The fact that there are no primary sources that definitely state that blacks
served as soldiers in the Confederacy makes the claims over the years weak.
Until you can provide primary sources that show black soldiers were enlisted in
the Confederate military as soliders, receiving pay, and a pension, it is not
fact, it is supposition and doesn't stand up to a factual statement, and as a
responsible educator cannot be taught in the classroom as fact.
Karen Needles
Director
Lincolnarchives Digital Project
http://wwwlincolnarchives.us
Once again,
On October 20, 2010 at 2:05 PM JEFFREY D SOUTHMAYD <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Why does the legalization of marijuana cause such "intense oppostion" when
> very many Americans already use the drug and it is in common usage? There has
> always been the de facto verses the de jure in history and life and often the
> two are in conflict. The fact there might have been opposition to Black
> soldiers doesn't prove they didn't exist and indeed fight for the South.
>
>
> JDS
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tarter, Brent (LVA) <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Wed, Oct 20, 2010 1:32 pm
> Subject: Re: Virginia 4th Grade Textbook
>
>
> Bruce C. Levine in his 2006 book, Confederate Emancipation: Southern
> lans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War, posed a very
> mportant question: Why did the law that passed the Confederate Congress
> arly in 1865 to change public policy and free slaves who fought in the
> onfederate army generate such intense opposition if any appreciable
> umber of free black or enslaved Southerners had already been fighting
> n the army?
>
> That question throws a large dash of cold water on the reliability of
> ndocumented post-Civil War assertions that any significant number of
> lack Southerners willingly fought for the Confederacy.
>
> What is lacking are military and archival records that prove that they
> id.
>
> I am willing to believe that just about anything is possible in a large
> opulation of Homo sapiens, and you can find some evidence somewhere to
> upport just about any assertion. There were, in fact, a very small
> umber of African American Virginians who received Confederate pensions
> n the twentieth century, though few or none of them had volunteered as
> oldiers. See Bill Archer, "Samuel Walker: Slave, Freedman, and
> ensioner, 1842-1933," Virginia Cavalcade 50 (2001): 40-47.
>
> The 1924 amendment to the Virginia pension law that authorized those
> ensions did not even mention volunteer soldiers. It offered pensions to
> en who had "actually accompanied a soldier in the service and remained
> aithful and loyal as the body servant of such soldier, or who served as
> ook, hostler or teamster or worked on breastworks . . . and thereby
> endered service to the Confederacy."
>
> What I have not seen (and I do not believe that it exists until somebody
> hows us) are authentic military and archival records that document the
> ilitary service of numerous African American Virginians who were not
> ody servants, impressed laborers, or enslaved workers doing what their
> wners required them to do.
>
> Lacking such documentation, I find it impossible to believe implausible
> fter-the-fact stories about black Confederate regiments or even any
> arge numbers of black Confederate soldiers. Revisionist writers late in
> he nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century propagated
> hat myth.
>
> Good writers, however good they are, who do not know enough about the
> ubject matter on which they write to recognize red warning flags or to
> now where the interpretive land mines are buried on the bookshelf or in
> he Web or to understand the differences between assertions and
> ocumented facts, cannot write good history. And textbook publishers,
> bove all, should require accuracy.
>
> If there is a discrepancy of interpretation on an important matter like
> his, perhaps the writers and publishers should include the variant
> nterpretations and enough of the evidence that people can make up their
> wn minds. Or better yet, teachers and students can learn how to
> valuate evidence and understand disagreements and develop some useful
> ritical thinking skills, something evidently sorely lacking here.
>
> My $0.02 (U.S. currency) worth from,
>
> Brent Tarter
> The Library of Virginia
> [log in to unmask]
>
> Please visit the Library of Virginia's Web site at
> ttp://www.lva.virginia.gov
>
>
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