"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."
--Howell Cobb, Georgia senator
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."
-- From the debate in the rebel congress, 1865
Mr. Edgerton is pursuing something not based in the record.
Walt
All your post shows is that there were some complete idiots(just like some in Gov't today) in the confederacy.
The people who lived it and passed the history down to their families merits consderation, not just the victor's publication of the "offical record".
When is the last time you walked 1500 miles to raise awarness for something? NEVER!
Mr. Edgerton is pursuing something not based in the record. Funny, cause these records support it...
"It is now pretty well established, that 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. There is a Negro in the army as well as in the fence, and our Government is likely to find it out before the war comes to an end. That the Negroes are numerous in the rebel army, and do for that army its heaviest work, is beyond question." - Frederick Douglass, September 1861 (printed in Douglass' Monthly volume IV, p. 516)
"The forces attacking my camp were the First Regiment Texas Rangers, Colonel Wharton, and a battalion of the First Georgia Rangers, Colonel Morrison, and a large number of citizens of Rutherford County, many of whom had recently taken the oath of allegiance to the United States Government. There were also quite a number of negroes attached to the Texas and Georgia troops, who were armed and equipped and took part in the several engagements with my forces during the day." - War of the Rebellion, Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Volume XVI, Part 1, p. 805 (http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/moa/moa_browse.html)