Alan J. Pitts
Re: black confederates
Tue May 29 11:57:21 2001


For those interested in this subject, Robert F. Durden's, "The Gray and the Black: the Confederate Debate on Emancipation" would be well worth reading. It's available in reprint at about $20. Durden describes the debate between those in the Confederacy who wanted to preserve slavery and more pragmatic Confederates who wanted to abandon slavery in order to achieve independence. Those who have access to William C. Oates' book may also read what this Alabama officer had to say on the subject. Oates fell with the more pragmatic group and was disappointed that Congress was never willing do take really decisive action on this issue.

Durden answered so many of my questions that I have chosen not to devote more time to this subject. It should be clear that until March 1865, Confederate military law did not allow enlistment of slaves any more than it allowed enlistment of women. Of course there are isolated exceptions in which we can find women as well as slaves in Confederate uniform. I recall seeing a pension application (Pike County Ala.?) in which a former slave claimed Confederate service and was supported in his suit by several Confederate veterans. However, the pension board denied the request with the comment that slaves were never allowed to serve as he had asserted.

The pension application serves to illustrate history: there were isolated examples of slaves serving the South with musket in hand, but Confederate authorities did not acknowledge their existence. I've read several claims that Forrest had a company of scouts composed of black Confederates. This was Harvey's Scouts, and a monument exists in Canton MS to commemorate blacks who rode with that company. But Addison Harvey's company was NOT a black company: it was a command like many others in which black servants shared the all hardships and privations of field duty with their white owners. Here's a URL for the monument at Canton:

http://www.37thtexas.org/html/Memoriam2.html

Sometimes we do harm to the cause we sincerely want to maintain and support by overstating our position and not citing history correctly. I appreciate Mr. Cagle's efforts to produce figures from the Federal census of 1860 which clearly show how many free blacks lived in which states. These figures make it perfectly clear how few lived in Deep South states. Even before he accepted a military commission in the Union army, William T. Sherman was aware of the disparity between the number of free blacks in the upper tier Southern states like Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky and those allowed in the Deep South. He believed that divergent interests in different regions of the Confederacy would produce yet another split at some time in the future.

Let me end by making a small request. Before resorting to a war of words on this subject or any other, take time to do a little reading and research first.

Hopefully other readers will be interested in reading what a "pragmatic" Alabama Confederate wrote about slavery and the reasons why poor Southerners who never owned a slave were willing to fight and die. A great passage on that topic starts at about page 498 in Oates' book: The War Between the Union and the Confederacy and its Lost Opportunities (1905, Morningside Press reprint 1985). I'd be interested in what others see in those pages.