Roger Brothers
Black Confederates
Mon May 28 10:38:12 2001


I don't know about 300 but I do know that Forrest offered 45 of his own slaves their freedom if they entered service with him. 18 months before the War was over Forrest, believing that he would not survive until the end, did officially free these men.
As for the larger picture of Blacks serving the Confederate cause consider the following facts. In 1860 there were 22 million people in the states that remained in the Union. In the South there were 9 million, 4 million of whom were Black. The Southern people fought the most powerful military force on Earth to a stand still for three years and hung on for another year while a hostile population almost as large as their own lived behind their lines? I consider the Confederate soldier to be among the very best in history but they were not supermen! Most Black Southerners had to have been loyal and probably taken as a whole more loyal than the average white Southerner. Whatever their social, economic or political status It was their Country too!