass's example, but continue to seek to turn the screw. You may suit yourself.
Wonder why he said that? I don't think the rednecks ever got out from under; they've just been sinking deeper ever since, IMHO, first under Civil Rights and now under a tide of contemptuous Northern immigrants who talk about "cleaning the place up" and voting out those old cracker politicians -- and getting in some of the new, blow-dry model, like that fine Bill Clinton, and Ray Blanton, and Jim Guy Tucker. Yeah, that'll be good for us.
I said race relations, not "legal standing" or "social standing of slaves". A slave was a slave. Check my post upthread on it. Not all Negroes in the South were slaves (sigh), but you won't stand for that, will you? It doesn't help you cudgel the South, as a hellhole that needs cudgeling regularly. As the apparition told Jack, "you must be very strict with them!!!"
As soon as you outed yourself, I realized how hard it would be to agree with you on anything, except by bumping my forehead to the rug.
"Lincoln Kool-Aid drinker"? OK, I guess that means that I don't believe that he is the Anti-Christ, at least on these boards, so yeah, I will wear that with pride.
What is the Declaration Foundation?
I said race relations, not "legal standing" or "social standing of slaves". A slave was a slave. Check my post upthread on it. Not all Negroes in the South were slaves (sigh), but you won't stand for that, will you? It doesn't help you cudgel the South, as a hellhole that needs cudgeling regularly.
Look, if believing that a society where one race is enslaved, unable to control almost aspects of their lives, or to hold any hopes for their children had good race relations helps you feel good, fine. But it did not. Slavery, by its nature, meant that a slave could never say no- he had to always obey his master, who had total control over his life and that of his family. Even for free blacks (who were never more than 10% of the total black population) their lives were prescribed- blacks did not have basic rights and could essentially be reenslaved at will. That fact of life defined race relations in the South whether you want to believe it or not.
I do not "hate" the South- half of my relatives come from Georgia, and the rest from Maryland, a border state that was slave-holding and sympathetic to the South. I am a descendant of slaves from both states; however slavery to me is merely history. I only care that history is accurate, I certainly don't hate Southerners of any race nor do I feel like I am owed anything. Instead, I am deeply grateful to those who died to keep the country I love together and in doing so, freeing my ancestors. If it were not for them and others who died to maintain my freedom, I would not be here to have this discussion, and if that makes me a "Lincoln Kool-Aid drinker" so be it.
The secessionist argument, best expounded by Jefferson Davis in his inaugural address as the president of the provisional Confederate States government at Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861, can be (poorly, stumblingly) summarized thus:
1. That the several States were, from the signing of the Treaty of Paris, independent and sovereign. Sovereignty inured to each of them severally, and they didn't give it up with Confederation, as the language of the Articles of Confederation clearly shows. The People of each former colony (after it became a State) was its Sovereign, the People of Massachusetts, or New York, etc., sitting as Sovereign in place of the deposed George III.
a) The People was the Sovereign.
b) The State was the polity of the People.
c) The state government was the Prince, under the Sovereign People, and the People's creature.
d) State officers were officers of the state government, but conventions were assemblies of the People sitting as Sovereign.
2. At the ratification of the United States Constitution, these arrangements were not disturbed, but a new Constitution and Government were formed when the several States, their Peoples deliberating separately, acceded to a delegation of certain powers and attributes of the People's sovereignty, which are enumerated in the Constitution.
The argument is over what the significance of the Constitution was for the Sovereignty of the People.
3. The secessionists believed (correctly, I think) that the People had the right to resume their powers and set aside the United States Constitution if it pleased them, provided that the People did so not as an act of state government, which would have violated the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the United States Constitution, under which all state and federal officials and governments had to bear true fealty and loyalty to the United States Constitution, but in convention as the People of that State instead. This the secessionists did. The States, the Peoples, and their governments were thus removed from the Union by an act of sovereign power, reviewable only by almighty God Himself, and their further actions were thus no longer subject to the United States Constitution or the Peoples of the other States.
The devil is in the details.
4. The Constitution did not modify the Powers of the People that were not delegated to the United States in any way (confirmed by the Ninth and Tenth Amendments); and being sovereign, the People had the right to resume all their Powers at any time, said the secessionists. Which they did in 1861, after a deliberative period of some 30 years, or four times as long as it took the colonists, from the promulgation of the Stamp Tax, to declare independence from Great Britain.
No, said Lincoln (and after him, the Declarationists so-called, of whom the Declaration Foundation, founded by Alan Keyes and some of the people who post to Civil War and Constitutional threads), the Union predated the States, and its existence implied that there was now a new People, and a new Sovereign consisting of all the people of all the States, whose approval (reneged, of course) was necessary for a State to secede. In other words, in the view of Lincoln and the Declarationists, the People was no longer sovereign, the States were no longer the People, and the Union had Sovereignty, the States did not. Lincoln appealed to the Declaration of Independence, the only document he could appeal to as a source of authority (authority, critically to Lincoln's political purposes, over the states -- small "s" states now, shorn of Sovereignty) for a preexisting Union that could carry the weight he wanted to give it. The weight he wanted to give the concept of the Union was, whatever was needed to war down the South.
Anyway, that is the short form of the argument as it has been carried forward on other threads, with the Declarationists lining up to defend Lincoln down the line. The Civil War was right, the right people won and the right people got hurt, and whatever theory confirms that the South was in the wrong as well as just on the losing end, has to be correct. Some (not all) Southerners like me have been arguing that this is teleology, and historically unsound argumentation. The Southern argument is basically, look, you won the war and amended the Constitution with a bloody bayonet -- you got what you wanted, just don't insult our intelligence by lying about it.
And that's the three-cent executive summary.
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