No one was more overworked, underfed and poorly housed than the Southern soldiers, so I don't see his point there.


 


J South


 


 

-----Original Message-----
From: Henry Wiencek <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Tue, Jul 28, 2009 4:44 pm
Subject: Civil War slave impressment in Virginia and NC










There is a recent Ph.D. dissertation which might be of interest to some
researchers on this list. I haven't read it but have only seen the Abstract.

"For the defense of the state: Slave impressment in Confederate Virginia and
North Carolina"

Martinez, Jaime Amanda.  University of Virginia; 2008.  260 pages.


Abstract

Beginning in the fall of 1862, the Virginia General Assembly, the North
Carolina state legislature, and eventually the Confederate Congress enacted
legislation to impress slave laborers for Confederate service. Most of the
slaves impressed by either state or Confederate governments in Virginia and
North Carolina worked for the Engineer Bureau, digging trenches and building
fortifications around the major cities, rivers, ports, and railroad lines of
the two states. Slaves on the fortifications tended to be underfed,
overworked, and poorly housed, and as a consequence, many died or returned
to their owners in ill health. Slaveholders heard about conditions on the
fortifications not only from their slaves but also through the newspapers;
one of the reasons impressment was both necessary and difficult was the
widespread knowledge of how bad things tended to be for slave laborers.

Slaveholders objected to slave impressment for both practical and
ideological reasons. Taking slaves to work on fortifications reduced the
number available for labor at home, making it harder for local economies to
meet the heightened needs of wartime production. Thus, this dissertation
also addresses the impact of slave impressment, both real and imagined, on
agriculture in both Virginia and North Carolina. Because slaves were crucial
to food production in both states, the governors of Virginia and North
Carolina proved far more likely to interpose their power between the
national government and the slaveholders of their states to protect
agriculture than for any other reason.

Another key element in this dissertation is the Confederate Slave Claims
Board, which met in the summer of 1864 to determine compensation for slaves
who died as a result of government service. Slaveholders' petitions to the
Slave Claims Board, in which they expressed paternal concern for the health
of their slaves while requesting monetary compensation for slaves who died
as a result of their work for the Engineer Bureau, demonstrate the wartime
confluence of paternalism, ameliorative reform, and economics. The
dissertation concludes by connecting four years of slave impressment, and
the military labor these impressed slaves performed, to the decision to
enlist black men as Confederate soldiers in early 1865.    

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