Blacks Who Fought For the South!!!

For some yankees who still think the war between the states was because of blacks.

Most historical accounts portray Southern blacks as anxiously awaiting President Abraham Lincoln's "liberty-dispensing troops" marching south in the War Between the States. But there's more to the story; let's look at it.
Black Confederate military units, both as freemen and slaves, fought federal troops. Louisiana free blacks gave their reason for fighting in a letter written to New Orleans' Daily Delta: "The free colored population love their home, their property, their own slaves and recognize no other country than Louisiana, and are ready to shed their blood for her defense. They have no sympathy for Abolitionism; no love for the North, but they have plenty for Louisiana. They will fight for her in 1861 as they fought in 1814-15." As to bravery, one black scolded the commanding general of the state militia, saying, "Pardon me, general, but the only cowardly blood we have got in our veins is the white blood."
Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest had slaves and freemen serving in units under his command. After the war, Forrest said of the black men who served under him, "These boys stayed with me.. - and better Confederates did not live." Articles in "Black Southerners in Gray," edited by Richard Rollins, gives numerous accounts of blacks serving as fighting men or servants in every battle from Gettysburg to Vicksburg.
Professor Ed Smith, director of American Studies at American University, says Stonewall Jackson had 3,000 fully equipped black troops scattered throughout his corps at Antietam - the war's bloodiest battle. Mr. Smith calculates that between 60,000 and 93,000 blacks served the Confederacy in some capacity. They fought for the same reason they fought in previous wars and wars afterward: "to position themselves. They had to prove they were patriots in the hope the future would be better ... they hoped to be rewarded."
Many knew Lincoln had little love for enslaved blacks and didn't wage war against the South for their benefit. Lincoln made that plain, saying, "I will say, then, that I am not, nor have ever been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races ... I am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." The very words of his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation revealed his deceit and cunning; it freed those slaves held "within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States." It didn't apply to slaves in West Virginia and areas and states not in rebellion. Like Gen. Ulysses Grant's slaves, they had to wait for the 13th Amendment, Grant explained why he didn't free his slaves earlier, saying, "Good help is so hard to come by these days."
Lincoln waged war to "preserve the Union". The 1783 peace agreement with England (Treaty of Paris] left 13 sovereign nations. They came together in 1787, as principals, to create a federal government, as their agent, giving it specific delegated authority -specified in our Constitution. Principals always retain the right to fire their agent. The South acted on that right when it seceded. Its firing on Fort Sumter, federal property, gave Lincoln the pretext needed for the war.
The War Between the States, through force of arms, settled the question of secession, enabling the federal government to run roughshod over states' rights specified by the Constitution's 10th Amendment.
Sons of Confederate Veterans is a group dedicated to giving a truer account of the War Between the States. I'd like to see it erect on Richmond's Monument Avenue a statue of one of the thousands of black Confederate soldiers.

A TRUE BLACK HISTORY MOMENT

When elected representatives were statesmen.......

(The following article from The Charleston Voice appears in the book War For What by Francis W. Springer)

In Mississippi on Feb. 1, 1890 an appropriation for a monument to the Confederate dead was being considered. A delegate had just spoken against the bill, when John F. Harris, a Negro Republican delegate from Washington, County, rose to speak:
"Mr. Speaker! I have arisen here in my place to offer a few words on the bill. I have come from a sick bed. Perhaps it was not prudent for me to come. But sir, I could not rest quietly in my room without contributing a few remarks of my own. I was sorry to hear the speech of the young gentlemen from Marshall County. I am sorry that any son of a soldier should go on record as opposed to the erection of a monument in honor of the brave dead. And, Sir, I am convinced that had he seen what I saw at Seven Pines, and in the Seven Day's fighting around Richmond, the battlefield covered with the mangled forms of those who fought for their country and for their country's honor, he would not have made the speech. When the news came that the South had been invaded, those men went forth to fight for what they believed, and they made no requests for monuments. But they died, and their virtues should be remembered. Sir, I went with them. I, too, wore the gray, the same color my master wore. We stayed four long years, and if that war had gone on till now I would have been there yet. I want to honor those brave men who died for their convictions. When my mother died I was a boy. Who, Sir, then acted the part of a mother to the orphaned slave boy, but my old MISSUS! Were she living now, or could speak to me from those high realms where are gathered the sainted dead, she would tell me to vote for this bill. And, Sir, I shall vote for it. I want it known to all the world that my vote is given in favor of the bill to erect a monument in HONOR OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD."
When the applause died down, the measure passed overwhelmingly, and every Negro member voted "AYE".

(By Steve Fry, The Topeka Capital-Journal, September 27, 2001)

Before William Clarke Quantrill and hundreds of his Missouri guerrillas raided Lawrence in 1863, John Noland rode ahead to scout out the town.
Noland, Quantrill's primary scout, is just one of many blacks who served in Confederate units during the Civil War, said historian Ed Kennedy, who will speak at 6:30 p.m. today to the Civil War Roundtable of Eastern Kansas at the Koch Education Center at the Kansas History Center, 6425 S.W. 6th. Admission is free and the event is open to the public.
Noland joined Quantrill because his family in Missouri had been abused by Jayhawkers, Kansas guerrillas who raided Missouri and later were mustered into the Union forces, Kennedy said. Photographs of Quantrill's raiders as they attended reunions after the Civil War show Noland sitting prominently with white members of the group.
In the 1999 movie "Ride With the Devil," Noland is the basis for the character Daniel Holt, the freed black who along with his former owner rides with Quantrill's bushwhackers, Kennedy said.
It is difficult to determine how many blacks fought in the Confederate forces, in part because many Confederate records were destroyed. Kennedy estimates seven percent to eight percent of the Confederate forces might have been black.
Kennedy cites a number of sources, including diaries, letters, private publications, the "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion" and writings of black scholars.
For instance:
.. A Union sanitary commission officer saw 3,000 black armed combatants in the Confederate Army moving through Fredricksburg, Va., in 1862.
.. An 1862 letter from Frederick Douglass to President Abraham Lincoln in which Douglass writes that many blacks serve in the Confederate Army as "real soldiers having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government."
.. Pensions were paid to black Confederate soldiers.
.. And photographs showed black veterans, who "wore their veterans badges as proudly as any whites."
Blacks served in the Confederate Army "for the same reason they defended the United States colonies in the Revolutionary War," Kennedy said. "They were patriots," who thought their homes were being invaded by the Union. They felt like this was their home, that this was their country. They weren't fighting for slavery."
The black Confederates were a combination of free blacks and slaves who were house servants accompanying white masters, Kennedy said. Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest freed 44 of his slaves after they served Forrest's cavalry forces, Kennedy said. Unlike blacks in the Union Army who served in all-black regiments, blacks in the Confederate Army fought in mixed units, he said.
The topic of black Confederate soldiers is rarely talked about because "it's not politically correct," Kennedy said. Some people who hear about black soldiers fighting in the Confederate Army "just go ballistic," Kennedy said. He likens their reaction to people who didn't know blacks served in the Union Army before release of the 1989 movie "Glory," the film about the 54th Massachusetts, an all-black unit Union regiment. (The first black regiment to fight in the Civil War was the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry.)
Civil War Historian Ed Kennedy is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army and a former instructor of history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He teaches Army Reserve Officer Training Corps classes at Leavenworth High School and is co-owner of Historical Leadership Seminars, a private company that takes corporate executives to battlefields to teach leadership and decision-making skills.

Copyright 2001 Topeka Capital-Journal