peashooter85: The Black Confederate Soldier, This is a really controversial topic that has been beco
peashooter85: The Black Confederate Soldier, This is a really controversial topic that has been becoming more common recently, what with strained race relations and the current state of politics. Typically, the debate over whether there were African Confederate soldiers falls into two camps; those who argue that black soldiers were very common in the Confederate Army, and those who argue that there were none at all whatsoever. The first camp is typically pro-Southern, and is meant to support the notion that slavery had no part in the Civil War. It has even been suggested that up to 30,000 people of African descent served in the Confederate Army. The opposing viewpoint is staunchly absolutist. Absolutist arguments are typically wrong arguments, as there are exceptions to every rule. So where does the truth lie? There actually were thousands or tens of thousands of blacks that served in the Confederate Army. However, the overwhelming vast majority of them were slaves who were pressed into service as laborers, servants, cooks, musicians, teamsters, and other support personnel. Few served as combat soldiers, and in fact using blacks as soldiers was forbidden by Confederate law. However, it was often up to individual generals and high ranking officers whether to allow black recruits. Since this was illegal, it was often done in an unofficial basis. Thus there is no paperwork, and thus it is impossible to tell how many African Confederate soldiers saw combat. One of the most common ways a black slave became a confederate soldier was when he was taken to war alongside his owner who went to war. It was not uncommon for slave owners who fought in the Confederate Army to dress their personal servants as soldiers for portraits, such is the case with picture above. However, sometimes a slave might be expected to take up a musket and fight alongside his master. Again, it was up a units commanding officer whether this was to be permitted or not. Some slaves even volunteered to serve. I kid you not. One of the most famous was Holt Collier, a Mississippi slave who actually ran away from his master in order to enlist in the Confederate Army and was permitted to do so by Gen. Albert Sydney Johnson. After the war Collier would become a professional bear hunter, even serving as guide to President Theodore Roosevelt. I would like to emphasize that slaves volunteering to enlist in the Confederate Army was exceedingly rare. In fact African Confederate soldiers were very rare, whether they volunteered willingly or were pressed into service. Without official documentation it is very hard to estimate numbers. However there are some primary sources. Historian Robert Crick of the Spotsylvania National Battlefield Park sifted through the records of 100,000 soldier’s records to see how many non-whites were represented. He found around 30, which includes Native Americans, blacks, and people of mixed race. Professor James McPherson read around 25,000 soldiers letters, and found 12 with evident of black soldiers. Best estimates are that 250-300 African Americans served in combat with the Confederate Army, an army in which 700,000 - 950,000 men served throughout the war. 1,000 - 2,000 might be plausible, thought that’s probably really pushing it. It is certainly nothing compared to the Union Army, where 200,000 African Americans served in a force which totaled around a million men. On March 13th, 1865 a bill was passed by the Confederate Congress permitting the recruitment of slaves. Gen. Robert E. Lee supported the bill, commenting. “We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves.” A small regiment of black soldiers were recruited with no promise of freedom. They were never used in combat. The Confederacy fell less than a month later. Reblogging this because I need to correct the information. There has not been a single case of a black man serving as a Confederate soldier. Any black man in service to the Confederate army was there as a slave or servant or as manual labor. Every instance of a supposed black Confederate soldier has been disproven by census records or personal testimony or Confederate Army records.In the case of Holt Collier he was 12 or 13 when the war broke out. There are a tiny handful of cases where soldiers that young are documented, but almost all of them are from the Navy.He ran away to the war and was a servant in the company, not an actual soldier. He may have been involved in combat when the unit he was attached to was attacked, but he’s not on the rolls as a soldier, and it would be incorrect to call him one.And this is the case with every single supposed “Black Confederate soldier”. If you dig deeper into their stories you will find that invariably they were servants and non-combatants, not soldiers. And if some of them ended up fighting they did so in extreme circumstances, not as part of their regular duties. There has been a great deal of actual research done on this, and as of yet not a single record has been found to substantiate the claim that any black man served as a soldier (e.g. pay, musters, commendations, quartermaster records, hospital record, or even letters home from other Confederate soldiers talking about black soldiers). Were there tens of thousands of black non-combatants who served in the Confederate Army? Absolutely. Cooks, camp servants, manual labor, etc. Did some of them, at some point, take up arms when their camps or units were attacked? Possibly.Does that make them black soldiers? Absolutely not. -- source link
#civil war