Excerpts from here:
O-kayyyyy…
As Henry Mancini once wrote music to, “Where do I begin…”. With the history I suppose.
There most definitely were blacks who fought for the Confederacy, this is beyond dispute, but I seriously doubt there were even hundreds of them, let alone thousands, and there most definitely were not black brigades. The majority were free blacks from the state of Louisiana, and they served in white units. There were probably as many women who saw active combat in the war by disguising themselves as men as there were black men who fought for the Confederacy.
Blacks did contribute to the CSA war effort, but mostly as laborers: digging ditches, building roads, cooks, laundry, etc.- basically the same stuff they did as slaves. Many Confederate officers took some of their enslaved house servants (especially valets and cooks) with them. However, the notion of handing out weapons to slaves has never ever ever ever ever ever been a warmly popular idea in any civilization that practiced slavery. Unless perhaps you count Egypt under the Mamluks where the army was comprised of slaves. And they took over and became in all practical purposes if not in name the master class. Which is why you don’t give heavy arms to slaves.
A few blacks who were master craftsmen were used by the CSA. Horace King for example designed fortifications around Columbus GA (fortifications that were bypassed by the Union almost as if somebody had leaked plans to them) and there were black gunsmiths and mechanics who served the units, but they did so as unpaid labor.
I can’t remember who wrote it but one of the Confederate generals remarked on the oddity that southern planters were more than willing to send every one of their sons off to fight knowing fully well there was a better than small chance they’d be killed- they’d buy them the finest horses, uniforms, weapons, etc., kiss them on the cheeks and say “Have fun killing Yankees” and the mothers would drawl out some variant of “come back with your shield or on it and I’ll make cornbread” and that was that, but ask them for one of their slaves they’d like as not hold a gun on you. They were asking for slaves for manual labor of course, not for soldiers, but the planters had to be ordered to turn over any requisitioned slaves or livestock.
It is true that there were many suggestions that blacks should be used as soldiers. The most famous and the one that came closest to fruition was Patrick Cleburne’s proposal- he was Irish and lacked the same views as most of his contemporaries (certainly he didn’t see blacks as equal but he did see them as capable). He suggested they arm volunteer black men and give them their freedom at wars end, and he unleashed a shitstorm for suggesting this from, among many many many others, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, Bishop Leonidas Polk, as well as hundreds of other generals and Congressmen and private citizens who denounced him as a fool and a madman and a dreamer for even considering it. Some used antisemitic language to also slam Judah Benjamin, the Jewish (by birth- Catholic by conversion) Secretary of War and one of the only high ranking CSA-ers who thought the idea had merit (also a very good friend of Jefferson Davis, which is probably what saved him from being discharged).
Much later in the war, when it was clear the South couldn’t hold on and a Southern offensive was no longer even hoped for, the idea didn’t sound as crazy and even Lee and Davis got behind it. A regiment was raised, but by the time they finished basic the war was over anyway so they never saw action.
That in a nutshell is the history of blacks who served in the Confederate armed forces: a few freedmen from Louisiana who served with special permission, a small smattering of them throughout the rest, NONE of them officers, and a regiment that was never used. Whose ass the notion of Stonewall Jackson having two Negro brigades (a brigade, for those who aren’t familiar with the term, consists of at least 2,000 men, usually twice that) came from is anybody’s guess; Jackson was long dead by the time Cleburne’s proposals were given merit and while few if any officers on either side saw blacks as remotely equal Jackson was more racist than most.
Anyway, blacks who fought for the Confederacy were curiosities, much like the Asians and Russian nobles who fought for the Confederacy (and they did exist). They didn’t swing any battles and they weren’t that significant outside of their own families. A few did get pensions, but again we’re talking a few hundred and those very scattered.
So let’s get to the idea of why the fuck a non-historian is writing a history textbook. I remember my own 4th grade state history textbook: I later had its (ancient) writer as a professor at Auburn University and he was one of the top men in the field of Alabama history. He had a co-writer who “4th graded” it down, but it was historically sound; I still remember some of the interesting bits from it. It never occurred to me you could write a textbook to be used by hundreds of thousands of students in a subject you haven’t studied beyond a cursory level. And of course her research came from the internet- especially the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a group of old and less old assholes who stopped being an ancestor worship group long ago and now are basically Tea Party overlaps who are discredited left right and center even on wikipedia for their views and teachings (most of which having to do with how slavery was not the cause of the Civil War and in fact slaves by dadgum liked slavery and in fact we wanted to free 'em as early as 1682 but they begged us and whined so pitiful to please let 'em keep being slaves we did it as an act of kindness- the war was about states rights and the fight to get half decent sweet iced tea north of Culpepper Virginia).
And why is it that when people are caught in absolute error they can’t say “I was wrong, please excuse me”? I know it’s embarrassing but it’s happened to me and I said it, nobody’s going to much remember it anyway and it’s not like one error will destroy your reputation. (I’ve read errors in books by the president of Harvard and the current bestseller Bloody Crimes [a book about Lincoln’s post mortem parades and the chase for Jeff Davis- has some whoppers actually]). I certainly don’t expect a children’s book writer whose previous books have been one on “really yucky gross history” (true) to know what she’s talking about, but I’d have thought there’d have been peer review of some sort before making it a textbook; I’d expect the textbook company to say simply “Sorry, we made a boo boo”, for the author to do likewise, and if you don’t recall the book put a sticker on it saying “There’s an error on page ____”- problem solved, but now you have to wonder what the hell else is in there.
Anyway, I could go on but no reason really. This is mundane, pointless, and now it’s shared.
And oh yes- Virginia is indeed the state with the governor who wanted to have the big Confederate Awareness Month.
