Erasing Black Confederates

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Wanjiru Njoya
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In 2019 The New York Times launched their 1619 project, which “aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” In the NYT retelling of American history, black troops who fought for the Union in the 1861-65 war are to be commemorated, but black Confederates must be summarily erased. The aim of this article is to argue against this erasure of black Confederates.

Black Confederates were viewed as soldiers

Those who seek to erase black Confederates from the historical record argue that black confederates may have appeared to everyone at the time to be soldiers, but in truth they were not real soldiers. The concept of black Confederates is said to be a myth, unworthy of inclusion in any history of the American South. For example, the American Battlefield Trust states that “black soldiers made up 10 percent of the Union Army,” but adds that there were no black Confederates: “There were no black Confederate combat units in service during the war and no documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate soldier.”

By “no documentation whatsoever” they do not mean that there are no war records of Confederate soldiers—their argument is that the black men documented by the Confederate armies as soldiers were not “real” or “true” or “actual” soldiers despite being depicted as such. For example, Charley Benger, who played the fife for Georgia’s Macon Volunteers, is documented as a soldier discharged with honor and, subsequently, in receipt of an army pension, but the Trust would argue that playing the fife in the Confederate army does not count as being an actual Confederate soldier.

The Trust further notes that “there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of black Confederates. Three of these reports mention black men shooting at Union soldiers, one report mentions capturing a handful of armed black men along with some soldiers.” The Trust then states that, “There is no record of Union soldiers encountering an all-black line of battle or anything close to it.” In the absence of an “all-black line of battle,” they conclude the armed black men in the Confederate armies who were shooting at Union soldiers do not count as real soldiers, despite all appearances and despite being described in press reports of the time as soldiers. By contrast, the Union, which conveniently segregated white and black troops, exhibits the requisite all-black lines and thus meets the standard set by the Trust for blacks to count as real soldiers.

Thus, the view that there were no black Confederates has now widely proliferated. For example, the BBC reports that,

As US cities tear down Confederate monuments, South Carolina lawmakers want to erect a memorial to African-American rebel troops. A historian, however, says no black soldiers fought for the Confederacy… University of South Carolina history professor emeritus Walter Edgar told the paper that no black people fought for the pro-slavery South.

The war for Southern independence

Like the BBC, many who seek to erase black Confederates insist on referring to the American South as “the pro-slavery South.” It is clear why depicting the South as pro-slavery is of critical importance for those who seek to erase black Confederates: if the South is seen as pro-slavery, it must follow logically that no black man would fight to defend the pro-slavery side. They therefore insist that the main reason Lincoln invaded the South was to “free the slaves” and that the South duly fought resistance because they were pro-slavery. The war between the states is thus depicted as a conflict between an anti-slavery North and a pro-slavery South.

This feat is accomplished only by ignoring all evidence of the North being as heavily committed to slavery as the South, and also by ignoring all evidence that Lincoln did not wage this war in order to abolish slavery. In his book The Real Lincoln, Tom DiLorenzo debunks the simplistic “Lincoln the Messiah” narrative of the war. As David Gordon has observed, “DiLorenzo calls attention to a vital fact that demolishes the mythological view that Lincoln’s primary motive for opposing secession in 1861 was his distaste for slavery. Precisely the opposite is true.” In The Problem with Lincoln, DiLorenzo highlights, for example, the significance of the “War Aims Resolution” (the Crittenden-Johnson Resolution). DiLorenzo explains that in this resolution the US Congress “declared that the purpose of the war was not ending slavery (‘overthrowing or interfering with the rights of established institutions of those States’) but solely defending the Constitution and maintaining the Union.” DiLorenzo also draws attention to Lincoln’s own words in a letter to Horace Greely:

On August 22, 1862, Lincoln responded to an open letter by New York Tribune editor Horace Greely asking what the purpose of the war was. As the president wrote, it was to “save the union” and not to “save or destroy slavery.”

So, what was the real reason why the Southern states seceded? Murray Rothbard explains:

In 1861, the Southern states, believing correctly that their cherished institutions were under grave threat and assault from the federal government, decided to exercise their natural, contractual, and constitutional right to withdraw, to “secede” from that Union. The separate Southern states then exercised their contractual right as sovereign republics to come together in another confederation, the Confederate States of America. If the American Revolutionary War was just, then it follows as the night the day that the Southern cause, the War for Southern Independence, was just, and for the same reason: casting off the “political bonds” that connected the two peoples. In neither case was this decision made for “light or transient causes.” And in both cases, the courageous seceders pledged to each other “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.”

As General Robert E. Lee wrote in a letter to Lord Acton, the main reason for secession was constitutional: “The South has contended only for the supremacy of the constitution, and the just administration of the laws made in pursuance to it. Virginia to the last made great efforts to save the union, and urged harmony and compromise.” This goes a long way in explaining why the abolitionist Lysander Spooner, despite being against the institution of slavery, defended the right of the Southern states to secede.

In that case, why did some Southern states say they would secede to defend slavery? In his book When in the Course of Human Events, Charles Adams evaluates the reasons why some of the original seven seceding states mentioned in their secession documents a desire to defend slavery. Adams argues that,

…there is something strange, even irrational, about the thesis that the solid South seceded over slavery, even though many Southerners said so… The thesis that the solid South seceded to protect slavery just does not make sense. The institution of slavery had never been more secure for the slave owners, with the Supreme Court in their back pocket; with the Constitution itself expressly protecting slavery and mandating the return of fugitive slaves everywhere—a mandate Lincoln said he would enforce; with Lincoln also declaring he had no right to interfere with slavery and no personal inclination to do so; with Lincoln personally supporting a new constitutional amendment protecting slavery forever—an amendment expressly made irrevocable... There is nothing the South could have asked for the protection of slavery that wouldn’t have been gladly provided, just as long as the South remained in the Union.

Adams points out that the declaration by states like Mississippi that they seceded to retain slavery was roundly rejected at the time as implausible. As he observes, there was, in fact, no such risk to slavery. He cites as an example the North American Review of Boston which wrote in 1862: “Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion… Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, ‘to fire the Southern heart,’ and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced.” It was regarded as a “political ploy” designed to persuade the South that four million slaves were suddenly and peremptorily to be set free, and by that means hopefully to rally them to fight.

Men of both North and South would have regarded such a potential outcome as unfortunate. It could be said that most Americans of the time, indeed most human beings of the time (and even most human beings today, if the antiracists are to be believed), were what we would now call “racist.” Lincoln himself expressed the widespread racism that was considered normal at the time, when he declared:

I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people.

The claim that Lincoln waged this deadly war “to destroy slavery,” therefore, flies in the face of Lincoln’s own words. Yet this claim is relied on by historians in the “1619” tradition to explain why there were no black Confederates: in their opinion, if Lincoln, the “great emancipator,” waged war to free slaves, we would of course not expect any black men to take up arms to thwart their own emancipator. It seems axiomatic that no black person is pro-slavery (leaving aside cases of free blacks who owned slaves or ex-slaves who went on to purchase their own slaves). Based on that premise, if the purpose of the South fighting was to resist the abolitionist goals of “Lincoln the great emancipator,” it would follow logically that no black men would fight with or for the South.

Critical race theories and oppression ideologies

Historians who advance the “great emancipator” argument as a reason to erase black Confederates proceed squarely within the “reality as a social construct” social science theory according to which, in order to understand reality we must look, not to the facts of how people behaved, but to theories of how human beings should have behaved. This “social construct” reasoning now passes for historical analysis—the argument in this case being that since Lincoln waged war “to free the slaves,” it follows logically that the slaves would welcome him as their emancipator and would certainly not help their own slave owners to fight against Lincoln. Yet, help they did, in their tens of thousands: “Indeed, the logistical support provided for the Confederacy by nearly 180,000 Afro-Virginians allowed the war to continue as long as it did.”

The “social construct” reasoning which seeks to erase the role and contribution of black Confederates is founded on a false premise. Human beings, black or white, do not act based on critical race theories or any oppression ideologies, no matter how compelling and beguiling some may consider these theories to be. Rather, human beings attempt to make decisions based on their own best evaluation of the reality of the situation. We can see how people evaluated the situation based on their own words and actions, and it is quite wrong to dismiss everything they said and did based on the theory that according to CRT we would not expect them to act that way.

The notion that reality is a social construct lies at the heart of critical race theories. CRT treats black and white according to different standards, and constructs reality around those racialized constructs. Thus, CRT does not consider that white people would ever suffer under a heavy burden of oppression, because white people are classified as “oppressors.” Similarly, CRT rejects altogether the notion of a black man making up his own mind to enjoy a Confederate reunion because blacks are classified as “oppressed” and everything they do must be seen as a reflection of their oppressed status.

This is collectivist thinking, which presumes that all members of a racial group are motivated by a single motive that applies to all members of their group. It is also a form of racial polylogism, in which we are to assume that the logical patterns of black thought and white thought are not the same, but vary based on their respective races. After all, a theory of why men fight (because they were “forced”) or why they honor veterans (because they are “coping” with how they are oppressed by the system) may perhaps be advanced in relation to all human beings, but those of us who are not racial polylogists cannot accept that such responses to war and compulsion are determined by one’s race.

The science of human action does not merely explain abstract economic theories of market exchange, but also explains in a fuller sense how human beings act. On that basis all forms of racial polylogism must be rejected. In Praxeology: The Methodology of Austrian Economics Rothbard emphasizes “the universal formal fact that people act, that they employ means to try to attain chosen ends” observing that “the individual actor adopts goals and believes, whether erroneously or correctly, that he can arrive at them by the employment of certain means” (emphasis added). In understanding how blacks responded to the war in which they found themselves caught up, the question is not whether black men were correct or erroneous in fighting in the Confederate ranks, nor whether—in a normative sense—this is something they should or should not have done (a matter which is open to debate) but whether they, in fact, did so. If they, in fact, did so, it cannot be correct to erase them from the historical record.

As Mark Thornton has argued, much of the disagreement over the history of this war purports to be a dispute about the accuracy of historical facts, but in truth it is largely an ideological battle:

In the current ideological war, American intellectuals and their minions in the media and arts try to paint the founding fathers, especially Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, as racist slave owners out to establish a new American hegemony based on black slavery.... From this ideological vantage point, the war between Union and Confederate governments becomes the true battle for freedom, with democracy in the vanguard, the slave system vanquished, and Lincoln established as the messiah.

Thornton argues that,

Most Americans are taught that slave owners started the war to protect their power and position while the people of free states to the north rose up to emancipate their oppressed black brothers and sisters. The economic view of war contradicts the idea that the South and North fought to preserve or destroy slavery. The true catalyst of this or any other war is not racial, religious, or tribal, it holds, but economic.

Thornton adds:

The great value of Charles Adams’s book, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, is that it shows in careful historical detail that slavery did not cause this great tragedy.

Similarly, in his critique of the NYT 1619 project, the economist Phil Magness argues that the project was heavily ideological:

…certain 1619 Project essayists infused this worthy line of inquiry with a heavy stream of ideological advocacy. Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones announced this political intention openly, pairing progressive activism with the initiative’s stated educational purposes.

The proper aim of revisionist history should not be to achieve some sort of false or fabricated “consensus” on the ideological significance of any war, or on how we should conduct “race relations,” or whether we should now destroy all America’s historic monuments, but rather to shed light on historical events in a manner that advances our knowledge and understanding. We advance our understanding of history by highlighting important aspects that may have been overlooked, wittingly or inadvertently, by historians, not by forcing the facts to fit modern “antiracist” ideologies. 

Honoring black Confederates

When history is viewed in that light, there is no reason why a slave would not fight to defend his Southern home in exactly the same way as anyone else in a position to do so. As Clyde Wilson observes:

Large numbers of black people identified the South and the Confederacy as their homeland and homefolks, and did not rush into the arms of the emancipators. This really is not surprising to anyone who knows anything about history or human nature.

In his book Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in the Civil War Virginia, Ervin L. Jordan Jr. argues that the history of African Americans ought not to be told simply as a history of oppression and victimhood. In recounting the stories of black Confederates, he accordingly “depicts African-Americans as human beings who were an integral component of Confederate Virginia” and indeed, by extrapolation, of the Confederate States. Jordan examines the motivations, expressed in their own words, of slaves and free black men who stood with slave owners in this war. He tells their stories in order “to show African-Americans as human beings who took an active part in Confederate Virginia.” He depicts all black men—“slave and free, homefront and battlefield, Confederate and Union”—as human beings with agency. He observes that black men were regarded as “indispensable” to the Confederate war effort: 

When the war was over, Southerners praised African-Americans whom they consider “faithful among the faithless”… Blacks who comprised these classes, especially body servants, were respected and extolled by nostalgic rebels and welcomed at postbellum Confederate conventions: “It is nothing but simple justice to give each one due credit for services rendered their owners during the war”… [Those who] attend our annual reunions, are treated with the kindest consideration, and mix and mingle with the boys in the most cordial manner, and seem to enjoy the meetings fully as much as their white comrades.

It is in that context that a statue was raised in North Carolina which stated “in appreciation of our faithful slaves.” This is the history which the adherents of CRT—who are self-styled “antiracists”—now wish to erase on grounds that the entire history is “racist.” Their argument is that slavery is wrong and, therefore, offering gratitude or appreciation to men who were slaves is wrong. In their view, treating blacks as human beings with agency is wrong altogether because, as they see it, treating blacks as fully human and able to make up their own minds may lead people to underplay or even overlook the brutality of slavery and other forms of racial oppression. In their view, no human being who is a slave would or should enjoy a reunion of Confederates and, therefore, if a black man appeared to regard Confederates as his friends and compatriots, he should be assumed to be exhibiting some form of Marxist “false consciousness.” 

The shadow of oppression politics can also be detected in some interpretations of Jordan’s book, which seem to imply that blacks only collaborated with whites in order to “cope with both the heavy burden of slavery and the upheaval of a civil war.” The difficulty with such interpretations is that historians who feel that blacks were all just “coping” when they fought for Confederates do not allege that white men also supported Confederates purely in order to “cope”—their theory is that blacks are in a particular position of oppression where “coping” with the force meted out upon them by whites should be regarded as the sole motivation for anything black men do, unlike whites who act based on free will and their own agency.

The anti-human Neo-Marxist history of slavery

The Neo-Marxist view is that slaves, by definition, lack the ability to make choices or to live fully human lives. They are at the whim of their masters, and everything done by a slave must be interpreted as a reflection of the master’s dominant will. Neo-Marxists emphasize the exploitative nature of slavery and absolutely reject the view that slaves could possibly be devoted to their home or to plantation families. After all, no slave chooses or desires to live in slavery. From this logical principle, Neo-Marxists derive the theory that slaves despise every element of their existence. We are informed that slaves “detested the master.” Slaves are to be regarded as chattels, deprived of their humanity by their condition, incapable of forming any human attachments to place and home, and, therefore, the idea that they would fight to defend it is inconceivable.

The paradox in this Neo-Marxist discourse is that in order to highlight the evil of slavery it adopts the racist premise it claims to oppose, namely, the premise that slaves are not human beings but mere chattels. Any attempt to argue that slaves may well be regarded as chattels by the law but are nevertheless fully human is rejected by Neo-Marxists on grounds that it denies or dilutes the brutality of slavery: in their view slavery is wrong precisely because it treated men as chattels, and so to argue that slaves are, in any sense, as human as free men is seen as an attempt to mask the true nature of their degraded status as chattels.

This is the essential dispute at the heart of debates about black Confederates. The Neo-Marxist position is, to summarize, that a chattel cannot be a soldier. Their view is that a chattel cannot feel bound to a homeland in which he is enslaved. Describing a slave as a soldier is, in their view, an inherent contradiction. Hence, part of the debate about the existence of black Confederates has been framed as a debate about what counts as a soldier. If a black man wears the grey, bears arms with the grey, and fights with the grey, is he a soldier? The American Civil War Museum observes that,

The disagreement arises in part from rival ideological positions, but also traces to different definitions of key terms, especially “soldier.” There is no question that tens of thousands of enslaved and free African Americans served with Confederate armies as body servants, laborers, teamsters, hospital workers, and cooks. But were these men “soldiers” in any real sense of the word?

They argue that they may have marched with the grey, and fired guns for the grey, but they were still just slaves or menial servants and should not be described as soldiers.

To those who see slaves as nonetheless human, it is not difficult to understand them as men and as much “soldiers” (in the ordinary non-technical sense) as their white comrades. The fact that the law created the status of a man as a chattel has no bearing on the substantive issue of whether he may nevertheless rightly and justly be regarded by his own commander and his own comrades as a soldier. The abolitionist slogan was, “Am I not a man and a brother?” not, “Will I become a man and a brother upon my official emancipation?” The abolitionists understood that slaves are human beings, regardless of what legal status might be accorded to them by the prevailing law.

Viktor Frankl inspired many people with his testament to the human spirit in conditions of oppression or captivity, famously stating that, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” This is a truth that applies to all human beings, slave or free. Many fail to distinguish between liberty in the sense of ability to do anything they please—a liberty denied to slaves—and liberty in the sense Frankl describes, namely, the human ability to choose one’s own way.

Free or slave, soldier or cook, black men who fought with Confederates should not be erased. They were black men of the South who, like their comrades in arms who were white men of the South, supported the cause for Southern independence. This is why the United Daughters of the Confederacy have proposed to honor Charles Benger, the fifer from Macon, Georgia. He may not satisfy the rigorous Neo-Marxist test of a “real soldier,” but his captain regarded him as “a faithful old soldier and a devoted old friend.”