Black Confederates and Slavery

MattL

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I didn't want to derail other threads, but in the various discussion involving Black Confederates a potential odd contradiction comes up.

I have seen many who exaggerate the "Black Confederate" quantity by bolstering their numbers with every slave in service (enlisted or not) into the Confederate military (almost exclusively as cooks, musicians, servants, etc). That somehow these people should be counted among the supporters of the Confederate cause.

I find this a contradiction. Most of these people (an assumption, but one I'm willing to put forward) would likely agree across the sides that slavery was bad in general. Which in most cases forced Blacks to perform agricultural work for the benefit of White people. That doing agricultural work in itself isn't bad of course (plenty of White people did it, usually at a much smaller scale) but that when someone is enslaved, who has no real say, no real rights, faces various inhumane consequences and treatment due to that status etc it becomes bad.

Yet somehow those slaves being forced to risk their lives (whether just traveling along with soldiers so being in danger due to being present, or the rare cases a gun was thrown in their hands and/or they were forced to defend themselves in the moment) and contribute towards the killing of their White masters enemies is somehow virtuous?

How is this not a contradiction and one quite vile when you step back and look at it. Slavery is bad except when those slaves are forced to do something far more dangerous and far more exploitative of their lack of personal rights?

Conversely to those that might have been surprised why so many of us don't like to count slaves among the Black Confederates without any direct evidence to suggest they genuinely wanted to be, this is why. We don't count Black slave farm workers as pro-White Slave Master agriculture just because they were forced to labor for that cause either. In fact it feels quite insulting and deprecating to do so. Another abuse of the slaves, not only were they forced to do things they had no real say in during their lives, but in death they are used to bolster those same causes they were forced to serve.
 
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dedej

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In fact it feels quite insulting and deprecating to do so. Another abuse of the slaves, not only were they forced to do things they had no real say in during their lives, but in death they are used to bolster those same causes they were forced to serve.




No, it IS insulting and depreciating. But, they don't care -- because they don't see them as human -- or as someones ancestor - and loved one.
 

MattL

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In fact it feels quite insulting and deprecating to do so. Another abuse of the slaves, not only were they forced to do things they had no real say in during their lives, but in death they are used to bolster those same causes they were forced to serve.




No, it IS insulting and depreciating. But, they don't care -- because they don't see them as human -- or as someones ancestor - and loved one.
Exactly. That's my biggest problem with many of the Black Confederate exaggeration attempts (that play loosely with this concept, to be clear there are a rare few who are simply looking for the genuine but rare cases). It's an attempt to not treat these Southern Blacks as people, to look at t heir interests, motives, and stake. Slaves were not citizens, they did not have the same stake in the Confederate Nation formed for their White slave masters. Objectively they had such a different status you simply cannot treat them like White's who served with integrity. Apples and oranges. You can't ignore the context.

It's such an exploitative perspective, to abuse and exploit the slave for the primary goal of the "Confederacy". It's honestly quite logically silly when you step back. For example should we then consider Confederate PoWs put to labor as White Unionists? They had a higher status and protections in many ways than slaves did as property in many ways even. Of course again the pretty direct comparable analogy that they were forced to labor for Southern slave master interests, does that mean they supported that too?

Sure if you have evidence that a PoW genuinely supported the side that controlled them, but barring specific reasons to believe that you would be pretty ridiculous to apply the same "Black Confederate" logic.

Also like you say it's far too easy for people to forget that those Blacks in the Souths, those slaves and free, were someones ancestors. Some of our White Southern Civil War era heritage is of slave owners, of White Confederates. To so many other Americans slavery is their heritage from this era. First being forced to labor in the fields and homestead for their White masters and then some forced to labor for the military efforts fighting to protect their White master's slave interests. We should honor their Confederate service from the perspective of them, and in most cases that would start with them being exploited in a new way, risking their lives at a whole new level for their owners. Helping the fight (and rarely fighting, sometimes out of necessity) for the rights they didn't have any interest in.

Some people twist that abuse into praise for the Confederacy. In cases without exception it's highly disturbing. Some people like to remind people slavery is over, it died 150+ years ago. So did the Confederacy, yet the long dead Confederacy is still used as a way to exploit the long dead slaves to this day.
 
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