"Black Confederate soldiers." Topic

This is an interesting article about them.

link

My question is:

a) Were there really african-american soldiers which fought for the Rebels?. Or only servants?
b) Were they "volunteers" or they had to obey the order of their masters to enrole?
c) If they fought and survive, then they would be free?
d) Did anybody paint any confederate little soldiers as african-american?

Thanks in advance for your guidance.

Amicalement
Armand

How much room is available in the DH? Air conditioning with the music?

Armand, Armand, Armand…forget this one. Unless you believe Roswell is true and JFK was killed as part of a conspiracy.

It isn't that bad.

a) Probably yes. Not all blacks were slaves. Indeed there were more than a few blacks that owned slaves.

b) Again probably yes. The South was fighting for states rights (allegedly).

c) Never heard anything about this proposition.

d) Not me.

mjc

Some claim a few thousand fought for the CSA. At least 180,000 fought for the USA.

Roswell was not true????.

Amicalement
Armand

As I recall, there were a few small units of black soldiers, as noted above made up of freemen – even a few black soldiers in the Richmond Howitzers

That being said, most of the (estimated) 65,000 blacks who served in the Confederate army did so in the capacity of cooks, labourers, teamsters, etc.

Our current concept of volunteering is probably not the same concept that drove Americans, black or white, to join the cause on both sides of the great divide

As noted above, of the relatively small number of soldiers, they were probably free to start with

Have to admit, while I do have a couple of black brigades in my Union army, my Confederates are pretty much all white

Guess this is one of those topics TMPers feel the need to revisit every so often, whether we need to or not.

Allen

I paint some of my Confederate teamsters as black, but there is no evidence to justify painting any more than that.

Billy Yank

Actually I saw an article on this not to long ago (wish I could remember where) but it covered this very subject.

The fellow I read the story about lived for a very long time after the war, he claimed to have been a cook (I think) but later as the war progressed he entered in the ranks and fought in many engagements. He was very proud of his service and taught his children the reasons he fought and he believed in what he was fighting for.

I will have to see if I can find this story, well worth reading as it places a whole new prospective on things.

Oh yes they fought, lived and died.

Not until the end of the war did the Confederate Government make it legal to have African Americans in the ranks. Of course with much military doctrine, it was abandoned once supplies/men started running thin. There are several cases in which blacks did serve in Confederate Units, either with their master, continued to fight after their master had died or they joined and fought on their own terms. I sprinkle African American miniatures into some of my units. But since my Confederate Army portrays a western Division in 1862-1863, I used black miniatures in moderation.

White southerners were willing to arm a few trusted slaves. Merriwether Lewis' slave York went armed on the Lewis and Clark expedition. York later told Lewis that he had earned his freedom by his service on the expedition, but Lewis would never free him.

TMP link

I think the tension between Cleburne's proposal to arm slaves, which was suppressed, and the Confederate Congress's action a year later to do just that, illustrates well the complexity of the issue and its weight in southern thought. Everyone understood the logic that you cannot arm slaves without undermining the institution. It was ALMOST inconceivable to most whites, but not quite so; and a year later -- too late but of course they didn't know that for sure -- when defeat was the only alternative it turned out NOT to be inconceivable.

I doubt that many blacks FOUGHT for the Confederacy, on the firing line, but it is incontrovertible that thousands of blacks served as an integral (and uniformed) part of the Confederate Army as teamsters and orderlies and similar support roles. Most were slaves accompanying their masters.

The movie "Ride with the Devil" has one of the main characters as the boyhood friend of a white Confederate cavalry trooper. The boyhood friend is black. I believe he is freedman, but was previously a slave owned by the white cav. troopers family. Not sure.

It is an interesting movie as the black character fights along side the others, but during the down time he is regulated to food service. One of the Confederate troopers recongizes the two standards shown.

A very good movie.

Here is the reality of "Negro" rebel soldiers

link

"On page 289 we reproduce one of Mr. Mead's sketches. It illustrates the way in which the cowardly rebels force their negro slaves to do dangerous work. It represents a struggle between two negroes and a rebel captain, who insisted upon their loading a cannon within range of Berdan's Sharp-shooters. The affair was witnessed by our officers through a glass. The rebel captain succeeded in forcing the negroes to expose themselves, and they were shot, one after the other."

Yes, slaves always had the choice to serve when and where they wished (sarcasm mode on).

The fact that Confederate law prohibited the enlistment of blacks, that many actual examples are recorded of 'blacks' that had enlisted due to their ability to 'pass' as whites being driven out of Confederate service for being black, the many known news articles in local papers against any such service and the reaction to various proposals to enlist blacks in Confederate service until the last few weeks of the war (in Richmond only), the refusal of the Confederate government to take into service the offered free black units from New Orleans or the inability of anyone to find and publish personal accounts from Union troops to having faced organized Confederate black troops (other than a possible individual servant or such), never seems to end this odd debate.

I'm never sure as to the motivation of those who feel a need to 'find' such black Confederates, but there must be some reason as this subject just never seems to go away.

Dan

Yes, RIDE WITH THE DEVIL is a very good film.

I posted this at the tail end of the previous thread on this, but am not sure many saw it. I suspect this is fairly representative of numbers and functions of black Confederates:

While looking for something else, I came across this:

link

A number of blacks served with the 7th Texas, as personal (officer) servants, cooks and teamsters. Only in Company H were they recorded on the regular company muster roll, however, so only a few are known by name.

Of the blacks who are registered in official documents, five were in Company H. They were Lafayette Hearne, Samuel Hill, Jesse Powell, Nathan, and Sam. All were slaves who accompanied their owners to war, and all were captured at Fort Donelson (February 1862) and sent to Camp Douglas as prisoners of war. Hearne died in prison of typhoid fever, while Hill was exchanged with the other members of the 7th Texas in September 1862. Jesse Powell and Nathan enlisted in the Union army, while the fate of Sam is unknown. Another recorded black man was Peter Callaway of Company D, also a slave. He was eventually released unconditionally from Camp Douglas and apparently stayed in the North.

In April 1862, the Confederate Congress authorized the enlistment of blacks as cooks and teamsters in army regiments. Each company was allowed four cooks, "white or black, free or slave", who would be paid and uniformed like ordinary soldiers. In combat situations, they were often employed to evacuate the wounded (as stretcher bearers). While in principle unarmed, blacks serving with combat units such as the 7th Texas faced many of the same hardships and dangers as white men shouldering a musket.

The October 11, 1862, issue of the (Marshall) Texas Republican contained a notice by regimental quartermaster Quentin D. Horr seeking 50 Negroes for service as cooks and teamsters in the 7th Texas Infantry. It is not known to what degree Horr's appeal succeeded, but quite a few blacks were presumably enlisted as a result of his efforts.

Thus, it is fair to say that the Confederate army contained a significant number of black support personnel, but due to the prevailing practice of recording only combatants on unit muster rolls, their names have largely been lost to posterity (with some exceptions, such as in Company H of the 7th Texas).

Doc adds: this agrees with what we've said -- lots of blacks, but not on the firing line. However, it DOES seem to support the argument I have made: they were recognized to be, and were in fact, integral members of the Confederate army.

And the above contains two different bits suggesting that 50 or so blacks per regiment was perhaps typical and certainly desired: a company had 5 (ten companies in a regiment) and the regimental QM was trying to find 50.

Steiner's diary entry counting 3000 or so in ANV looks pretty consistent with that.

Lest Tango once again gets the children stirred up, I recommend checking out the noted ACW historian and Pulitzer Prize winning writer, James McPherson's wonderful book called "The Negro's Civil War," page 23-24 for a pretty good summary of this issue and others related to the negro in the ACW.

The book is an excellent look at a little explored subject; the role of blacks in the civil war in fighting for their own emancipation. It includes some great background on how they came to join the US Army in the hundred's of thousands, the role of Contraband, and the rather tawdry history of the Confederacy in this regard.

Needless to say, most of the Southern apologists' increasingly exaggerated and fabricated stories in this area, are pure bunkum. The cases are few and seldom ended well for the negroes or for the Confederacy (The New Orleans' Freedmen Battalion stayed behind when the Union took New Orleans and joined the Union Army!). The fact that Black POWS were seldom taken, and the few that were, were never exchanged and often sent back into slavery speaks more to the Confederate ethos.

Yup, Doc those white men didn't want to cook, clean latrines, or dig trenches. 3000 ought to just about cover the need! You might say that the impressed black slaves (for that's what they were) were the original Kellogg,Root and Brown! With NO wages, or work rules!

Mr. Jones, do you read what others post?

You wrote: "The fact that Black POWS were seldom taken, and the few that were, were never exchanged and often sent back into slavery speaks more to the Confederate ethos."

I posted just above: "Of the blacks who are registered in official documents, five were in Company H. They were Lafayette Hearne, Samuel Hill, Jesse Powell, Nathan, and Sam. All were slaves who accompanied their owners to war, and all were captured at Fort Donelson (February 1862) and sent to Camp Douglas as prisoners of war. Hearne died in prison of typhoid fever, while Hill was exchanged with the other members of the 7th Texas in September 1862. Jesse Powell and Nathan enlisted in the Union army, while the fate of Sam is unknown. Another recorded black man was Peter Callaway of Company D, also a slave. He was eventually released unconditionally from Camp Douglas and apparently stayed in the North."

So not "never exchanged."

I think Confederate apologists have greatly exagerated and overemphasized the extent to which this happened. I'm not saying there weren't a few black men who fought for the South, clearly there were. But they were an ultra-rare exception, unlike the 180,000 who volunteered for the Union.

Yes African-Americans did fight for the Confederacy, but don't make too much out of it. The total number that fought, or even served in combat units, was very small. It was nothing like the number who served in the United States armies from 1863-65. If they had been more common it is likely that Cleburne's proposal would not have been as controversial. Probably more served in the Confederate navy than served in combat units in the Confederate army prior to 1865. African-Americans serving the Confederate army in non-combat roles were far more common. Remember in Gone With The Wind how Big Sam told Ms. Scarlet that he was going to dig ditches for the white men to hide in?

For those who were in combat roles I am not sure that it really makes much difference whether they were "serving in the army" or "serving along side the army". To me a man with a musket following officer's instructions in combat is a soldier, whether he is carried on the rolls as such or not. Although slaves were not supposed to be able to serve in combat units prior to 1865, similar prohibitions had existed prior to the ACW and had been widely ignored.

African Americans could enter Confederate service in different ways. Some were free and volunteered or were hired. Some slaves were given or rented by their masters, or accompanied their masters. Some were impressed by the Confederacy or by state governments.

To my knowledge it was only at the end of the war that there was a formal plan for freeing slaves who served in the Confederate armed forces. Private arrangements might have been made in individual cases prior to this.

Unfortunately the African-American Confederate has gotten wrapped up in the battle between those extremists who like to claim that the ACW had nothing to do with slavery and those extremists who insist it was only about slavery.

Some at least moved freely within the army's lines and indeed outside the army's zone of control; Levi Miller was sent home alone (on the train) for shoes, and also sent, again alone, to Charlottesville to nurse Captain McBride. His pension application describes him running through Union sniper fire to bring rations up to his company's trench at Spotsylvania.

My guess is he is a fairly typical example of an officer's body servant: uniformed, probably armed, and trusted.

The fact that slavery was a wicked and pernicious system did not prevent many (perhaps even most) whites and blacks living under it from making personal accommodations and forming personal relationships that mitigated to some extent the worst features of an inherently unjust system.

Doc, my mention of never exchanged related to Union blacks being taken by Confederate forces, they were not exchanged (if they lived at all). The union was a different story. They actually observed the codes of war.

Oh, okay. Sorry for my confusion.

Doc, my mention of never exchanged related to Union blacks being taken by Confederate forces, they were not exchanged (if they lived at all). The union was a different story. They actually observed the codes of war.

You may want to check your sources. I believe of the close to 200,000 African Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces during the ACW, less than 1,000 were captured, and most of those were captured after the breakdown of formal POW exchanges. As for the U.S. observing the "codes of war", the ACW could be a rather nasty affair with gross violations of the "norms of civilized warfare" engaged in by both sides.

Didn't Lincoln halt the importation of medicine into the South?

And I don't think the death rate at Union POW camps like Camp Douglas was much below Andersonville -- which is inexcusable given the disparity of resources.

The whole war was a bloody tragedy, and I doubt you can prove that one side fought it more humanely than the other.

" The union was a different story. They actually observed the codes of war."

Well, most of the time.

Well, some of the time.

Well, some did and others didn't.

The treatment of Confederate POW in Chicago and in Elmira, NY not exactly following the codes of war.

War will make people do the worst to others. Both sides in the ACW, and both sides in all wars, commit horrible acts. The victors are justified and the defeated are vilified for what they have done.

I've been reading quite a bit on W.W. II in New Guinea. Seems it was very common for BOTH sides to machine gun pilots who had bailed out of their aircraft. That's the type of war that was being fought.

To say that the Federal forces were all warm and fuzzy in their approach to war would be very flawed. I had five ancesters who fought wearing blue, 1 KIA, 1 POW (Andersonville) in the group. It was a terrible conflict that brought out the worst in people.

"If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking." – William Tecumseh Sherman

"War means fighting, and fighting means killing." – Nathan Bedford Forrest

"200,000 African Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces"
Of those, is it true that only 9 'fighting regts' were formed, and all the rest served, as did their Southern counterparts, as cooks, trench diggers, teamsters, and doing laundry?

We did this all very thoroughly and recently. We concluded no enlisted black Confederate soldiers. Some body servants, who could be armed, with their masters. Lots of black labourers and supporting functions.

No free men of colour enlisted as Confederates although some did volunteer.

I'm off to work this morning and just saw this post…I've addressed it before, but I would like to address it again this evening…as once again someone is slightly inaccurate in their statements…

Hi Calico, the North raised 166 regiments of "colored troops" during the war plus the 54th, 55th MA & 29th CT they suffered 2,751 men killed and mortally wounded in battle. The 25th Corps was an entire corps of "colored troops" that fought at Petersburg, fall of Richmond and Appomattox. All the above from Fox's "Regimental Losses in the Civil War" pages 523, & 109

"200,000 African Americans who served in the U.S. armed forces"
Of those, is it true that only 9 'fighting regts' were formed, and all the rest served, as did their Southern counterparts, as cooks, trench diggers, teamsters, and doing laundry?

There were over 100 regiments of USCT, all branches of the service. Their record of fighting was every bit as good and as bad as their white compatriots (note the number of medals of honor awarded at New Market Heights, for example.)

I won't try to add to the comments above debunking the notion of black Confederates, TMP-ers have come through as usual. I am mortified by the Virginia textbook mess.

To put things in perspective with respect to the Union Army, at the end of Civil War, as I recall, 10% of the Federal forces were black – as I noted above, I have a couple of brigades of African-American troops I use for late war battles

I am always puzzled by the hue and outcry over this question… not the question…it is an interesting and legitimate question… but the emotions over this question.

Certainly blacks fought for the South… some were forced.. some joined voluntarily… some passed as whites.

Some Americans in WW2 fought for the Nazis. Some were fully supporting of the extermination of the Jews…

Some Germans escaped the Reich and came to the US and served the allies here.

None of these facts prove the moral superiority of either side.

Just because some free blacks served the South doesn't excuse the problems of slavery. Just because the North ended slavery by a harsh bloody war doesn't give it a morale high ground.

Speaking in Christian terms… both sides were horridly flawed…. the great emancipation didn't erase the sins of the North… any more than slavery condemned the South…

Afterwards, both are still imperfect and condemned.. just as they were before the war….

The small bright hope is that slavery was erased though at great cost. We can hope that this improved the world and American society.

End of Calvinistic sermon…

Sorry guys… just had to write it.

Joe Collins

Personally, I stopped reading when I got to the point where it said the monument was commissioned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy!

Who did you think might have commissioned such a monument?

Interestingly, today happens to be Robert E. Lee's birthday.

Question:

With thousands of african-american soldiers on the Confederate Army, I asume that the rate of desertion had been very hight?
If they run, they would be free!.

And which was the rate of desertion of same guys on the Union Army?. Supose very low because were they would go?

A question from a ignorant, so apologhies in advance.

Amicalement
Armand

Armand, This is available above from Doc mcb above.

TMP link

I think you need to read it.

Who did you think might have commissioned such a monument?

Fair point but actually I was referring to the likely authenticity of the portrayal!

Not to be too pushy, but have a look at my African Americans at War (ABC Clio), should be in quite a lot of reference sections in the US. I researched all of this as part of the work, there were a significant number of African Americans in the Confederate army – if my memory serves me right there are contemporary paintings and so forth which confirm this, added to which some of the names from the rosters suggest this too. For many years they were passed off as camp followers and servants, but they were armed participants in my view. No big surprise to be honest, African Americans had regularly fought in all US conflicts since the early colonial period. As far as I'm aware, there were no specific African American only Confederate regiments, but I stand to be corrected if someone can find some evidence to the contrary.

Many thanks Mr. Oh!.

I had miss that one.

Amicalement
Armand

Look, the historical issue is a clear one-some have claimed that black soldiers served as combatants-not support, usually forced-in the Confederate Army. The claim is they did this of their own free will, and served and were recognized as soldiers in their units.

It is inherent for the proponents of this fantasy to provide unequivocal documentation that this was true. There is damn little evidence for this "fact."

The reason, it is clear, was to blur the fact that the war was over slavery by showing black support for the Confederate cause, and to augment the "happy" slave and beneficent Massah mantra of the Gone with the Wind/Lost cause propaganda.

It is essentially bunkum.

As for the "Codes of War" , no one has claimed the Union troops were saints, BUT the forces of slavery have Lawrence Kansas, Quantrill, N.B. Forest's actions at Fort Pillow, among many other partisan killings and murders.

It is also true that the majority of outlaws and gunslingers on the Western Frontier after the ACW were former Confederates. Various klan and other night riders were ex-Confederate officers and soldiers responsible for many killings, lynchings, and maimings throughout the South. N.B. Forest started the Klan in the South as another act of criminality and treason against his supposed country.

The Union just looks like saints compared to the actions of many Confederates.

Pique, no doubt you are correct that "some" have made such claims -- probably because they are tired of being called racists by arrogant Yankees -- but I don't think anyone on TMP has done so. You set up straw men and then expertly knock them down.

And if you think the North fought with any less cruelty than the south, in Kansas and Missouri and Tennessee and Georgia, you are badly informed or wearing blinders.

Imagine being conquered and then being governed by men who hated the South. That's Radical Reconstruction.

Lincoln's death is surely one of the greatest tragedies in this tragic era.