Let's see them.
There is no credible proof that more than a handful of blacks fought for the CSA.
Consider:
FRIDAY, February 10, 1865.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
SECOND CONGRESS-SECOND SESSION
EMPLOYMENT OF NEGROES AS SOLDIERS
Mr. Wickham, of Virginia, moved the indefinite postponement of the bill. He was opposed to its going to a select committee. If it went to any committee it should go, in the regular channel, to the Committee on Military Affairs. He wished, however, this question of arming and making soldiers of negroes to be now disposed of, finally and forever. He wished it to be decided whether negroes are to be placed upon an equality by the side of our brave soldiers. They would be compelled to. They would have to camp and bivouac together.
Mr. Wickham said that our brave soldiers, who have fought so long and nobly, would not stand to be thus placed side by side with negro soldiers. He was opposed to such a measure. The day that such a bill passed Congress sounds the death knell of this Confederacy. The very moment an order goes forth from the War Department authorizing the arming and organizing of negro soldiers there was an eternal end to this struggle.-(Voice-That's so.)
The question being ordered upon the rejection of the bill, it was lost-ayes 21, noes 53. As this vote was regarded as a kind of test of the sense of the House upon the policy of putting negroes into the army, we append the ayes and noes-the question being the rejection of this bill authorizing the employment of negroes as soldiers:
Ayes-Messrs. Baldwin, Branch, Cruikshank, De Jarnette, Fuller, Garland, Gholson, Gilmer, Lamkin, J. M. Leach, J. T. Leach, McMullin, Miles, Miller, Ramsey, Sexton, Smith, of Alabama, Smith, of North Carolina, Wickham, Witherspoon, Mr. Speaker.
Noes-Messrs. Akin, Anderson, Barksdale, Batson, Bell, Blandford, Boyce, Bradley, H. W. Bruce, Carroll, Chambers, Chilton, Clark, Clopton, Cluskey, Conrad, Conrow, Darden, Dickinson, Dupre, Ewing, Farrow, Foster, Funsten, Gaither, Goode, Gray, Hartridge, Hatcher, Hilton, Holder, Holliday, Johnston, Keeble, Lyon, Pugh, Read, Rogers, Russell, Simpson, J. M. Smith, W. E. Smith, Snead, Swan, Triplett, Villere, Welsh.
If any number of black soldiers had been serving in the ranks of the CSA armies, how did it escape the notice of Congress? It also escaped the notice of Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and others:
Page 246, Confederate Veteran, June 1915. Official publication of the United Confederate Veteran, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Confederated Southern Memorial Association.
Gen. Howell Cobb, an unbeliever in this expedient, wrote from Macon, Ga., January 8, 1865: "I think that the proposition is the most pernicious idea that has been suggested since the war began. You cannot make soldiers of slaves or slaves of soldiers. The moment you resort to this your white soldiers are lost to you, and one reason why this proposition is received with favor by some portions of the army is because they hope that when the negro comes in they can retire. You cannot keep white and black troops together, and you cannot trust negroes alone. They won't make soldiers, as they are wanting in every qualification necessary to make one.
[Note General Lee on the negro as a soldier.] Better by far to yield to the demands of England and France and abolish slavery and thereby purchase their aid than to resort to this policy, which would lead to certain ruin and subjugation."
Samuel Clayton, Esq., of Cuthbert, Ga., wrote on January 10, 1865: "All of our male population between sixteen and sixty is in the army. We cannot get men from any other source; they must come from our slaves. Some say that negroes will not fight, but they fought us at Ocean Pond. Honey Hill, and other places. The government takes all of our men and exposes them to death. Why can't they take our property? He who values his property more than independence is a poor, sordid wretch."
General Lee, who clearly saw the inevitable unless his forces were strengthened, wrote on January 11 [1865]: "I should prefer to rely on our white population; but in view of the preparation of our enemy it is our duty to provide for a continuous war, which, I fear, we cannot accomplish with our present resources. It is the avowed intention of the enemy to convert the ablebodied negro into soldiers and emancipate all. His progress will thus add to his numbers and at the same time destroy slavery in a most pernicious manner to the welfare of our people. Whatever may be the effect of our employing negro troops, it cannot be as mischievous as this. If it ends in subverting slavery, it will be accomplished by ourselves, and we can devise the means of alleviating the evil consequences to both races. I think, therefore, that we must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves used against us or use them ourselves at the risk of the effects which may be produced upon our soldiers' social institutions. My own opinion is that we should employ tl1em without delay. I believe that with proper regulations they can be made efficient soldiers. They possess the physical qualifications in an eminent degree. Long habits of obedience and subordination, coupled with the moral influence which in our country the white man possesses over the black, furnish an excellent foundation for that discipline which is the best guarantee of military efficiency. We can give them an interest by allowing immediate freedom to all who enlist and freedom at the end of the war to their families. We should not expect slaves to fight for prospective freedom when they can secure it at once by going to the enemy, in whose service they will incur no greater risk than in ours. In conclusion, I can only say that whatever is to be done must be attended to at once."
President Davis on February 21 [1865]expressed himself as follows: "It is now becoming daily more evident to all reflecting persons that we are reduced to choosing whether the negroes shall fight for or against us and that all the arguments as to the positive advantage or disadvantage of employing them are beside the question, which is simply one of relative advantage between having their fighting element in our ranks or those of the enemy.":
Would Lee and Davis have had those points of view had there been any number of blacks in ranks?
The idea of black CSA soldiers is nothing but Soviet style misinformation.
It's a lie.
Walt
I'll post the story of my Uncle JJ and his body servant Levi Miller; it deserves to be told.
Curious indeed.
Have you never heard of the Janissaries? A better description of this fighting group, feared for generations, I can not imagine: slave-warriors.
This ding-dong never heard of Carthage? The Muslim conquests?
FR sure is educational.
Cultures that have made soldiers of slaves ultimately do fail, but the original statement is preposterous on its face.
Slavery was AN issue............not THE issue...........that led to the Civil War. Bone up and come back again sometime.
the official service records do NOT lie, but they certainly point out that damnynakees DO!
as usual, the revisionists show their true colors as RACISTS & racebaiters, by continuing to deny the black CSA soldiers their HONOR as servicemembers for the TRUE CAUSE!
for a FREE dixie,sw
In response to the frequent unsubstantiated accusations of "Soviet style misinformation" made by Walt against anybody and everybody who happens to disagree with him, presented in the spirit of the famous "Who Said It: Al Gore or the Unabomber?" quotation quiz, and to add a little humor to the often bitterly divisive FR debates on Lincoln...
The "Who Said It: Walt or Karl Marx?" Quiz
DIRECTIONS: The following quotations are statements made either by Karl Marx, the father of communism and big government thuggery, or by Walt in his pro-Lincoln postings on Free Republic. Without consulting outside sources, identify who you believe to be the author of each quote by indicating so. Each correct answer will be worth 1 point.. Answers will be displayed shortly after ample time has been allowed for response. Yankees are welcome to give it a try as well.
1. "Part of Lincoln's genius was in knowing what the country would accept, and another part was helping to guide it where it needed to go."
2. "[Abraham Lincoln was] one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good. Such, indeed, was the modesty of this great and good man, that the world only discovered him a hero after he had fallen a martyr."
3. "In accordance with the principle that any further extension of slave territories was to be prohibited by law, the Republicans therefore attacked the rule of the slaveholders at its root. The Republican election victory was...bound to lead to open struggle between North and South."
4. "[Lincoln] was firm "as with a chain of steel" on there being no expansion of slavery from where it already existed. That alone was enough to cause the war, because the slave owners knew that their "futures" in slaves and slave breeding would be compromised unless slavery were allowed to expand."
5. "This geographical barrier [containing slavery] was thrown down in 1854 by the so-called Kansas-Nebraska Bill...[which] placed slavery and freedom on the same footing, commanded the Union government to treat them both with equal indifference"
6. " Lincoln was alarmed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act into becoming more politically active -- because he had a personal abhorance of slavery...he had a solution to at least begin the ending of slavery. And that is what the secessionists found so repugnant."
7. "Lincoln was a very pracical man. He did discover a way to begin to end slavery in the United States. If slavery were confined to areas in which it already existed, it would die"
8. "The whole movement was...based, as one sees, on the slave question. Not in the sense of whether the slaves within the existing slave states should be emancipated outright or not, but whether the twenty million free men of the North should submit any longer to an oligarchy of...slaveholders; whether the vast territories of the republic should be nurseries for free states or for slavery...whether the national policy of the Union should take armed spreading of slavery in Mexico, Central and South America as its device."
9. "[Lincoln] knew that if slavery was limited to areas where it was currently legal, it would die. The slave holders knew it too. That is why slave holders were continually trying to expand territory favorable to gang-labor slavery. That was why the Mexican War was fought and that is why the federal government tried to buy Cuba and that is why slave holders sent expeditions to disrupt Nicaraugua and other Central American locations."
10. "Lincoln bent over backwards to avoid war in his first inaugural. But Jeffeson Davis couldn't allow secession fever to cool. So he fired on Fort Sumter."
11. "It is above all to be remembered that the war did not originate with the North, but with the South...For months [the North] had quietly looked on while the secessionists appropriated the Union's forts, arsenals, shipyards, customs houses, pay offices, ships and supplies of arms, insulted its flag and took prisoner bodies of its troops. Finally the secessionists resolved to force the Union government out of its passive attitude by a blatant act of war, and solely for this reason proceeded to the bombardment of Fort Sumter near Charleston."
12. "[F]rom 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed...Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress"
13. "[We are fortunate] that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln...to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world."
14. "Lincoln's words show what a great and good man he was, and his actions show [his critics] for a fool or poltroon."
BONUS QUESTION:
Identify the author of this quote denying the sovereignty of the states and advocating the union just like Lincoln did. It could be Walt. It could be Marx. Or it could be somebody else. Take a guess!
"[In America] it is impossible to speak of original sovereignty in regard to the majority of the states. Many of them were not included in the federal complex until long after it had been established. The states that make up the American Union are mostly in the nature of territories, more or less, formed for technical administrative purposes, their boundaries having in many cases been fixed in the mapping office. Originally these states did not and could not possess sovereign rights of their own. Because it was the Union that created most of the so-called states."
Scroll down for answers
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ANSWERS:
1. Walt, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/703308/posts?page=2#2
2. Karl Marx, Address of the International Working Men's Association to President Johnson, 1865
3. Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861
4. Walt, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/700651/posts?page=88#88
5. Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861
6. Walt, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/688238/posts?page=62#62
7. Walt, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/688238/posts?page=42#42
8. Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861
9. Walt, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/688238/posts?page=42#42
10. Walt, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/662922/posts?page=85#85
11. Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861
12. Karl Marx, On the North American Civil War, October 20, 1861
13. Karl Marx, letter to Abraham Lincoln congratulating him on reelection as President of the United States, January 28, 1865
14. Walt, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/664750/posts?page=51#51
BONUS: Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf volume II, 1926