Once again you simply dismiss the inconvenient statements of Union heroes (for no other reason than their words contradict your revisionist "history") and resort to using quotes specific to that proposal for raising all-black regiments. That proposal was a completely different issue than the blacks that were already a minority percentage serving in one capacity or another with the regular Confederate Army. Dr. Steiner observed that five percent of Jackson's Army was negro, most of those armed and otherwise equipped as soldiers. Not all were, but "most". If you want to have some fun and be disillusioned, Walt, go to Arlington National Cemetery and look at the Confederate Memorial that was erected there in 1914. It was created by a Confederate veteran named Moses Ezekiel, who was knighted by the King of Italy for his work as an artist in Europe after the war. On one of the memorial's panels you will see a bas-relief of Confederate soldiers marching off to war. One of those soldiers is a black man. Go and see for yourself.
The neo-rebs on their websites have posted figures of 65,000 or 90,000 or even more black rebel soldiers. Those numbers are a fantasy. This whole thing is a fantasy and you'll show it for nothing else, no matter what Dr. Steiner, Frederick Douglass or anyone else said. Many other people said otherwise, or failed to note any black soldiers at all -- and it would surely have been something to remark on.
"It's pure fantasy,' contends James McPherson, a Princeton historian and one of the nation's leading Civil War scholars. Adds Edwin Bearss, historian emeritus at the National Park Service: 'It's b.s., wishful thinking.' Robert Krick, author of 10 books on the Confederacy, has studied the records of 150,000 Southern soldiers and found fewer than a dozen were black. 'Of course, if I documented 12, someone would start adding zeros,' he says.
"These and other scholars say claims about black rebels derive from unreliable anecdotes, a blurring of soldiers and laborers, and the rapid spread on the Internet of what Mr. McPherson calls 'pseudohistory.' Thousands of blacks did accompany rebel troops -- as servants, cooks, teamsters and musicians. Most were slaves who served involuntarily; until the final days of the war, the Confederacy staunchly refused to enlist black soldiers.
"Some blacks carried guns for their masters and wore spare or cast-off uniforms, which may help explain eyewitness accounts of blacks units. But any blacks who actually fought did so unofficially, either out of personal loyalty or self-defense, many historians say.
"They also bristle at what they see as the disingenuous twist on political correctness fueling the black Confederate fad. 'It's a search for a multicultural Confederacy, a desperate desire to feel better about your ancestors,' says Leslie Rowland, a University of Maryland historian. 'If you suggest that some blacks supported the South, then you can deny that the Confederacy was about slavery and white supremacy.'
"David Blight, an Amherst College historian, likens the trend to bygone notions about happy plantation darkies.' Confederate groups invited devoted ex-slaves to reunions and even won Senate approval in 1923 for a "mammy" monument in Washington (it was never built). Black Confederates, Mr. Blight says, are a new and more palatable way to 'legitimize the Confederacy.'"
-- Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1997
These professional historians don't accept the notion of black rebel soldiers and you look silly putting it forward.
Walt