Posted on 10/19/2002 3:41:11 AM PDT by shuckmaster
Edited on 05/07/2004 9:05:57 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
With a slow, deliberate gait, H.K. Edgerton walked along U.S. 25 toward Greenville on Wednesday wearing a Confederate soldier's uniform and resting a Confederate flag on his right shoulder.
Edgerton, who is black, is marching from Asheville, N.C., to Austin, Texas, to raise awareness and funds for Sons of the Confederate Veterans and the Southern Legal Resource Center, which advocates Southern heritage.
(Excerpt) Read more at greenvilleonline.com ...
Okay, neo-rebs. Don't make things up, and this thread won't get very long.
Walt
When I moved to Greenville from Northern Indiana in 1981, there were alot of stereotypes that I had to overcome. I learned all the good things about the Confederacy that I never would have learned up North.
Don in Greenville
Oh yeah...heres some cheese in advance to go with the whine thats sure to come.
"A lot of people don't seem to realize that the Confederate Army was basically a bunch of state militias on loan to Richmond," he said.
Very interesting
The same could be said for the Union army.
Federal forces controlled the field at the end of the battle of Antietam. They found no black corpses in CSA uniform. Only a handful of blacks fought for the CSA.
This oft-repeated misstatement about the 3,000 black CSA soldiers came from the writings of a Dr. Steiner, who oddly enough was a big proponent of using black troops in the federal army. a) he was no expert and b) he was not objective.
Some excerpts form a pamphlet he had published:
"At four o'clock this morning the rebel army began to move from our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The movement continued until eight o'clock P.M., occupying sixteen hours. The most liberal calculations could not give them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 negroes must. be included in this number. These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only in cast-off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. These were shabby, but not shabbier or seedier than those worn by white men in the rebel ranks. Most of the negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabres, bowie-knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy Army.
Three of the buildings on the hospital grounds were taken possession of by the Confederates for the accommodation of their sick. These soon threw themselves on the beds, with their filthy clothing and boots. In a few hours a marked contrast could be noticed between the neatness of the wards containing the Union soldiers and those occupied by the rebels. The secessionists collected the ladies of their order of thinking, and, for the first time since the breaking out of the rebellion, the fair forms of female secessionists were seen within the walls of the Frederick hospital, ministering to the wants of suffering humanity. I must confess that they seemed to work with a will. The Union ladies, whenever they found their supplies more than sufficient for our own sick, freely gave them to sick rebels.
The experience of one week with the Rebel Army satisfies me that the men are in a high state of discipline and have learned implicit obedience. When separated from their officers they do not show the same self-reliance that our men possess,—do not seem able to discuss with intelligent ease the political subjects which claim every man's attention at this time. All of them show a lack of energy and spirit, a want of thrift and cleanliness, which are altogether paradoxical to our men. A constant fear of their officers is associated with their prompt obedience of orders. Many, while they expressed their contempt for "the Yankees," would lament the war and express a desire to throw down their arms and return to their homes, if they could only do this without molestation. Jackson's name was always mentioned with a species of veneration, and his orders were obeyed with a slavish obedience unsurpassed by that of Russian serfs.
[I like that part]
The men generally looked sturdy when in ranks, yet a cachectic expression of countenance prevailed, which could not be accounted for entirely by the unwashed faces that were, from necessity or choice, the rule. Those who have fallen into our hands show worn-out constitutions, disordered digestions and a total lack of vital stamina. They do not bear pain with any fortitude, and their constitutions seem to have very little power of resistance to disease. The rate of mortality in the rebel sick and wounded is double or treble that found in the Hospitals containing our men.
During the afternoon of the day, the memorable engagement at the South Mountain Pass took place, in which our new levies vied with the veterans in pressing the Confederates up the side of the mountain, and then over into the valley beyond. Our military commanders will bear testimony, in proper form, to the heroic courage shown by our army in this well-fought action. The rebels had tried to make a stand at several points on the road prior to this engagement, but were gallantly driven forwards by our troops.
On Wednesday the great battle of Antietam was fought, with such a display of strategy and power on the part of our General, and of heroism and daring from our men, that the enemy was glad to resign all hopes of entering Pennsylvania, and to withdraw his forces across the Potomac.
[He means McClellan. That impeaches him pretty much as an observer in my book]
A great victory had been gained; the enemy had been driven from loyal soil, and McClellan had shown himself worthy of the love, (amounting almost to adoration,) which his troops expressed on all sides.
Dr. Steiner also refers to the officers and men of the Army of Northern Virginia as "filthy and repulsive."
Walt
I knew it was coming.
"It's pure fantasy,' contends James McPherson, a Princeton historian and one of the nation's leading Civil War scholars. Adds Edwin Bearss, historian emeritus at the National Park Service: 'It's b.s., wishful thinking.' Robert Krick, author of 10 books on the Confederacy, has studied the records of 150,000 Southern soldiers and found fewer than a dozen were black. 'Of course, if I documented 12, someone would start adding zeros,' he says.
"These and other scholars say claims about black rebels derive from unreliable anecdotes, a blurring of soldiers and laborers, and the rapid spread on the Internet of what Mr. McPherson calls 'pseudohistory.' Thousands of blacks did accompany rebel troops -- as servants, cooks, teamsters and musicians. Most were slaves who served involuntarily; until the final days of the war, the Confederacy staunchly refused to enlist black soldiers.
"Some blacks carried guns for their masters and wore spare or cast-off uniforms, which may help explain eyewitness accounts of blacks units. But any blacks who actually fought did so unofficially, either out of personal loyalty or self-defense, many historians say.
"They also bristle at what they see as the disingenuous twist on political correctness fueling the black Confederate fad. 'It's a search for a multicultural Confederacy, a desperate desire to feel better about your ancestors,' says Leslie Rowland, a University of Maryland historian. 'If you suggest that some blacks supported the South, then you can deny that the Confederacy was about slavery and white supremacy.'
"David Blight, an Amherst College historian, likens the trend to bygone notions about happy plantation darkies.' Confederate groups invited devoted ex-slaves to reunions and even won Senate approval in 1923 for a "mammy" monument in Washington (it was never built). Black Confederates, Mr. Blight says, are a new and more palatable way to 'legitimize the Confederacy.'"
-- Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1997
AND:
"There seems to be no evidence that the Negro soldiers authorized by the Confederate Government (March 13, 1865) ever went into battle. This gives rise to the question as to whether or not any Negroes ever fought in the Confederate ranks. It is possible that some of the free Negro companies organized in Louisiana and Tennessee in the early part of the war took part in local engagements; but evidence seems to the contrary. (Authors note: If they did, their action was not authorized by the Confederate Government.) A company of "Creoles," some of whom had Negro blood, may have been accepted in the Confederate service at Mobile. Secretary Seddon conditioned his authorization of the acceptance of the company on the ability of those "Creoles" to be naturally and properly distinguished from Negroes. If persons with Negro Blood served in Confederate ranks as full-fledged soldiers, the per cent of Negro blood was sufficiently low for them to pass as whites."
(Authors note: Henry Clay Warmoth said that many Louisiana mulattoes were in Confederate service but they were "not registered as Negroes." War Politics and Reconstruction, p. 56)
p. 160-61, SOUTHERN NEGROES, Wiley
Another factor that mitigates against the myth of black CSA soldiers is the savagery inflicted on black USA POW's by forces of the so-called CSA. Hundreds were murdered outright.
The idea of any number of black CSA soldiers is simply not supportable.
Walt
A little obsessed with the back door, aren't we?
If you want to enter the lists, throw up some facts on the late unpleasantness. Here's something just for you:
"Conscious that this document bore upon its face the plain contradiction of their pretended authority, and its own palpable nullity both in techincal form and essential principle, the convention undertook to give it strength and plausibility by an elaborate Declaration of Causes, adopted a few days later (December 24th)-- a sort of half-parody of Jefferson's masterpiece. It could of course, quote no direct warrant from the Constitution for secession, but sought to deduce one, by implication, from the language of the Declaration of Independence and the Xth amendment. It reasserts the absurd paradox of State supremacy-persistantly miscaled "State Rights" --which reverses the natural order of governmental existance ; considers a State superior to the Union; makes a part greater than the whole; turns the pyramid of authority upon its apex; plants the tree of liberty with its branches in the ground and its roots in the air.
The fallacy has been has been a hundred times analysed, exposed, and refuted; but the cheap dogmatism of demagougues and the automatic machinery of faction perpetually conjures it up anew to astonish the sucklings and terrify the dotards of politiics. The notable point in the [South Carolina] Declaration of Causes is, that its complaint over grievances past and present is against certain states, and for these remedy was of course logically barred by its own theory of state supremacy. On the other hand, all its allegations against the Union are concerning dangers to come, before which admission the moral justification of disunion falls to the ground. In rejecting the remedy of future elections for future wrongs, the conspiracy discarded the entire theory of republican government.
One might have thought that this might have exhausted their counterfeit philosophy--but not yet. Greatly as they groaned at unfriendly state laws--serisly as they pretended to fear damage or spoilation under future federal statutes, the burden of their anger rose at the sentient and belief of the North. "All hope of remedy," says the manifesto, "is rendered vain by the fact that the public opinion at the North has invested a great political error with the sanctions of a more erroneous religious belief." This is language one might expect from the Pope of Rome; but that an American convention should denounce the liberty of opinion, is not merely to recede from Jefferson, to Louis XIV; it is flying from the town-meeting to the Inquisition. "With all their affectation of legality, formality, and present justification, some of the members were honest enough to acknowledge the true character of the event as the culmination of a chronic conspiracy, not a spontaneous revolution. "The secession of South Carolina," said one of the chief actors, "is not an event of a day. It is not anything produced by Mr. Lincoln's election, or by the non-execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. It is a matter which has been gathering head for thirty years." This with many similar avowals, crowns and completes the otherwise abundant proof that the revolt was not only aganist right, but that it was without cause."
--John G. Nicolay, 1881
The so-called CSA was a bad joke, and it can only be honored in ignorance.
The semantic content of your posts to me so far has been zero. I don't expect that to change.
Walt
LOL! Speaking of obsessed why is it that you cant leave ONE thread about the CSA alone? Just curious.
BTW, I noticed from your profile that you are from Tenn. Do you spout this same CSA bashing garbage with your neighbors in person or is it more a undercover thing you do on the computer?
Walt
Walt
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.