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
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