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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 01/16/2003 10:05:26 PM PST by stainlessbanner
Did free blacks support the Confederacy during the Civil War?
About 10 years ago, this was the question Winston Jones of West Chester asked himself.
What he discovered was that, yes, free blacks did support the Confederacy and in November, he independently published a novel "For God, Country and the Confederacy" through First Books, based on those findings.
The novel follows the St. Claire family, a free black family who owns a farm and owns slaves to help work the land in New Orleans, and begins the day Fort Sumter was attacked and ends, one year later, the day New Orleans falls to the Union.
The book is available online from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble and Jones has signings planned locally throughout the months of February and March. The book is also available at Barnes and Noble at Main Street at Exton.
The first signing is on Sunday, Feb. 9 at 3 p.m. at Art Partners Studio in Coatesville. Another signing is planned for Saturday, March 8 at noon at the Dane Tilghman Gallery also in Coatesville.
Jones, a playwright who works at HDX in Exton as an engineer, spent five and 1/2 years researching the novel, which he first began as a play. Most of the time, he said, he spent checking and re-checking notes to insure that he was being historically accurate.
"When I was in school, I was taught that blacks in the Confederate South were either slaves or were trying to escape to the North. They were uneducated and had no rights," he said.
He said the information found in history books didn't give the full picture, because what he learned was that free blacks did live in the South. "They could read, they were educated, they had businesses and had an economic foothold in the Confederacy," he said.
When the Civil War started, he said about 40 percent of the Confederate South was black and between 50 to 7 percent or a quarter of a million of those blacks were free. "In many cases, they had five to 10 generations of freedom," said Jones. He said some also had slaves.
"We need to get this information out, so black kids growing up don't feel like they're victims and so white kids don't think all whites are oppressors," he said. "Blacks were more than just slaves, but we were never taught that. We were not given enough information so we could make our own decisions."
He said he is an one-person campaign to get the history books correct. "The kids are the leaders of tomorrow," said Jones. "If we continue to raise our children by telling them that one race is the victim and the other is the oppressor, then there are going to continue to be problems between the races understanding one another."
He said all most people know about the Confederate South is from three movies, "Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind," and "Roots." And all three deal with blacks being victims, he said. "As a nation, that brings with it a lot of guilt," he added.
He said as a result of his research, he learned that blacks were not always victims and that he and his wife, Jodi, are raising their son, Elliot, 11, to think differently about blacks in the South. "Not every black was a slave," he said. "Some were free, educated, owned businesses and were part of the economy in the South."
However, he stressed that he was not saying that slavery was good. "It is a scar on America's past, but not every black was a slave in the Confederate South."
Asked why he chose to put this information in the form of a novel, he said, "Because all the research is out there, but it's dull and clinical."
He said that he does include a bibliography in the book for those that want to study the issue further.
So why independently publish the book? He said he tried when President Bush was first elected to sell the book to prospective publishers, but at the time the issue was too hot with controversy over Confederate flags being flown at state capitals. He said he sent 75 query letters and received all of them back within a few weeks with a negative response.
That is part of the reason why he chose to publish the book himself. However, he said the book is not about race, but about how the Civil War impacted a free black family of the Confederate South, specifically, in this case, the fictional St. Claire family of New Orleans.
In addition to the signings already mentioned, Jones has the following book signings scheduled:
n Wednesday, Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble at Main Street at Exton
n Saturday, Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. at the Chester County Conference and Visitor's Bureau in Kennett Square
n Thursday, Feb. 27 at Hudson United Bank in West Chester.
There also may be two others later in March at the Chester County Book Store in Downingtown and West Chester, dates to be determined.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Way too confusing.
How about this for an idea:
Let's take absolutely everything away from anyone in America who has ever owned a slave. Then split it equally among all of those in America who have ever been a slave.
He said the information found in history books didn't give the full picture, because what he learned was that free blacks did live in the South. "They could read, they were educated, they had businesses and had an economic foothold in the Confederacy," he said.
When the Civil War started, he said about 40 percent of the Confederate South was black and between 50 to 7 percent or a quarter of a million of those blacks were free. "In many cases, they had five to 10 generations of freedom," said Jones. He said some also had slaves.
Oh, Lord, now you've gone and done it!! Took another chunk out of that lincoln myth. I imagine a day, 50 or so years from now, where the statues of lincoln throughout the nation are in the dustbin of history, and the area that is now occupied by that memorial in DC is finally put to good use as a parking lot
Here is another variation what we should do, call it "prooving em wrong":
Everyone in the USA will be entitled to One Million dollars, man woman and child. If you have more then a million, then you give, if you have less, you receive ( Bill Gates alone could take care of the state of Washington). Then we end welfare, we end unemployment. We end all government hand outs.
And what will happen?
In about two to three years, those who were poor, most will be poor again. Those who had millions, will again have millions. Those who despise wealth, will have lost theirs and be rioting in the streets.
..much of the high-skill labor in the ante-bellum South was black....some were free; some were slave..they did excellent work..our church was built in 1835 and a lot of slave labor went into it....I know this to be true because my g.g.grandfather's slaves dug the foundation and laid it up in granite....168 years later that church is still plumb, level and in square...
Sure, Non, keep denying it. Drink some more of the Empire's koolaid why don't you?
Here is something that will drive Non_Sense's panties further up into her arse ;^)
I sent Marse Larry a copy of "The Tragic Era" by the Northerner, Claude Bowers, as a thank you for writing this excellent piece.
Keep the skeer on 'em!
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Here is the column which appeared today in the Lexington Herald-Leader. Larry, who happens to be black, has wanted to get this off his chest in a public forum for some time. He prepared this with black history month in mind, and the paper bit on it! It appeared on the op-ed page, and is the largest column on it. The logo which has been running all through the paper "Black History Month In Celebration" appears as an inset in the column (this is some Black history that they haven't yet seen though). – A Southerner
Headline "Black history distorted by 'political correctness' "
By Larry Sykes
As a black Southerner, I am upset when witness to "knee-jerk" attacks on white Southerners such as Merlene Davis' "Class on Slavery Teaches White Man's 'Truth'".
Davis was in quite a lather to preach that a college class claimed by an Associated Press reporter to have taught that Southern slaves were "happy" should be muzzled. Her basic reaction to the report was that Southern whites should only be allowed to teach the "evil" parts of their heritage. There was one problem she missed out on, though: the story was a hoax. Videotapes of the class proved that the AP reporter had made up the story about a history class teaching that slaves were happy. While I saw this information on AP wires, I did not see anything carried in the Herald-Leader.
Instead of seeking the truth, "politically correct" blacks have created their own "truth", in which anything that can be connected with American slavery in the Old South is entirely evil - and anything less than this race-baiting propaganda is not acceptable to teach as history. This "truth" ignores the historical facts that American slavery would not have existed without blacks selling fellow blacks into slavery, or that the first slaveholder in the American colonies was black. What seemed to scare Davis the most, though, was that anyone might actually study the "Slave Narratives", since some of what is in them won't fall in line with the revisionist history we are taught today.
Davis says that just because blacks loved the South they didn't love slavery. No one claims that they did; the important point is that most blacks did love their home - the South. Davis then correctly says that thousands of blacks fought for the Confederacy, and did so with patriotism. This is an important truth, which is actively being erased by politically correct forces.
Davis is to be commended for admitting this. She goes on, though, to speculate that blacks fought for the Confederacy because they were somehow duped by whites into doing so through a white conspiracy to keep them completely ignorant of events around them. I disagree; this is an insult to the intelligence of blacks that developed numerous methods of communication and ways to keep that information to themselves and who had eyes and ears with which they could witness the events unfolding around them. The blacks who supported the Confederacy - by keeping the farm going at home, or by supporting and fighting with the army on the front - did not do so because they were duped. They did so because their homes were being invaded - the black wives, sweethearts and sisters were being abused and raped as well as the wives, sweethearts and sisters of the white Southerners by the northern "bands of angels" in Union blue - and because their patriotism overcame the fact that they did not yet share fully in the benefits of society.. Black Confederates did reasonably expect, especially if the South had won, some reward for their patriotism.
In spite of losing the war, though, the patriotism of Confederate blacks was still often rewarded, as evidenced by the Tennessee pension records and other sources. It is today that we try to avoid honoring their patriotism. Why else would Dr. Emory Emerson, a descendant of a black Confederate soldier and member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans have been "disinvited" from the services dedicating a monument which only memorialized the service of blacks in the Union army?
To end her attack, Davis says that Southerners can celebrate the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but must always remember that men who forged this heritage were evil racists. Then she says to Southerners about their brief years as an independent nation that they are, essentially, best forgotten. My hope is we never forget when the Southern states stood up to defend states' rights and the constitution against a military invasion of the most powerful army on the planet. Just as I hope my 26 years of military service defending my country and constitution would not be forgotten, we should never forget the bravery of the Southern soldier, most of whom didn't own slaves anyway, in taking arms and giving their lives to defend their civil rights, their constitution, and their country.
The civil rights movement of the 1960's in the South would not have succeeded without brave Southern whites that joined with us. The civil rights movement was not about taking away the justifiable pride Southerners have in their heritage, but in securing constitutional guarantees for all. Blacks enjoying constitutional freedoms is not in opposition to, but rather an extension of, states securing their constitutional rights as well. Somehow, though, today what we see is a "civil rights" movement which wants to rob the South of its heritage, pride and symbols. The best way we can stop this wrong is for Southern blacks to repay the favor from the 1960's, and stand today with our Southern white friends, to protect the heritage and symbols of the South, before our common history is completely rewritten and erased by "political correctness".
* Larry Sykes, a Mississippi native and an Army Airborne veteran, lives in Lexington
Let me assume the role of 19th Century Language Police here. Although "Creole" may have a certain meaning in the U.S. now, that meaning is quite different from it's 19th Century meaning.
The word "Creole", derived from the Spanish word "Criollo" simply meant an individual of either race born in the New World.
My great-gradfather, born in Spain, was a "Peninsular". My grandfather, born in 1889 in Colonial Cuba, was a "Criollo". In Spanish colonies, this was a significant distinction as Spain tried to keep an iron grip on it's American colonies by limiting positions of power to Peninsulares. The effect, of course, was to foment revolution from both the Criollos and the Peninsulares with Criollo children.
The term used in 19th Century Louisiana for New World born free blacks was gens de couleur libre.
We will never forget.
Wealthy whites of French and Spanish descent were also Creoles, and they did most of the dominating. Some people will blame "Yankees" for everything, but the decline of mixed race Creoles didn't come about until after Reconstruction. And considering how unrepresentative New Orleans was of the rest of the South before the 1890s, and how similar segregation was throughout the South, blaming the fall of the colored Creoles on Northerners looks like a stretch.
If you're far enough South, all problems come from the North, but for New Orleans the "North" included Mississippi, Arkansas and Baton Rouge, and the inspiration for segregation could be found in the antebellum slave codes and postbellum black codes more readily than in anything from farther North. The relevant distinction wasn't between North and South, but between Catholic New Orleans and Anglo-Saxon Protestant America. Within the South or the US, the position of people of mixed race in New Orleans was unique, but even there it was always precarious.
So true. The PC extremists despise any truth that doesn't fit their manufactured version of history. Frederick Douglass used black Confederates as part of his argument that blacks should be allowed to fight for the North. I guess the revisionists will say Douglass was a liar, and erase him from the books next.
"There are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels. There were such soldiers at Manassas, and they are probably there still...Rising above vulgar prejudice, the slaveholding rebel accepts the aid of the black man as readily as that of any other." - Frederick Douglass in 1861.
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