An opposing view: Descendant of black Confederate soldier speaks at museum

THOMASVILLE -- Nelson Winbush knows his voice isn't likely to be heard above the crowd that writes American history books. That doesn't keep him from speaking his mind, however.

A 75-year-old black man whose grandfather proudly fought in the gray uniform of the South during the Civil War, Winbush addressed a group of about 40 at the Thomas County Museum of History Sunday afternoon. To say the least, his perspective of the war differs greatly from what is taught in America's classrooms today.

"People have manufactured a lot of mistruths about why the war took place," he said. "It wasn't about slavery. It was about state's rights and tariffs."

Many of Winbush's words were reserved for the Confederate battle flag, which still swirls amid controversy more than 150 years after it originally flew.

"This flag has been lied about more than any flag in the world," Winbush said. "People see it and they don't really know what the hell they are looking at."

About midway through his 90-minute presentation, Winbush's comments were issued with extra force.

"This flag is the one that draped my grandfathers' coffin," he said while clutching it strongly in his left hand. "I would shudder to think what would happen if somebody tried to do something to this particular flag."

Winbush, a retired in educator and Korean War veteran who resides in Kissimmee, Fla., said the Confederate battle flag has been hijacked by racist groups, prompting unwarranted criticism from its detractors.

"This flag had nothing to with the (Ku Klux) klan or skinheads," he said while wearing a necktie that featured the Confederate emblem. "They weren't even heard of then. It was just a guide to follow in battle.

Winbush said Confederate soldiers started using the flag with the St. Andrews cross because its original flag closely resembled the U.S. flag. The first Confederate flag's blue patch in an upper corner and its alternating red and white stripes caused confusion on the battlefield, he said.

"Neither side (of the debate) knows what the flag represents," Winbush said. "It's dumb and dumber. You can turn it around, but it's still two dumb bunches.

Winbush learned about the Civil War at the knee of Louis Napoleon Nelson, who joined his master and one of his master's sons in battle voluntarily when he was 14. Nelson saw combat at Lookout Mountain, Bryson's Crossroads, Shiloh and Vicksburg.

"At Shiloh, my grandfather served as a chaplain even though he couldn't read or write," said Winbush, who bolstered his points with photos, letters and newspapers that used to belong to his grandfather. "I've never heard of a black Yankee holding such an office, so that makes him a little different."

Winbush said his grandfather, who also served as a "scavenger," never had any qualms about fighting for the South. He had plenty of chances to make a break for freedom, but never did. He attended 39 Confederate reunions, the final one in 1934. A Sons of Confederate Veterans Chapter in Tennessee is named after him.

"People ask why a black person would fight for the Confederacy. (It was) for the same damned reason a white Southerner did," Winbush explained.

Winbush said Southern blacks and whites often lived together as extended families., adding slaves and slave owners were outraged when Union forces raided their homes. He said history books rarely make mention of this.

"When the master and his older sons went to war, who did he leave his families with?" asked Winbush, who grandfather remained with his former owners 12 years after the hostilities ended. "It was with the slaves. Were his (family members) mistreated? Hell, no!

Winbush said more than 90,000 blacks, some of them free, fought for the Confederacy. He has said in the past that he would have fought by his grandfather's side in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forest.

After his presentation, Winbush opened the floor for questions. Two black women, including Jule Anderson of the Thomas County Historical Society Board of Directors, told him the Confederate battle flag made them uncomfortable.

Winbush, who said he started speaking out about the Civil War in 1992 after growing weary of what he dubbed "political correctness," was also challenged about his opinions.

"I have difficulty in trying to apply today's standards with what happened 150 years ago," he said to Anderson's tearful comments. "...That's what a lot of people are attempting to do. I'm just presenting facts, not as I read from some book where somebody thought that they understood. This came straight from the horse's mouth, and I refute anybody to deny that."

Thomas County Historical Society Board member and SVC member Chip Bragg moved in to close the session after it took a political turn when a white audience member voiced disapproval of the use of Confederate symbols on the state flag. Georgia voters are set to go to the polls a week from today to pick a flag to replace the 1956 version, which featured the St. Andrew's cross prominently.

"Those of us who are serious about our Confederate heritage are very unhappy with the trivialization of Confederate symbols and their misuse," he said. "Part of what we are trying to do is correct this misunderstanding."

ANTHONY JOHNSON

The most obvious fallacy of "the legacy of slavery" myth is that slavery was a white-versus-black institution. As will be demonstrated in chapter 4, the complexion of slave ownership was never totally white. Throughout the history of American slavery, thousands of African-Americans were slaveholders. Furthermore, several histori-ans have reported that the institution of slavery itself has its origins in a lawsuit filed by an early African-American slaveholder. [87] According to this account, Anthony Johnson, one of the original Africans landed in Virginia in 1619, was sold as an indentured servant. Alter completing his indentureship, Johnson became a rather successful farmer and bought several indentured servants for his own use. Upon a demand by one of his servants, the servant, named John Castor, was freed from his indentureship. When Castor bound himself to another man, a Mr. Parker, Johnson filed suit against Parker (Johnson v. Parker, Northampton County, Virginia). The suit resulted in Castor being returned to Johnson as his servant for life. From this landmark decision in 1653, slavery in the South sprang. It should be noted that the main characters in this event were all Africans. Even if it can be proven that the father of Southern slavery was an African-American, supporters of victimization will still try to fix the guilt of slavery on white racists. When faced with the fact that Africans in Africa sold their fellow citizens to Europeans or with the fact of African-American involvement in the institution of slavery in America, this crowd never allows these tacts to get in the way of their crusade. As with the communist purveyors, anyone who wishes to discuss facts will be charged with aiding and abetting the so-called criminal activity.
[87] Francis W. Springer, War for What (Bill Coats Ltd., Nashville, TN: 1990), p. 9

SOURCE: Myths of American Slavery, Walter D. Kennedy; Foreward by Bob Harrison; Pelican Publishing Company, Gretna, Louisiana, 2003, p. 62.

Walter D. Kennedy

Bob Harrison

In a limited but nonetheless significant sense, then, the Jamestown experience was an open experience which provided unusual opportunities for individual blacks. This comes out most clearly in the life and times of Anthony Johnson, who came to America in 1621 or thereabouts from England. Like many other blacks of the period, Johnson quickly worked out his term of indenture and started accumulating property. In 1651, according to official records, he imported and paid for five servants, some of whom were white, and was granted 250 acres of land on the basis of the headright system, which permitted planters to claim fifty acres of land for each individual brought to the colony.
The abstract of the deed reads as follows:

ANTHONY JOHNSON, 250 acs. Northampton Co., 24 July 1651, .... At great Naswattock Cr., being a neck of land bounded on the S.W. by the maine Cr. & on S.E. & N.W. by two small branches issueing out of the mayne Cr. Trans, of 5 pers: Tho. Bemrose, Peter Bughby, Antho. Cripps, Jno, Gesorroro, Richard Johnson.

In the years that followed, Johnson and his relatives established one of America's first black communities on the banks of the Pungoteague River. In 1652 John Johnson, who was probably Anthony Johnson's son, imported eleven persons, most of them white males and females, and received headrights for 550 acres adjacent to Anthony Johnson. Two years later Richard Johnson imported two white indentured servants and received one hundred acres.
Here are the records of the deeds:
JOHN JOHNSON, 550 acs. Northampton Co., 10 May 1652 ... At great Naswattocks Cr., adj. 200 acs. granted to Anthony Johnson. Trans, of 11 pers: John Edward, Wm. Routh, Tho. Yowell, Fra. Maland, William Price, John Owen, Dorothy Rily, Richard Hemstead, Law. Barnes, Row. Rith, Mary Johnson.
RICH. Jnoson (Johnson-also given as John), Negro, 100 acs. Northampton Co., 21 Nov. 1654, ... On S. Side of Pongoteague Riv., Ely. upon Pocomock Nly. upon land of John Jnoson., Negro, Wly. upon Anto. Jnoson., Negro, & Sly. upon Nich. Waddilow. Trans, of 2 pers: Wm. Ames, Wm. Vincent.

The Johnson settlement at its height included only a handful of blacks with large holdings. Other blacks lived in integrated communities in other areas of the colony. In 1656, for instance, Benjamin Doyle received a patent for three hundred acres in Surry County. In 1668 John Harris bought fifty acres in New Kent County; and Phillip Morgan, reflecting the optimism of the age, leased two hundred acres in York County for ninety-nine years.
One can hardly doubt, in the face of this clear evidence, that the first generation of blacks had, as J. H. Russell noted, "about the same industrial or economic opportunities as the free white servant." Additional evidence of the relatively high status of the first American blacks is to be found in colonial documents which indicate that they voted and participated in public life. It was not until 1723, in fact, that blacks were denied the right to vote in Virginia. According to Albert E. McKinley, blacks voted in South Carolina until 1701, in North Carolina until 1715, and in Georgia until 1754. Not only did pioneer blacks vote, but they also held public office. There was a black surety in York County, Virginia, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, and a black beadle in Lancaster County, Virginia.
Nor was this sort of thing confined to Virginia. The first blacks in Massachusetts -- they arrived in 1638 on the Desire, America's first slave ship -- were apparently assigned the status of indentured servants. In his classic work, The Negro in Colonial New England, Lorenzo J. Greene said that "until almost the end of the seventeenth century the records refer to the Negroes as 'servants' not as 'slaves.' For some time no definite status could be assigned to incoming Negroes. Some were sold for a period of time only, and like the white indentured servants became free after their indenture."

SOURCE: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower, Sixth Ed., Penguin Books, (1993) (First published 1962), pp. 37-38.

Mr. Bennett is executive editor of Ebony magazine and a recipient of the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Lerone Bennett, Jr.

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