Free Republic

On March 30, 1865, John W. Riley, the Confederate adjutant general in Richmond, Va., gave Capt. Edward Bostick of the 26th South Carolina Volunteers these orders: “You are authorized to raise a battalion of four companies of Negro troops in the state of South Carolina. You are allowed sixty days to raise the battalion.” This order during the last weeks of the Civil War has often been debated by historians and laypersons alike. Did South Carolina ever raise these four black battalions in defense of the Confederacy? The immediate answer is no. But several individual blacks did fight for the...

Black Confederates Why haven't we heard more about them? National Park Service historian, Ed Bearrs, stated, "I don't want to call it a conspiracy to ignore the role of Blacks both above and below the Mason-Dixon line, but it was definitely a tendency that began around 1910" Historian, Erwin L. Jordan, Jr., calls it a "cover-up" which started back in 1865. He writes, "During my research, I came across instances where Black men stated they were soldiers, but you can plainly see where 'soldier' is crossed out and 'body servant' inserted, or 'teamster' on pension applications." Another black historian, Roland...

So with all those hurdles in front of him, what topic does Armstrong select for his second documentary feature? How does the title Black Confederates: The Forgotten Men in Gray grab you? "Black people tend to look at me as if to say, 'Wow, we didn't know this,'" Armstrong said last week as he stood outside the Maryland Theatre in Hagerstown, where his film had just ended a two-night run. Armstrong was selling videos of Black Confederates and his first documentary, The Fort Pillow Massacre, about an infamous Civil War incident in which Confederate troops are alleged to have slaughtered...

Origin Of The Teddy Bear Most people probably know that the teddy bear, that little stuffed animal so dear to so many children, has something to do with Teddy Roosevelt. Most, I'll bet, don't know the details, including the fact that a black Confederate played a key role in the affair. It's all detailed in a new book, a biography of a remarkable Mississippi slave who became celebrated as a hunter, a soldier and a lawman. The title is simply "Holt Collier," the author is a lawyer named Minor Ferris Buchanan, and the publisher is Centennial Press in Jackson, Miss....