New book looks at startling Confederate policy during Civil War

Current ^ | 20 February 2006 | Scott Rappaport

[Euro-American Scum]

I knew about this when I was just a lad..some 45 years ago..my Dad, a Southerner, explained this to me..it's not "startling" or new..

So did I. It was common knowledge among mainstream history courses, books and documentaries. Don't know what is so revolutionary about this news.

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[RexBeach]

I guess so, but what about the Compromise of 1820, 1850, including the Fugitive Slave Act, the unsuccessful, but very controversial Wilmot Proviso, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, The Dred Scott Decision, et al. I simply cannot imagine anything else as compelling for war than the issue of slavery. Tariffs, sectional dislike for one another, sure. But without the issue of slavery, civil war might well have been averted.

It's fun to speculate, though.

Thanks for your note!

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[sauropod]

review

[scory]

Exactly.

[R.W.Ratikal]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Also, the North encouraged slaves to revolt and kill their masters. That's what the Emancipation Proclamation was all about.

[KarlInOhio]

Tax and tariff policies.

So the book which inflamed opinions on both sides before the war was "Uncle Tom's Customs House"? Slavery wasn't the sole reason, but it was the primary reason.

[stainlessbanner]

Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were slaveholding states that technically stayed in the Union, under the Great Emancipator.

[LWalk18]

This is nothing new. Anyone who has read anything about the War for Southern Independence knows that President Jefferson Davis had a plan to arm slaves.

Then how come he did not execute it, since supposedly slavery had nothing to do with the war and there were already tens of thousands of slaves fighting unofficially for the Confederacy? BTW, I wonder if these tens of thousands of blacks serving in the Confederate army actually existed why that why wasn't that the primary argument for arming slaves?

[cvq3842]

interesting

[Lee'sGhost]

Absolutely. Words have no meaning. If the winning side had said, "we are no longer 'Yankees,' we are '@ss clowns,' that would make just as much sense.

[Vicomte13]

Without slavery, there wouldn't have been an American Civil War.

It is telling that, even at the bitter end, when the South was losing, the slaveowners were still ferociously opposing arming the slaves to fight for the South.

Probably for good reason. Arm the slaves to fight FOR the South, and the slaves might very well turn those arms on the South. That would have been the sensible thing to do, if you were in a slave regiment given arms. The slave owed the Southerner NOTHING, and having a regiment of slaves on a battlefield suddenly doing a right face and firing directly into the flank of another Confederate unit, would have been precisely the sort of treachery that Southern slaveowners could reasonably foresee, and fear.

Arm slaves, and you have an army of armed slaves. What makes anyone think that an army of armed slaves is going to obey some white officer with a sword telling them to fight the Yankees whom the slaves know will liberate them?

Bullet in the back, or the face, of the white officer, and you are a regiment of free, armed black men, equally capable of shooting down white Confederates as they are of shooting you down.

There's a good military reason why Southern slaveowners rejected the idea...in addition, of course, to their racism and refusal to even consider putting blacks on an equal footing with themselves.

[indcons]

England and France were quite close to recognizing the Confederate govt. The Emancipation Proclamation was, according to some historians, precisely designed to prevent the formal recognition from taking place. In other words, Lincoln used the moral basis of the EP masterfully to prevent political recognition of the Confederacy.

[DOGEY]

After all, how could the war be about slavery if the Confederates were willing to sacrifice slavery in order to win the war? What a non sequitur! At that point it wasn't about winning but surviving.