South Carolina Ping 
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Posted on 01/05/2018 12:07:18 PM PST by DoodleDawg
Two South Carolina lawmakers want to erect a monument on the State House grounds to African-Americans who served the state as Confederate soldiers. But records show the state never accepted nor recognized armed African-American soldiers during the Civil War.
“In all my years of research, I can say I have seen no documentation of black South Carolina soldiers fighting for the Confederacy,” said Walter Edgar, who for 32 years was director of the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies and is author of “South Carolina: A History.”
“In fact, when secession came, the state turned down free (blacks) who wanted to volunteer because they didn’t want armed persons of color,” he said.
Pension records gleaned from the S.C. Department of History and Archives show no black Confederate soldiers received payment for combat service. And of the more than 300 blacks who did receive pensions after they were allowed in 1923, all served as body servants or cooks, the records show.
Confederate law prohibited blacks from bearing arms in the war, records show, until that edict was repealed in 1865 at the very end of the conflict.
That repeal resulted in a handful of African-American units in states such as Virginia and Texas. But there were none in South Carolina, which prohibited African-Americans from carrying guns in the state’s service throughout the war for fear of insurrection, according to the archives.
(Excerpt) Read more at thestate.com ...
Why is it that in all the Official Records of the War of Rebellion, in those thousands and thousands of Confederate communications, there is not a single mention of black Confederate soldiers of any type? In any unit? Not at least until February or March of 1865.
This whole discussion thread, where others are showing there were Black CSA soldiers and sailors tells me there could be more to the belief that the secession was about states rights and less about slavery.
I really have mixed feelings over this war. Slavery IMO is unquestionably wrong. But this war is where we lost much in states rights. More was lost with the 17th amendment which transferred power to the parties.
Because no one in the CSA Army really distinguish on race. Nobody cared about color. There are no records because being black wasn’t special.
Are you serious???
What Really Happened never changes.
I agree with both of you that “History” should be a record of “What Really Happened.”
But, the term history also applies to records of what happened, which may be incomplete, or contain accidental or deliberate errors. The latter, of course, is propaganda, for which we have the phrase “Victors write the history books.” Or, blow up Palmyra, burn the Alexandria libraries, or pull down statues of Confederate heroes (or even those of the Founding Fathers).
Not special as long as you knew your place in society. Cook my food, dig my trenches, shine my boots. Be a black Yankee soldier captured by the Confederate Army, that really didn’t care about color and you were treated as treated as a runaway slave, not as a prisoner of war.
Funny though, in the Confederate Navy they were valued sailors and crew members on Confederate warships. They received the same pay for their skill level as the white sailors did.
Thank you for your comments. I understand the dynamics you address there.
An accurate portrayal of history is so important.
There are several anecdotal observations about colored soldiers in the confederate ranks. It is one of those subjects that has people hyperventilating before the discussion even begins. A question I have asked for years -- without getting a good response -- is this: how does one account for mixed race men in this discussion? The South had a substantial mixed race population. Some were slave; some were free. And they would have ranged in color from black to "light enough to pass," with most somewhere in between. They were, in the language of the period, mulattos, quadroons, and octoroons. Some had Indian blood mixed in as well. At the risk of sounding like an SJW snowflake, race isn't a binary condition, not now and not then.
So: what counts as "black?"
Remember also that it was not unusual for slaveowners to manumit their slaves, sometimes upon their death but occasionally before. Sometimes this was merely humanitarian. But not infrequently, it was a matter of a slaveowner manumitting his own children. The peculiar institution did get peculiar at times. I can easily imagine a slaveowner not wanting his own flesh and blood to possibly be whipped, beaten or raped by strangers after his death. One guesses that he might have used his slave children decently while he was alive but would be apprehensive about their future prospects. Better to free them.
The usual statement is that about ten percent of the "black" people in the South, however they were defined, were free. In the South's overwhelmingly agrarian society, this meant that free people of mixed race were living in rural communities alongside other people who may have been white but who were, in fact, cousins, second cousins, or more distant relations. And in a rural society, everyone would have known it. People would have known perfectly well that their grandfather or great grandfather was sleeping around, and across the color line. They knew who their cousins were on the other side of the line.
I recall a conversation with an historian who had been working with regimental muster rolls. These were of regiments in eastern and central Tennessee, thus the hill country, not the plantation belt. In these he found a scattering of men listed as "free man of color." They're there. It would be interesting to know more about them. Some of them may have been undiluted African in heritage, but I've always imagined that the typical case was a free man of mixed blood who moved reasonably comfortably in white society -- bearing in mind that a lot of these white folks would have been his relations -- and who enlisted with his second and third cousins when the war began. (We're not talking about the planter aristocracy in their mansions; we're talking about a rural frontier society up in the hill country.) Two years later and a couple of hundred miles away, an observer would then spot "black confederates" in the ranks, and this observation then went on to confound historical arguments. But if we peel it back to the origin, it is not really very surprising.
I recall and African-American man in Virginia who took part in Civil War reenactments - must have been in the 1990s - on the side of the South since an ancestor or ancestors fought for the South.
Actually maybe you should yourself first no offense
Don't know about these guys but there were black confederates
Jewish too some
Amazing huh
This professor is bald faced liar
Would you like me to offer proof
Even our legion of south haters here including the OP don't believe no blacks fought for the confederacy
Even Forrest had some whom he offered freedom to for their service
I love the idea personally
the left and black lives matter and neoyankees really wan to expunge this inconvenient truth...pity
And you’re the expert how
More so than Frederick Douglas who lived that time
Yeah right
You and the rest of your south bashers can’t stomach the truths you don’t like
The last time I visited the Stephen Decatur House in DC, the guide told me that more people come to visit because of Judah Benjamin than Decatur. Benjamin had rented the house during his time in Washington.
Exactly. At least you grasp the concept in theory if not in practice.
I’ve read an article several months ago about Blacks serving as soldiers with Nathan Bedford Forest. He promised them freedom in exchange for their service, and all but one stayed with him till he disbanded. True to his word, he gave them their freedom papers before the agreed upon service had been completed, because he wanted to make sure that if he died in battle, their freedom would still be protected through those papers.
That is what honest and objective people eventually come to recognize after they've studied our history long enough. Lincoln birthed our current Federal leviathan. Wilson grew it larger, as did Roosevelt and Johnson.
Blacks served in the Confederate Navy from the first day its creation.
Only because Lincoln laid the foundation for doing so. The Federal Government was never so all powerful prior to 1861.
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