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Black Southerners in Confederate Armies

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Black Southerners in Confederate Armies is the second book on this subject by Charles K. Barrows asnd J. H. Segars and as such is one more of several very good recent scholarly studies on this most intriguing subject. This topic is finally receiving the serious attention of Civil War scholars it deserves.

Though Barrows is historian-in-chief for the Georgia Sons of Confederate Veterans, the work is free of any pro-Confederate bias. The essay authors, scholars and professional historians, allow the historical records themselves to speak, which is critical for any historical topic, but particularly one that has become so controversial. The essays themselves are concise and well-written, covering a wide range of material relating to black Southerners who served in Confederate armies. The records surveyed include old period newspaper articles, official Confederate military correspondence, interviews with black Confederate veterans as well as analysis of black Confederate pension application files.

The existence of pro-Confederate blacks and black Confederate veterans is beyond serious historical question as this volume makes abundantly clear. Too much historical documentation exists to seriously question the existence of black Confederates, though their motives in some cases may be open to
interpretation; most, though by no means all, served out of patriotism and loyalty to their homeland.

All-in-all a very good stand-alone book on black Confederates or a good introduction to other works on the subject.

Nothing is so upsetting to a liberal as the idea that Blacks willingly supported the Confederacy. It assails their preconceived notions about slavery and their assumptions about how Blacks should think and act. They simply cannot accept the idea that some slaves and many freemen willingly supported the CSA and many served in its' armies. The fallback position is that they were not soldiers as they lacked weapons being only cooks, teamsters or body servants. The same group will accord soldier status to a man who drove the Red Ball in WWII but not a teamster driving a wagon for the AoNV.

This book takes a very close look at Black Confederates, proves that they do exist, and shows how much information was never recorded. The sad part of their story is that it is untold. This is a vital book for anyone interested in the subject.

Whether Southern Blacks served in the Confederate Army as cooks or front line troops is irrelevant. What is relevant is the intent of their hearts; they supported the Cause of the Confederacy. Blacks can and do believe in State's Rights. Blacks can and do believe that a strong central government is the enemy of freedom and noone wanted freedom more than the slaves, especially the Black slaves in the North. Southern States were buying McCormick Reapers as fast as the North could manufacture them. This book does a great service in shattering Liberal myths about the Lincoln War and in proving that Black people like freedom as well as Whites. After all, why would a Black man want to fight for Mr. Lincoln after all the rude insults and negative remarks he made about Blacks? This book is a positive contribution to Black History. Perhaps the next book will be about Confederate Indians.

While the book itself is remarkably free of pro-Southern retoric, the context of the book is not, as can be seen by its reviews, along with those for other similar books.
The existence of black Confederates is taken as a proof that the objectives of Secession and the Confederacy were somehow validated.
The point to be made here in opposition was that the OFFICIAL policy of the Confederate States was, initially, that blacks, other than as personal servants of white soldiers, were unwelcome in the Army. When the colored and mixed race militia of Louisiana offered their services to the Governor on secession, they were rejected and then disarmed. The officers, NCOs and soldiers of these militia units became the cadre of the Corps d' Afrique later raised by Butler upon Union recovery of New Orleans. The Confederate government did not OFFICIALLY recruit slaves as combat soldiers until April 1865. This position is well documented, as was the virulent opposition against earlier recommendations, such as that by Patrick Cleburne, one of the South's best division commanders and an Irish immigrant with no stake in the pre-war South's attachment to slavery. The response of Southerners as varied as the Adjutant General of the Confederate Army to the former Governor of Georgia was uniformly adverse to recruiting slaves as combatants. It must be pointed out that the total number of black combat soldiers that can be validated by muster rosters and pension petitions is less than 1,000. Compare this to the over 180,000 black combat soldiers (and the more than 250,000 Southern whites) in the service of the Union, validated by the same types of documents. It should be pointed out that during the Civil War, Grant captured three Confederate armies. All three were processed, the first as prisoners of war, the other two being. In the official records, nor in any published memoir, regimental history or other document related to the processing of these armies is there any reference to the capture and processing of black Confederate soldiers. Either they didn't exist or they refused to come forward, for whatever reason, to identify themselves as such. The only blacks mentioned are bandsmen, cooks, teamasters and servants.
Certainly blacks served as muscisians, litter bearers, cooks and teamsters. Yet, it is debateble as to how many were there voluntarily, as was the use of free and slave blacks as engineers on defensive works or in the wartime industries, both government and privately owned in the Confederacy. The Confedrate government began to recruit slaves from their masters for these positions in 1862, when, along with the unilateral extension of enlistments and the introduction of a draft, efforts were being made to maintain the combat strength of the Confederate armies. It must be remarked there was no effort to recruit slaves, much less free blacks as combat soldiers. Placing weapons in the hands of such was severely restricted by Confederate Army policy.
Consider that by the census of 1860, there were over 400,000 free and 3.4 million slave blacks in the states that seceded. This should have translated into around and at least 40,000 free and 340,000 slave male blacks of military age. Yet, where the Union was able to officially mobilize over 140,000 of these individuals (the difference between this figure and the 180,000 is the 40,000 free blacks recruited in the North and West) as combat soldiers, the Confederacy couldn't mobilize more than a thousand. Yet from a white free population of something over 6 million, the Confederacy mobilized over 750,000 soldiers (and the Union, 250,000). This sin't exactly a ringing indorsement of the Confedercy's political, social, economic and cultural objectives by the South's black populace.