Several speakers in the afternoon session of the recent Civil War conference
at Norfolk State spoke to the myth of black soldiers in grey . . .  I
believe the conference was videotaped and is meant to be made accessible on
line ... sometime.  Maybe someone has the URL for the Civil War
Sesquicentennial Commission and its programs - including the Univ of
Richmond and Norfolk State Conferences.


Jon Kukla
________________
www.JonKukla.com <http://www.jonkukla.com/>

On Wed, Oct 20, 2010 at 1:32 PM, Tarter, Brent (LVA) <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Bruce C. Levine in his 2006 book, Confederate Emancipation: Southern
> Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War, posed a very
> important question: Why did the law that passed the Confederate Congress
> early in 1865 to change public policy and free slaves who fought in the
> Confederate army generate such intense opposition if any appreciable
> number of free black or enslaved Southerners had already been fighting
> in the army?
>
>
>
> That question throws a large dash of cold water on the reliability of
> undocumented post-Civil War assertions that any significant number of
> black Southerners willingly fought for the Confederacy.
>
>
>
> What is lacking are military and archival records that prove that they
> did.
>
>
>
> I am willing to believe that just about anything is possible in a large
> population of Homo sapiens, and you can find some evidence somewhere to
> support just about any assertion. There were, in fact, a very small
> number of African American Virginians who received Confederate pensions
> in the twentieth century, though few or none of them had volunteered as
> soldiers. See Bill Archer, "Samuel Walker: Slave, Freedman, and
> Pensioner, 1842-1933," Virginia Cavalcade 50 (2001): 40-47.
>
>
>
> The 1924 amendment to the Virginia pension law that authorized those
> pensions did not even mention volunteer soldiers. It offered pensions to
> men who had "actually accompanied a soldier in the service and remained
> faithful and loyal as the body servant of such soldier, or who served as
> cook, hostler or teamster or worked on breastworks . . . and thereby
> rendered service to the Confederacy."
>
>
>
> What I have not seen (and I do not believe that it exists until somebody
> shows us) are authentic military and archival records that document the
> military service of numerous African American Virginians who were not
> body servants, impressed laborers, or enslaved workers doing what their
> owners required them to do.
>
>
>
> Lacking such documentation, I find it impossible to believe implausible
> after-the-fact stories about black Confederate regiments or even any
> large numbers of black Confederate soldiers. Revisionist writers late in
> the nineteenth century and early in the twentieth century propagated
> that myth.
>
>
>
> Good writers, however good they are, who do not know enough about the
> subject matter on which they write to recognize red warning flags or to
> know where the interpretive land mines are buried on the bookshelf or in
> the Web or to understand the differences between assertions and
> documented facts, cannot write good history. And textbook publishers,
> above all, should require accuracy.
>
>
>
> If there is a discrepancy of interpretation on an important matter like
> this, perhaps the writers and publishers should include the variant
> interpretations and enough of the evidence that people can make up their
> own minds. Or better yet, teachers and students can learn how to
> evaluate evidence and understand disagreements and develop some useful
> critical 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
> http://www.lva.virginia.gov
>
>
>
>
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