A little known fact about the Civil War

[63_Springfield]

Not sure how many of you know, but nearly 100,000 blacks VOLUNTEERED for service in the Confederate Army at the outset of the Civil War. They felt it was as much their duty to serve as it was their masters and other "white folk". What are your thoughts about it?

[1dominator1]

The love of one's country transcends all borders? There were also black slave owners in the south and many freedmen, not as many as afterwards though!

[A_Major_Threat]

So 10 percent of the Confederate army was black? Seems iffy.

[The Mouth]

I actually knew about this. I believe that some were offered freedom while others volunteered of their own free will.

[Minas Moth]

i know they volunteered but were they actually accepted into the ranks or not? i know that Confederate Congressmen Howell Cobb (who also ran for president before the War) stated:"You cannot make soldiers of slaves or slaves of soldiers. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong!" This remark was made in November 1864 when Jefferson Davies presented issue of recruiting black soldiers into Confederate army.

As i see it so far, thy were mostly used as "engineer tools", not fighting men but builders of fortifications, repairmen of railroads etc. they were more a "commodity" or a "supply" of Confederate Army and that was one of the reasons why Union soldiers (considering this) treated them as contraband and not let say prisoners of war...

what i'm really appalled by is the number of blacks volunteering. this could be good indicator on how southern elites managed to make a Civil War not about slavery at all but about state's rights, leaving that vaguely described...

great info to ponder about, no doubt about that.

[Lowes]

So 10 percent of the Confederate army was black? Seems iffy.

Volunteered doesn't mean accepted; if you read memoirs of many Confederate Generals, only a handful were comfortable with the notion of using colored soldiers in service. The Union wasn't much different; Grant was all for the enlistment and employment of blacks, Sherman was vehemently not. Many blacks would serve in the CSA military, but largely as cooks, camp-followers and other such logistical aids.

[Genosse]

Second Lowes; construction crews, porters, teamsters and other logistical services - but pretty sure the overwhelming majority of these were in fact slaves, not wide-eyed volunteers.

[jnm858]

Found a pretty informative article on the subject.

http://civilwargazette.wordpress.com...e-confederacy/

[Confederate]

There actually were black soldiers in Stonewall Jackson's Army.

[Minas Moth]

Volunteered doesn't mean accepted; if you read memoirs of many Confederate Generals, only a handful were comfortable with the notion of using colored soldiers in service. The Union wasn't much different; Grant was all for the enlistment and employment of blacks, Sherman was vehemently not. Many blacks would serve in the CSA military, but largely as cooks, camp-followers and other such logistical aids.

i think you are forcing different things to be the same... what i mean is: after the Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, black people were to be admited into Union Army, no matter what individiual generals (such as Sherman) would have think about it. This came from highest authority and was Congress accepted act so there was no way that general's racial views could influence on the blacks being enlisted and sent to his corps or something like that.

in the Confederacy, policy to recruit blacks was never accepted as in the North. sure, there were debates about it, but as i said in my previous post here, As late as November 1864 Confederate Congress was against it. and this was when War was really closing on on the Confederacy. Would individual southern geneals admit blacks to their armies? Some would, but some most certain wouldn't even here about that. So they used them as cooks, camp utilities etc.

Therfore, one can't in this point of view compare North and South. Had the South in Confederate Congress passed such an act to allow black enlistment then we really could debate about such things.

There actually were black soldiers in Stonewall Jackson's Army.

in Gods&Generals, only blacks in Jackson's movie are cooks... granted, it's only a movie so no historical value there, but i had to say that

[63_Springfield]

So 10 percent of the Confederate army was black? Seems iffy.

I never said they were allowed to join the Army. I said they wanted to volunteer. The Confederacy wouldn't allow it, but I still think it would have made for an even more interesting war.

[ss97slp]

interesting that this conversation has come up. i have read many articles recently about this very subject. there is strong evidence to support, and many credible witnessess reported that general Jackson in fact had at least two fully equiped black regiments serving as front line troops. there are also many references to the free men joining regiments in the south that did in fact fight as front line soldiers. most notebly were soldiers out of Louisianna. i wish i could find the articles on this but i cant find them right now (of course). but serving black soldiers played prominant roles as artillery men in coastal defense batteries and city defense batteries especially along the Mississippi River. there were in fact full engineer battalions made of black troops and in many cases regular volunteer white regiments had replacement black companies that came into service but very little official records were kept and most records are from credible sources from the battlefield.

most black men that fought for the south were not trying to keep themselves slaves. they were offered freedom for service, acted as replacements for whites who "bought" there way out of service, but mostly black who fought for the south were already free men, who owned farms with slaves on them who did not want to loose this economic structure. this part is regularly forgotten in history that many black families owned other blacks and kept them as slaves to work their land. these free men would form national guard regiments, known as home guard units to protect these infulstructures. they had as much to loose as the white slave owners wich is the only ones we want to remember today. also there are union prison camp records of black soldiers being taken and put into prisons from the fields of battle.

[A_Major_Threat]

Nathan Bedford Forrest had slaves in his cavalry, he considered them as good as any southerner

which were given freedom, sorry for double post

EDIT: Merged few double posts... please use your edti button guys... Minas Moth

[darqen27]

The fact should just be proven, ANY man who is told he is worlth nothing and then stands and defends something he believes in, should be proven a hero, not a slave, or noble or royal, just any person, because many of the upper "caste" have show us their tales and made them self no better then the men they called slaves

And another thing, to fall back on the better generals, I can think of "Patton" as one, too damn with order if I am to command these men, I would show them my face, and they will know the man who commanded them to die, if such is their fate so be, it, but if i was a general, i would not hide from those i command, let me meet them all in hell!

EDIT: again, don't double post people, use your edit button Minas Moth

[Dave Strider]

Sorry for the half-necro half-bump, but I remember hearing that, on Day 1 of Gettysburg, of some of the Confederate prisoners from Heth's Division, there were 8 uniformed Confederate Blacks. So they were allowed in combat, that's for sure.

[Minas Moth]

Sorry for the half-necro half-bump, but I remember hearing that, on Day 1 of Gettysburg, of some of the Confederate prisoners from Heth's Division, there were 8 uniformed Confederate Blacks. So they were allowed in combat, that's for sure.

it's not a question if they were allowed in combat or not... ofc, they were; some slave-owners offered their slaves to serve in the CSA so they didn't have to. There was also some number of freed slaves in the south that did join the ranks.

your information still doesn't tell us were those blacks fighting men of Heth's Division or were they cooks, diggers, litter bearers etc; people who weren't active fighters but were with their units when fighting broke out.

Generally, in south there was no CS recognized regiment of blacks that I know of... individual cases (though there could be quite many of them, even thousand) of blacks serving in CSA are still vast minority. If we do the numbers; from 400,000 active soldiers in CSA if 1,000 were black that is exactly 0.25% (this figure is even lower if we take that CSA had strength of 900,000 men) while in the North, of 2,000,000 soldiers by the end of war, 10%+ were blacks.

I would say that in South, addmmiting blacks into ranks as soldiers, was left to individual brigade and maybe even regiment commanders. it is important to say that most (not all) of the southern soldiers were extremely negrophobic (especially Mississippians and Texans as I read somewhere) so it is hard to imagine they would be admitted on some larger scale.

to back my babble here:

... scoffed at rumors that the Confederacy had units made up of slaves. “This is utterly untrue,” he wrote in his diary. “We have no armed slaves to fight for us.”

...confirmed that “No slaves have been employed by the Government except as cooks or nurses in hospitals and for labor.”

[Dave Strider]

No, they were captured from the actual lines.

[Gordon Highlander]

Here is a PROFESSIONAL telling you, how you are wrong.

[Dave Strider]

And here is what I was talking about.

http://www.fold3.com/page/1641_confe...canscivil_war/
http://cwcrossroads.wordpress.com/20...-union-forces/

[Minas Moth]

ok guys, I really like all the info you provided... but even so, I believe that we have to agree that black soldiers weren't Confederate State (either by Congress or president) recognized soldiers... as I stated several times, it depended on personal opinion of that brigade/regiment/company commander.