Searching for Black Confederates by Kevin Levin

[O' Be Joyful]

@jgoodguy and @O'be Joyful
Go the top of the letter and work your way down to where the letter states the majority of Southern blacks overwhelmingly supported the Confederate war effort.
Kirk's Raider's

Oh shit, I never did find or get a confirmation on that, do you have one?

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

Oh shit, I never did find or get a confirmation on that, do you have one?

Read the letter in the link it's plain as day.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[Tom]

II look forward to reviewing the Confederate CSRs.

Here's a few...




Why would they need a Quartermaster?

All they needed for parade were party hats and beads? Right?

 

[Andersonh1]

Got the book today, so I'll try to post some thoughts as I read it. I will admit that I am honestly not surprised to read on Levin's blog that he "didn’t go looking for black soldiers". This is a book with an agenda, but we'll see if it's well supported or if only the portions of the story that support that agenda are told. If nothing else, I am going into this book with some knowledge of the topic, so I anticipate asking "where is this piece of information" and "why wasn't this addressed?"

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Got the book today, so I'll try to post some thoughts as I read it. I will admit that I am honestly not surprised to read on Levin's blog that he "didn’t go looking for black soldiers". This is a book with an agenda, but we'll see if it's well supported or if only the portions of the story that support that agenda are told. If nothing else, I am going into this book with some knowledge of the topic, so I anticipate asking "where is this piece of information" and "why wasn't this addressed?"

I, and many of us out here, can only hope that you are able to put your own biases aside and absorb/dissect it as if you had never heard of Levine before and take it as is. I know that can be difficult but give it a go.

I look forward to your thoughts upon it. And await the resulting fireworks .

OBJ

 

[Andersonh1]

I have to be honest, it's tough to be objective just over the content. I've read the intro and the first chapter and begun the second, and I'm happy to say that there is some good information there. There are also statements of fact that are incorrect, guesswork to plug gaps in what we actually know, and there are a lot of relevant details entirely unaddressed. Even if I'd never read Levin's blog and formed any sort of opinion about him, I would be questioning some of his conclusions and assertions.

So far, it's clear that this isn't a book about broadly examining the reality or not of black Confederates. Levin goes into the book having already decided they didn't exist, and begins building his historical narrative around "camp slaves". There are six chapters, and all the chapter titles except the last one contain the words "camp slaves" to hammer his point home. I'll go into more details as I get further into the book and have more time to digest the content, and I will try to be as fair as I can.

To end this post on something positive, I will say that his use of quotes from personal letters written by Confederate soldiers to illustrate a range of feelings about the slaves that accompanied the Confederate army is something I appreciated. And he has page after page of sources, so he's done his research. There are things I can learn from this book, certainly. It will be a good use of my time to read it.

 

[Tom]

Levin goes into the book having already decided they didn't exist, and begins building his historical narrative around "camp slaves". There are six chapters, and all the chapter titles except the last one contain the words "camp slaves" to hammer his point home.

He doesn't seem to realize (or doesn't want to acknowledge) that a lot of the "camp slaves" were free blacks hired for labor duties.
That's why the armies used the term 'servant' in official documents and regulations. Sometimes even whites were used as servants.

 

[Andersonh1]

An omission of relevant facts is the main flaw of this book so far , along with a few out and out false statements. The book is tightly focused on slavery and has little time for anything that might distract from that focus. That free blacks were enlisted as cooks, teamsters, etc. is mentioned in passing, but only in passing, then it's back to the "camp slaves".

 

[Andersonh1]

Chapter two is better than chapter one, largely because there's much more evidence to support what is largely an account of where the Confederate armies went and what the slaves that accompanied them did in support and at the various battles. This chapter benefits from how it discusses the debate over arming the slaves late in the war, pointing out some earlier instances that I was not aware of, so again I've learned some new facts, and Levin is not averse to noting when the population or members of the military come to support the idea of arming slaves. Quotes from the men on the ground in the CS army, both white and black where available, are welcome. I enjoy hearing about the war from the men who actually experienced it. Not every history of the war gives the slaves that were with the army their due, and they're certainly part of the history, so they should be included.

My complaint here is the same as the first chapter, in that where the historical material is thin, Levin feels free to speculate, and while that's fine, he's clearly always pushing against any possibility of genuine loyal motives or support for the Confederate cause or genuine friendship between slave and master, assuming that it just would not have happened, while admitting that in most cases we simply cannot know motivation. That's fine, it's his book and we shouldn't expect anything but his opinion, but the more I read, the more I think Levin views all action by the black men of the South as being a reaction to the white population around them, whether he realizes this or not. Every action is dictated by their status as a slave. Remember, he does not take free blacks into account, other than to again note that the army began to use their services more after Gettysburg than before. Their presence in the army and their behavior and motivation rate minimal mention and no examination. They are invisible people in his account, and I was struck by how detailed the accounts of the slave experiences were up to Gettysburg, and then nothing about the free black experience.

More solid evidence and less author editorial renders Chapter 2 an improvement, though still flawed. On to Chapter 3.

 

[Andersonh1]

Wow... who knew Booker T.Washington subscribed to the loyal slave narrative and the lost cause? Levin says he did. I don't buy it, but he tries to make the case.

 

[5fish]

Wow... who knew Booker T.Washington subscribed to the loyal slave narrative and the lost cause? Levin says he did. I don't buy it, but he tries to make the case.

I remember something about this: natepostbellum.blogspot.com/2011/04/booker-t-washington-was-uncle-tom

Booker T. Washington Was an Uncle Tom. That last part is a direct quote of Washington's Atlanta Compromise speech where he essentially told his fellow southern african-americans to stay in the south and help white people rebuild it. He advocated separate but equal segregationist policy, and white southerners loved him for it.

Note: take a look at Black Eugenics : https://www.jggscivilwartalk.online/index.php?threads/eugenics-following-the-civil-war.455/

 

[Andersonh1]

Ah, but they all were, in Levin's telling of this history. Any former slave who went to a reunion only did so in order to curry favor with the white majority, and they "played a role" that the whites would approve of, and the white veterans used them as props essentially to reinforce their delusional view of the war. Anyone of any color, Booker T. Washington included, who did not behave according to what Levin views as the reality of the situation is always doing so for some nefarious reason. Nothing's straightforward, nothing's being done for genuine reasons, in his view. There's no room for old wartime comrades to get together and relive the "glory days" of their youth in the army. It's all race, all the time.

Chapter three, where all this took place, really irritated me, because apart from Steve Eberhart/Perry, there is no real evidence presented that these former slaves who went to Confederate reunions only did so to "play the role of the faithful slave" and curry favor with the white population. We're back to the problem I had with some of Chapter one, in that there is a small amount of evidence with a large connective tissue of assumptions holding it together.

 

[Tom]

The one I was thinking of was in a West Point (MS) newspaper, but the Silas Chandler Wikipedia page says it was published in 1949. Neither were alive at that time. My bad.

I've seen another source for that article. That one says it was published in 1909.

But whether it was 1909 or 1949 - did Levin bother to look it up?

 

[Andersonh1]

I've seen another source for that article. That one says it was published in 1909.

But whether it was 1909 or 1949 - did Levin bother to look it up?

There is a lot of relevant information that he left out of the first four chapters, much of it things that run counter to the thesis of his book. And I honestly can't say if it's because he's found ways to rationalize away the information, whether he's not aware of it due to being unwilling to consider certain possibilities, or if he's deliberately leaving information that doesn't fit out. Any or all are possibilities.

One possibility is also an example of how a modern point of view and a focus exclusively on race can cause him to miss certain possibilities. We have 150 years of centralized government in the US, and it's common for people like Levin to project that back when evaluating Confederate actions. The way he focuses solely on the national Confederate military and excludes nearly all discussion of state militias or state actions is a prime example. The Confederate States were set up as a more decentralized system with more state power, despite some wartime measures by the Confederate government to exercise more power due to wartime pressures and challenges. State actions must be taken into account when considering the topic of black soldiers. States were the first to accept armed black men into their military, primarily Louisiana in 1861 but also the area around Mobile Alabama in late 1862 (this is the group Maury wanted enlisted into the CS army but was turned down). You will not get this history right taking a top-down view of the Confederate political and military system. Add to that a focus almost entirely on slaves with no real consideration of the free black population beyond a few mentions, and you can see how relevant facts are omitted from consideration.

Chapters Three and Four deal with Confederate reunions and pensions respectively, and in both cases, we get page after page of ulterior motives for both black and white, with just a few paragraphs reluctantly acknowledging that there was in fact some genuine shared wartime experience, and a genuine sense in the case of pensions that there was a moral obligation to help the old black veterans who had lived through the war and were suffering the same income and health problems as white veterans. It really is "all race, all the time" with this book. His historical figures are not people, they're automatons, programmed by society.

 

[Andersonh1]

The SCV and UDC are cast as the villains in chapter five.

 

[MattL]

There is a lot of relevant information that he left out of the first four chapters, much of it things that run counter to the thesis of his book. And I honestly can't say if it's because he's found ways to rationalize away the information, whether he's not aware of it due to being unwilling to consider certain possibilities, or if he's deliberately leaving information that doesn't fit out. Any or all are possibilities.

One possibility is also an example of how a modern point of view and a focus exclusively on race can cause him to miss certain possibilities. We have 150 years of centralized government in the US, and it's common for people like Levin to project that back when evaluating Confederate actions. The way he focuses solely on the national Confederate military and excludes nearly all discussion of state militias or state actions is a prime example. The Confederate States were set up as a more decentralized system with more state power, despite some wartime measures by the Confederate government to exercise more power due to wartime pressures and challenges. State actions must be taken into account when considering the topic of black soldiers. States were the first to accept armed black men into their military, primarily Louisiana in 1861 but also the area around Mobile Alabama in late 1862 (this is the group Maury wanted enlisted into the CS army but was turned down). You will not get this history right taking a top-down view of the Confederate political and military system. Add to that a focus almost entirely on slaves with no real consideration of the free black population beyond a few mentions, and you can see how relevant facts are omitted from consideration.

Purely from what you say here I don't think he's missing anything or projecting anything by focusing on the Confederate nation. A State is not the Confederacy. Literally by definition. They are a piece of what made up the Confederacy. In most topics regarding the Confederacy, and its military, people do the exact same as him and focus on the official Confederacy and its official actions (including its official military). Nothing surprising or different compared to the majority of focus on such topics.

This doesn't mean what States did on their own isn't important, but objectively it's far less about the "Confederacy" than it is about that specific Confederate State.

"Add to that a focus almost entirely on slaves with no real consideration of the free black population beyond a few mentions, and you can see how relevant facts are omitted from consideration."

I'm curious on the full scope of that, but again this wouldn't be surprising as well. Why would you not expect a focus on Blacks on the Confederacy to mostly focus on slaves when 96% of the black population in the South were slaves. Specifically in 1860 the to be CSA states had 3,521,110 slaves and 132,760 free colored.

This thread is really pushing this book to the top of my list!

That's part of the whole argued "Black Confederate Myth"... it's not that Black Confederates didn't exist, it's that one side wants to overly exaggerate an extremely small portion of the Southern Black population while under-emphasizing the vast majority. It's not even about personal interest, often people find the rare and outlying cases more fascinating and focus on it, but it's disingenuous when people falsely exaggerate that representation. Likewise if someone is looking at an objective look of the overall concept of "Black Confederates" you simply have to expect them to focus mostly on slaves (though not exclusively of course).

I think that's the point, there are multiple views on the topic

1. Top down view of Blacks and how many who were involved in the Confederacy can be reasonably called "Black Confederates"
2. Bottom up view focusing on the rare outlying cases of genuine and high confidence Black Confederates

Neither are implicitly flawed, but both should be considered in their context.

#2 would have to be understood within the context they were extremely rare and a small portion of the Black population within the Confederacy, much like say focusing on any topic about free blacks in the South in general. It's important and can be valuable, but should be understood and not represented that this was a common or typical experience.

#1 would be an overall look of the typical experience and perspectives of Blacks in the South and their involvement with the Confederacy. Slaves being 96% of the Black Southern population means that will implicitly be the focus. If that is indeed the focus of this book then that's potentially quite refreshing since usually the focus is on #2. In studying an anomaly under a microscope and sometimes deceptively exaggerating that microscopic view as more than an anomaly.

 

[MattL]

Just wanted to add that I was excited to see that there's an audible version of the book (which is only about a $7 addition to the kindle version). This will be my next listen while working out.

 

[MattL]

Wow... who knew Booker T.Washington subscribed to the loyal slave narrative and the lost cause? Levin says he did. I don't buy it, but he tries to make the case.

Could you cite what in the books makes that specific argument, or are you being hyperbolic?

Booker was criticized by some key Black activists and intellectuals, like W.E.B. DeBois

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/40

----
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force. So Mr. Washington’s cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work has wonderfully prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are confounded. To-day he stands as the one recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little has done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington’s career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world.

...

Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even to-day continuing strong and insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the nation. Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington’s theories have gained. These same men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor which is doing something worth the doing. They cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man’s tact and power that, steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all.

...

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all the Negro’s tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.

In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things, —

First, political power,

Second, insistence on civil rights,

Third, higher education of Negro youth,

...

In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.
-----

There's a lot more... but basically very strong criticisms of Booker were not uncommon among the leaders in Black civil rights. Not sure why you would be surprised people now might share similar views to say DuBois and others.

 

[O' Be Joyful]

Could you cite what in the books makes that specific argument, or are you being hyperbolic?

Booker was criticized by some key Black activists and intellectuals, like W.E.B. DeBois

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/40

----
And yet this very singleness of vision and thorough oneness with his age is a mark of the successful man. It is as though Nature must needs make men narrow in order to give them force. So Mr. Washington’s cult has gained unquestioning followers, his work has wonderfully prospered, his friends are legion, and his enemies are confounded. To-day he stands as the one recognized spokesman of his ten million fellows, and one of the most notable figures in a nation of seventy millions. One hesitates, therefore, to criticise a life which, beginning with so little has done so much. And yet the time is come when one may speak in all sincerity and utter courtesy of the mistakes and shortcomings of Mr. Washington’s career, as well as of his triumphs, without being thought captious or envious, and without forgetting that it is easier to do ill than well in the world.

...

Among his own people, however, Mr. Washington has encountered the strongest and most lasting opposition, amounting at times to bitterness, and even to-day continuing strong and insistent even though largely silenced in outward expression by the public opinion of the nation. Some of this opposition is, of course, mere envy; the disappointment of displaced demagogues and the spite of narrow minds. But aside from this, there is among educated and thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington’s theories have gained. These same men admire his sincerity of purpose, and are willing to forgive much to honest endeavor which is doing something worth the doing. They cooperate with Mr. Washington as far as they conscientiously can; and, indeed, it is no ordinary tribute to this man’s tact and power that, steering as he must between so many diverse interests and opinions, he so largely retains the respect of all.

...

Mr. Washington represents in Negro thought the old attitude of adjustment and submission; but adjustment at such a peculiar time as to make his programme unique. This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington’s programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. Again, in our own land, the reaction from the sentiment of war time has given impetus to race-prejudice against Negroes, and Mr. Washington withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens. In other periods of intensified prejudice all the Negro’s tendency to self-assertion has been called forth; at this period a policy of submission is advocated. In the history of nearly all other races and peoples the doctrine preached at such crises has been that manly self-respect is worth more than lands and houses, and that a people who voluntarily surrender such respect, or cease striving for it, are not worth civilizing.

In answer to this, it has been claimed that the Negro can survive only through submission. Mr. Washington distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things, —

First, political power,

Second, insistence on civil rights,

Third, higher education of Negro youth,

...

In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro’s shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.
-----

There's a lot more... but basically very strong criticisms of Booker were not uncommon among the leaders in Black civil rights. Not sure why you would be surprised people now might share similar views to say DuBois and others.

Dad gummed progressives.

 

[Andersonh1]

Could you cite what in the books makes that specific argument, or are you being hyperbolic?

Not at all. From page 83:

"Even national leaders like Booker T. Washington often embraced the Lost Cause to assuage concerns among whites and further their own personal and professional agendas."

"African American leaders like Booker T. Washington also took advantage of the faithful slave narrative to underscore the roles that they believed blacks should play in the progress toward regional prosperity. in the new century."