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 ______________________________________ To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html