African Americans in the CSA Army

[Daxil]

I do not think that anyone is questioning that blacks were present in CSA in mainly non-combattant roles. Seeing your picture would be interesting, but would not useful in demonstrating points. The black in the ranks could have been a cook or an aide.

Looking at it more closely it looks like it could be just a guy with a big black beard. In fact, half those guys have big black beards.

[ATTACH]4342[/ATTACH]

[TheDoctorKing]

I don't know specifically about the CSA Army, but many armies in slave societies used black slave musicians. Don't know why, other than that members of the color party would be the most likely individuals to get shot at by snipers and suchlike. I know in the French army before 1848 if you were a drummer for some years you would automatically get your freedom.

Musicians often had the secondary duty of collecting a regiment's dead and wounded after the battle and this might well have made them more popular with the other troops too.

So if your drummer is black that wouldn't be surprising. I don't think Barker mentioned musicians in his earlier posts but perhaps some of the people he recorded as being recognized members of regimental veteran associations after the war were drummers and the like.

[Zebedee]

More recent research on the Napoleonic era is indicating black soldiers saw a far greater role in combat than previously imagined.

eg http://www.napoleonic-literature.com/Articles/Black_Soldiers.htm


I'm sure there was a unit in the French Napoleonic army which consisted almost solely of former slaves from Haiti. IIRC it saw very bitter and active service in Italy against the guerillas fighting against French occupation there.

[TheDoctorKing]

What more do you know about the Haitian soldiers serving in Napoleon's army?

This is actually my professional field. I'd love to find out what you know.

I know that some of the Haitian officers who came over to Napoleon at the time of the 1802 invasion were deported to France and continued to serve once there. André Rigaud was imprisoned for a while but later released, served in the gendarmerie, and then made a last try to retake power in Haiti in 1810, where he was killed.

I think it would have been unlike Napoleon to allow them to serve as a separate unit, though.

[Barker]

Here are some Pictures

It is not surprising that some have reacted to the claim that Blacks voluntarily served the army of a government that supported the enslavement of members of their race with ridicule. Skeptics can argue that , although the men in pictures 6 and 7 are armed and in uniform, they are slaves forced to pose for these pictures. However, pictures 1 and 5 cannot be explained on the basis of force, as they were taken long after the War, and clearly these men did not have to attend Confederate reunions, and presumably would not have attended reunions if they had been forced to participate in the activities of the Confederate Army. (Observe that the Black men in picture 5 of an 1890 Alabama Confederate reunion are certainly not, say, waiters and bell men at the hotel where it was held, because they are wearing the same badges many of the White men are wearing, and they, like the Whites, are elderly. )

[Barker]

The Native Guard Picture in my previous post I discovered to be a fake. The unit though is real

[Zebedee]

What more do you know about the Haitian soldiers serving in Napoleon's army?

This is actually my professional field. I'd love to find out what you know.

I know that some of the Haitian officers who came over to Napoleon at the time of the 1802 invasion were deported to France and continued to serve once there. André Rigaud was imprisoned for a while but later released, served in the gendarmerie, and then made a last try to retake power in Haiti in 1810, where he was killed.

I think it would have been unlike Napoleon to allow them to serve as a separate unit, though.

Oh crikey, it was an old grognard article which covered odd units of the time period such as the French royalists in the British army. As far as I can recall, it was a unit which consisted of Haitian ex-slaves and it served in Italy fighting the 'insurgency' (if that's not too much of an anachronism) there.

Will see if I can dig it out and will post it.

edit: hurrah! not what I was after, but obviously sourced similarly - p.81 of Cathy Williams by Phillip Thomas Tucker. The e-book available here for preview: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jWPL8OrbbacC&pg=PA81&lpg=PA81&dq=%22black+soldiers%22+France+napoleon+italy&source=web&ots=SbpKON97SP&sig=YFvqwqBOCfka00FvCHzitrkMZP4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result nb: I don't think this is actually totally accurate, from memory I think only the pioniers noirs were haitian former slaves and they became the Royal Africain. And indeed - p.39 of Napoleon's Overseas Army by Chartrand and Back http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=0V_J645pKQcC&pg=PA39&lpg=PA39&dq=%22royal+africain%22+napoleon&source=web&ots=Wjz2A8fxVG&sig=KUDBtNE0c1X80rjYAcBouqWtN9U&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result And a picture - http://www.militaryhistorypress.com/GrandeArmee/freiberg/212-213-screen.pdf

edit (again): hope that makes sense and is of use as a starting point. Apologies for slight derail of thread. But I think my point is that combat service of black soldiers does seem to have been written out of large parts of C19th history.

[TheDoctorKing]

edit (again): hope that makes sense and is of use as a starting point. Apologies for slight derail of thread. But I think my point is that combat service of black soldiers does seem to have been written out of large parts of C19th history.

Boy, ain't that the truth!

Thanks for the links. Looks like they were colonial troops, could have been from anywhere, probably not Haiti. A good bit of the Guadeloupe army went over to Napoleon, and the Senegalese ports never had an uprising (though they were occupied by the British for a good part of the war, as was Martinique). I'm guessing that most of these soldiers were blacks resident in France, though.

Plenty of them just served in regular units, though.

[Zebedee]

Boy, ain't that the truth!

Thanks for the links. Looks like they were colonial troops, could have been from anywhere, probably not Haiti. A good bit of the Guadeloupe army went over to Napoleon, and the Senegalese ports never had an uprising (though they were occupied by the British for a good part of the war, as was Martinique). I'm guessing that most of these soldiers were blacks resident in France, though.

Plenty of them just served in regular units, though.

There were plenty of colonial troops in the French (and British) armies (eg 35e DB de Ligne). The reason these guys were different was because they were ex-pows (as were the pioniers blancs - hence the naming pattern) as well as some ex-slaves from the Antilles. Still hunting for that original article because it was pretty well sourced from contemporary accounts.

French wiki sources Ibrahima Baba Kaké's Les légions noires but I don't think I'll be able to grab hold of a copy Similarly with the classic Histoire des Troupes Etranger au service de France by Fief (sp?).

[Irish Guards]

200 years of insitituionalized slavery and racisim would probably make somone feel second class enough to think that fighting for bondage of their brothers was a good thing..Or maybe they wanted to be free as individuals and were promised or believed they would be free afterwards..and not all black people are noble..some owned slaves (very small group)..the british used sepoy regiments in much the same way..I dont dispute that blacks fought for the south..though I would need more evidence to thier numbers.

One of the healthy doses of salt that comes with some of these books is it tends to dilute the slavery issue and make it seem that it was not so bad or nobodys fault. Slavery and the racisim that spawned both from it and was before is a soical disease that has infected humanity from its inception. And I tend to blanche from making the southern cause noble. I have lived in both the north and the south..And I can safely say that south losing the civil war was the best thing that ever happened to the US and the South.

[dragoon47]

There is an event in the CSA Events file called 'evt_nam_CSA_Slaves1865' which looks like it relates to this I've never actually seen it happen as its set for late on.

Someone maybe wants to change that date so it kicks in earlier to find out what occurs.

There is also a disabled event for 1863 but I'm even less clear on what it does


BTW the quote above is from Howell Cobb.

S!

Just tried this and what you get is a boost towards intervention so its not for recruitment of slaves as such

That file is definetely not the one for drafting slaves into the CSA.

SelectFaction = $CSA
SelectRegion = $Richmond, VA
StartEvent = evt_nam_CSA_Slaves1865|1|2|evt_txt_CSA_Slaves1865|Event-img_CSA_Slaves1865|$Richmond, VA|97

Conditions
MinDate = 1864/01/01
MaxDate = 1866/01/01
EvalMorale = <;60

Actions
DescEvent = evt_desc_CSA_Slaves1865
ChangeActorPool = $gmaPartialMinority;MaxUse;1;ResetFreq;0;ImageID;DraftSlaves.png;Title;strCSAPartialSlavesTitle;MsgString;strCSAPartialSlaves;ToolString;strCSAPartialSlavesTool;VP;10;Param1;10
ChangeActorPool = $gmaFullMinority;MaxUse;1;ResetFreq;0;ImageID;DraftSlaves.png;Title;strCSAFullSlavesTitle;MsgString;strCSAFullSlaves;ToolString;strCSAFullSlavesTool;VP;25;Param1;20
ChangeActorPool = $gmaMinorityChange;MaxUse;1;ResetFreq;0;ImageID;FreeSlaves.png;Title;strFreeSlavesCSATitle;MsgString;strFreeSlavesCSA;ToolString;strFreeSlavesCSATool;Money;-999;VP;250;Morale;30;Param1;100;Param2;24;Param3;0;sParam1;strFreeSlavesCSA;sParam2;strFreeSlavesCSANotifyUSA;sParam3;strFreeSlavesCSANotifyUSA

EndEvent

I highlighted some of the clues in the event that would give it away, to me at least. I hope my first post in this forum was helpful, I can't say that much for other forums . The cost is quite ridiculous though, but it's worth it in the late game I would think, I still can't get past the first year without losing

It looks like a threat to get rid of slavery to bring in the Brits right? That's why there is the notifying of the USA and such?

That event from 1863 looks conspicuous however...


SelectFaction = $CSA
SelectRegion = $Richmond, VA
StartEvent = evt_nam_CSA_Slaves1863|0|2|evt_txt_CSA_Slaves1863|Event-img_CSA_Slaves1863|$Richmond, VA|124

Conditions
MinDate = 1863/06/01
MaxDate = 1864/01/01
Probability = 50
EvalMorale = <;50

Actions
DescEvent = evt_desc_CSA_Slaves1863
ChangeFacMorale = -10
ChangeWSUPool = -30
ChangeConscriptPool = 100

Why would it add conscripts? And in 1863? Does anyone know what it does?

[Barker]

I have lived in both the north and the south..And I can safely say that south losing the civil war was the best thing that ever happened to the US and the South.

Interseting comment but i think that no one would really know except if they came from an alternate dimension...lol. This thread was not to trivialize any wrongs that slavery was or is today. Interesting fact that from the US archives the US slavery population was les then 7% of the total slave population. I just wanted to bring up the fact there we Blacks that did fight for the south both free and not. That they were not only used for labor but a part of a chesive fighting unit. Some of the very large Plantation owners in La for example was black, those plantations had over 1000 slaves. Slavery is wrong no matter how you slice it but it was part of our, United States Legacy. There are other countries with far deeper slave ties then the US and by far were less tollerant. African nations for example when they were warring, it was a custom to take slaves from the losers. The American Indians did the same thing. I just found this to be a very interesting topic to discuss and not forget where we were and how it effected others.

[TommH]

Well when studying history I think you need to pursue the facts and not worry about the perception otherwise you end u\up where? covering up facts?

One of the things that makes looking onto questions like this is the political climate after the war had a lot of effect on the contemporary records. You see this here where both Northern and Southern contemporaries downplayed the contribution of African Americans on both sides.

Similarly anti-immigrant sentiment lead to a devaluing of the role of immigrants in the war (this happened more from the Northern then the Southern side of course).

AS to an option fore the South to consider some sort of early emancipation, thats a interesting possibility but the internal political consequences would have been serious, perhaps even breaking the CSA in two.

[ohms_law]

Well when studying history I think you need to pursue the facts and not worry about the perception otherwise you end u\up where? covering up facts?

AS to an option fore the South to consider some sort of early emancipation, thats a interesting possibility but the internal political consequences would have been serious, perhaps even breaking the CSA in two.

Yea... My personal feeling is that the CSA just wasn't politically willing or ready to do this. The only reason that they did is because they were desperate.

That being said, I have no doubt that the Confederacy would have emancipated the slaves relatively soon after ending the war (albeit slowly... which actually might have worked out better for the former slaves). To the South, rebelling really was about being able to decide their own fate rather than having the Federal government decide for them. Europeans who purchased cotton wanted slavery gone anyway, and property rights rather than human rights was the prism through which slavery was seen by Southerners. The real question to plantation owners was receiving some sort of recompense for giving up their "property".

[TheDoctorKing]

Some northern political leaders, including Lincoln, thought of compensated emancipation as a way to resolve the issue over slavery. Lincoln floated a proposal to offer compensation to border-state slave owners and loyalists in the southern states in order to get them to agree to a constitutional amendment eliminating slavery...but they wouldn't go along. In the end, the amendment was ratified anyway and those owners who had kept their slaves until 1865 lost their "property" with no reimbursement. If Lincoln couldn't get the border-state "war Democrats" and loyalist southerners, some of the most loyal people in the USA, to agree, I bet there would have been no chance at all for Jeff Davis, even a victorious Jeff Davis, to convince southern slave owners to go along with compensation. Heck, there were even serious people in the CSA calling for a restoration of the slave trade, though cooler heads prevailed (and in any case we can presume that the USA Navy would have stopped it).

A gradualist approach had worked in many northern states in the period 1776-1820 (New York finally abolished slavery in 1827, after having had "free womb" laws since 1799). But these were states with few blacks, most of whom were already free, and economies that were not heavily invested in plantation agriculture. I can't see gradual abolition being acceptable to southern slave owners either, especially if they were empowered by a victory in the war.

Economic historians are pretty much in agreement that the south's plantation economy was quite vibrant and slaves were productive workers. So there would have been little economic pressure to switch over to free labor.

I can't see slavery ending in an independent south for internal reasons, at least not in the nineteenth century. Maybe the populist/progressive political reforms of the turn of the century might have had the effect of turning mass public opinion against slavery in an independent CSA in the early twentieth century. And perhaps outside pressure from trading partners (the north and Britain) might have made southerners reform. But I would have to say that I think that US victory in the Civil War meant freedom at least half a century earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

Of course, what did we do with that half century? As a matter of fact, Jim Crow meant that African-Americans suffered under very serious discrimination into the middle of the twentieth century, and even today almost a decade into the twenty-first, with an African-American man elected president, there is still a lot more racial prejudice in this country than I would like to see. Maybe a longer emancipation process would have meant less enduring racial prejudice. The countries of the Americas that historically still had slavery after the Civil War, Brazil and Cuba, today have fairly good race relations (though not perfect in either case).

[TheDoctorKing]

The Native Guard Picture in my previous post I discovered to be a fake. The unit though is real

Notice that the guy on the left of the picture is wearing a US Army uniform.

The Louisiana Native Guards were actually on both sides - they were a Louisiana state unit, composed of free men of color, who accompanied the CSA army in its retreat after the USA capture of New Orleans. The CSA national government refused to muster them into the CSA Army, and so they were disbanded and returned to their homes, by that point mostly in areas under USA control. Some of their officers then re-assembled the unit (plus new recruits from the freed former slaves) as part of the US Army. They participated in the battle of Port Hudson, one of the earliest incidents in the war of black southerners fighting for the Union. Here's a link:
http://www2.netdoor.com/~jgh/

[Barker]

Remeber the Hunley? They found a Union ID Tag on board...a few other union items as well...so?

[Carrington]

AS to an option fore the South to consider some sort of early emancipation, thats a interesting possibility but the internal political consequences would have been serious, perhaps even breaking the CSA in two.

In general, I think AACW underplays the Civil War within the South (i.e. between Southern slaveholders, poor whites, and Southern blacks). I'd agree that there ought to be a bit more room for the Southern player to shape social policy.

I'd balance that option with a range of Federal options allowing emancipation much earlier, recruitment of black troops in the South, and increased social impacts (decreased southern production as slaves volunteered themselves as 'contraband') up to slave revolt.

NB. part of the problem with the 'Black Confederates' narrative is that Nat Turner (and, for that matter, John Brown) scared the Bejeesus out of huge swaths of white southern society. There was, to say the least, considerable push back against arguments for a large-scale Confederate armament of Southern blacks. Indeed, the need to 'maintain domestic order' tended to limit Southern draft returns among whites as well.\

That being said, I have no doubt that the Confederacy would have emancipated the slaves relatively soon after ending the war (albeit slowly... which actually might have worked out better for the former slaves). To the South, rebelling really was about being able to decide their own fate rather than having the Federal government decide for them. Europeans who purchased cotton wanted slavery gone anyway, and property rights rather than human rights was the prism through which slavery was seen by Southerners. The real question to plantation owners was receiving some sort of recompense for giving up their "property".

Meh. Andy Hall's post at the Atlantic does pretty well at rebutting the argument that the "South was really fighting for freedom" (try telling Sojourner that one).

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/small-truth-papering-over-a-big-lie/61136/

You don't have to talk to a Confederate apologist long before before you'll be told that only a tiny fraction of butternuts owned slaves. (This is usually followed immediately by an assertion that the speaker's own Confederate ancestors never owned slaves, either.) The number ascribed to Confederate soldiers as a whole varies—two percent, five percent—but the message is always the same, that those men 150 years had nothing to do with the peculiar institution, they has no stake in it, and that it certainly played no role whatever in their personal motivations or in the Confederacy's goals in the war. But it's simply not true in any meaningful way. Slave labor was as much a part of life in the antebellum South as heat in the summer and hog-killing time in the late fall. Southerners across the Confederacy, from Texas to Florida to Virginia, civilian and soldier alike, were awash in the institution of slavery. They were up to their necks in it. They swam in it, and no amount of willful denial can change that.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in his post "the Ghost of Bobby Lee," it is pretty hard to argue that the South went to war from freedom when the various acts of secession are lousy with references to their peculiar institution, vis: "A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union"

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy.

Mississippi:

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.

[TheDoctorKing]

In general, I think AACW underplays the Civil War within the South (i.e. between Southern slaveholders, poor whites, and Southern blacks).

I raised this point some time ago when I noticed that regions in the south that had like 90% black populations had 100% pro-confederate loyalty. Huh?

Andatiep has proposed a number of mini-mods in the "help improve AACW" thread, one of which would raise Union loyalty in states that had been invaded by Union troops to something close to the actual percentage of blacks and anti-secessionist whites living there.

[Carrington]

I raised this point some time ago when I noticed that regions in the south that had like 90% black populations had 100% pro-confederate loyalty. Huh?

Andatiep has proposed a number of mini-mods in the "help improve AACW" thread, one of which would raise Union loyalty in states that had been invaded by Union troops to something close to the actual percentage of blacks and anti-secessionist whites living there.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited about Andatiep's mini-mod.

Aside from the politics of 'Black Confederates,' the issue of black American combatants in the Civil War is, I believe, strategically fascinating. The decision by either side to raise black troops was -- or, for the Confederates, would have been -- potentially as significant as the Prussian decision to mobilize the Landwehr. In the event, the Confederates shied away from a mobilization near the Prussian scale -- a decision that damns neo-Confederate claims that the war was about State's Rights rather than the State's Right to enforce slavery . And, concurrently, though the USCT formed a fairly large portion of the Union war effort by 1864-1865, Lincoln and his generals never really faced a military necessity analogous to that faced by Scharnhorst, Clausewitz, or the Prussian establishment after 1807.

My own instinct is that Lincoln failed to grasp an opportunity for a far more 'Periclean' defensive strategy based on the social/economic importance of Southern slaves as well as their questionable loyalty overall. The coastal forts and coastal ports proved to be magnets for 'contrabands' even before emancipation. It's also interesting that one element of Lee's 1863 invasion of Maryland/Penna was an effort to reclaim slaves who had decamped from Virginia to resettle in Pennsylvania.

[soloswolf]

It's also interesting that one element of Lee's 1863 invasion of Maryland/Penna was an effort to reclaim slaves who had decamped from Virginia to resettle in Pennsylvania.

I'd love to see the source material for this. I've never heard that mentioned.

[Carrington]

I'd love to see the source material for this. I've never heard that mentioned.

I'll try to dig it up: I saw it referenced on TNC's blog at The Atlantic, the reference was to an academic journal article.

[soloswolf]

I'll try to dig it up: I saw it referenced on TNC's blog at The Atlantic, the reference was to an academic journal article.

Hi!

I'm not trying to pester you, just wondering if you had found it yet? I'd just be interested to read the article and see their sources. I've read a lot about the subject and I have never seen that theory once.

[Carrington]

Hi!

I'm not trying to pester you, just wondering if you had found it yet? I'd just be interested to read the article and see their sources. I've read a lot about the subject and I have never seen that theory once.

Quick mention of 'captured contrabands' in orders to Maj. Gen Pickett on July 1.

http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/or/R151733

The blog post is by Andy Hall on Ta-Nehisi Coates' blog at The Atlantic Monthly
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2010/08/we-have-received-provocation-enough/61276/

Hall was blogging on David Smith, "Race and Retaliation" in Wallenstein and Wyatt-Brown, Virginia's Civil War, University of VA Press, 2005.

Hall's gloss;

[quote="Andy Hall @ The Atlantic.com"]During the Gettysburg Campaign, soldiers in the the Army of Northern Virginia systematically rounded up free blacks and escaped slaves as they marched north into Maryland and Pennsylvania. Men, women and children were all swept up and brought along with the army as it moved north, and carried back into Virginia during the army's retreat after the battle. While specific numbers cannot be known, Smith argues that the total may have been over a thousand African Americans. Once back in Confederate-held territory, they were returned to their former owners, sold at auction or imprisoned.

That part of the story is well-known. What makes Smith's essay important is the way he provides additional, critical background to this horrible event, and reveals both its extent across the corps and divisions of Lee's army, as well as the acquiescence to it, up and down the chain of command. The seizures were not, as is sometimes suggested, the result of individual soldiers or rouge troops acting on their own initiative, in defiance of their orders. The perpetrators were not, to use a more recent cliché, "a few bad apples." The seizure of free blacks and escaped slaves by the Army of Northern Virginia was widespread, systematic, and countenanced by officers up to the highest levels of command. This event, and others on a much smaller scale, were so much part of the army's operation that Smith argues they can legitimately be considered a part of the army's operational objective. Smith is blunt in his terminology for these activities]

Smith's chapter is available in full, or nearly in full, via google books:

http://books.google.com/books?id=Ma-XQ2KqkyIC&pg=PA137&output=html&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=4

I don't know how Smith, and/or Virginia's Civil War fits into the current historiography, though my impression from David Blight and MacPherson is that there has been a renewed emphasis on the role and importance of slavery as the essential political cause. Smith would probably be breaking ground in assigning slavery a role in Southern operational planning as well.

Of course The Atlantic has, very literally, a history as an, um, radical Republican--- read, fire-eating abolitionist -- publication. Currently, it might not be be described accurately as 'left-wing,' but it is fairly clearly identified with a cosmopolitan and Northeastern slant. And Ta-Nehisi Coates spilled a fair number of electrons ridiculing the Neo-Confederate mythology surrounding "Black Confederates."

That said, I tend to find Smith's argument fairly plausible. First, I've never fully understood what prompted Lee to head North into Pennsylvania. And, second, I tend to think Civil War historiography has systematically underestimated the role of black folks. Slaves were, after all, the sinews of the Southern economic system; they brought in the cotton that paid for the South's import of war supplies, and just about everything else. A hemorrage of Southern blacks, to say nothing of Union recruitment of same, would put the South in a fairly sharp strategic predicament, even absent the South's deteriorating military position in the West.

[soloswolf]

An interesting read to be sure.

While the logic is clear enough in their writing, the leap from tacit acceptance of blacks being taken captive to it being a fundamental strategic objective is a bit too far of a jump for me. Particularly from a strict dollars and cents perspective there is no way to justify such a maneuver.

Obviously it was an awful addition to a deplorable practice, but I am anything but convinced that a 'slave raid' is reason enough to march the ANV across the Potomac.

[Carrington]

An interesting read to be sure.

While the logic is clear enough in their writing, the leap from tacit acceptance of blacks being taken captive to it being a fundamental strategic objective is a bit too far of a jump for me. Particularly from a strict dollars and cents perspective there is no way to justify such a maneuver.

Obviously it was an awful addition to a deplorable practice, but I am anything but convinced that a 'slave raid' is reason enough to march the ANV across the Potomac.

What we do know:

1) Preserving slavery was the Confederacy's fundamental policy objective. Generally the subject of slavery, and the North's 'oppressive' penchant for liberation, comes up in somewhere in the first three paragraphs of most Southern states' articles of secession... and there's no reason to believe that this was just a rhetorical red herring. The 'States' Right' that the Confederacy fought for was the right to hold slaves..... and, to the dismay of Northern states, the right to send slave-catching posses into the North.

Nb. this is not to say that the North's policy objectives were symmetrical -- ending slavery was most definitely not official policy in the North... until about 1862-1863. And even then the Emancipation Policy was somewhat fraught -- e.g. say what you will about Sherman's march to the sea, it is fairly clear that Sherman himself was fairly reluctant about liberating slaves along his line of march. Had he really wanted 'scorched earth' he could have handed out matches and guns at each plantation.

2) Preserving slavery was a 'problematic' political goal, particularly in a continent 'half-slave and half free.' Much like East Germans or East Europeans in the Cold War, Slaves had a propensity to vote with their feet. The fact that 'captive peoples' have to be actively kept captive would make 'winning' the Civil War a fairly tall order for the South -- some element of victory would have to be choking off Southern slaves' ability to escape northward.

3) By 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was further complicating this political goal.

4) What Smith shows is that the Gettysburg campaign had slave recovery as a tactical and perhaps operational objective -- the disposition and logistics of returning these slaves occupies some portion of the units' 'cable traffic' -- r rather, messenger traffic carrying unit division-level and corps-level orders.

What seems fairly implausible is that slave-catching was the sole operational objective behind Lee's campaign... though tactically, it's an interesting problem: you'd think that 'slave raids' would be a job for Stuart's cavalry, not the main force of the ANV... except for the fact that recapturing any significant numbers of people would entail escorting them as they walked back to the South.

The problem for me: I've never really been convinced that there was a clear operational goal or strategic goal to the Gettysburg campaign. The hills of East-Central Pennsylvania would not be the best place for the South to win a big battle, they're fairly far from any of the big strategic prizes -- DC, Philly, or even Pittsburgh. The best I've heard so far is that it was a chance for the ANV to show it could enter the North with impunity... but that and a three dollars will get you a cup of coffee.

As such, I'm more inclined to pay attention to arguments such as Smith's that do actually point toward a clear, quantitative payoff. If I were to start digging seriously into Civil War military history, these strategic motivations would be one place I'd start.

Gettysburg seems an awfully long way to march just to get new shoes.

[Thomas Niksa]

Gees. Yes, blacks served the CSA forces. Thousands of Poles and Russians served in the German armed forces in World War II. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese soldiered for puppet states on the 'Japanese side.' It doesn't change the fact that Poland, Russia and China were invaded and brutalized in that time period. -None- of the above type of soldiers were trusted very much by their commanders.

It always depresses me how there are still people out there trying to paint the Civil War as a regional rebellion against tyranny rather than what it was - an uprising by those benefiting from an archaic and inhumane economic system and suckering poorer people to join them by using racial fears as an incentive. If there are Southerners around today who buy into the "regional war of independence" malarkey, the Southerners of 1861 were under no such illusions. They were quite explicit that they were fighting for slavery.

[ERISS]

there are still people trying to paint the Civil War as a regional rebellion against tyranny rather than what it was - an uprising by those benefiting from an archaic and inhumane economic system and suckering poorer people to join them by using racial fears as an incentive. If there are Southerners around today who buy into the "regional war of independence" malarkey, the Southerners of 1861 were under no such illusions. They were quite explicit that they were fighting for slavery.

Yes, but they are right too. By fighting for slavery, a system they thought they needed, South states, feeling threathened, tried to keep their independance, fearing becoming a state puppet of the federal government, what they became by force.
Many states think they need waged labor, and feel threatened by people wanting to abolish this system. Like South states wanting slavery, states wanting waged labor do war to people wanting freedom, or let them die.

[Thomas Niksa]

The same Southerners who feared Federal intrusion on their lives had no problem inflicting it on Mexico fifteen years previous - theirs was the section most enthusiastic about that war. The New England "Yankees" saw that war for what it was. Ditto the Creek and Seminole Wars.

[Belisarius7]

The same Southerners who feared Federal intrusion on their lives had no problem inflicting it on Mexico fifteen years previous - theirs was the section most enthusiastic about that war. The New England "Yankees" saw that war for what it was. Ditto the Creek and Seminole Wars.

New Englanders were no angels in the history of the US. New Englanders had been fighting natives since Plymouth, just as Virginians had since Jamestown. They fought their share of native wars in the Ohio Valley before and during the Creek and Seminole Wars. Many Union officers and soldiers from the American Civil War went on to serve out west in the Indian wars.

With regards to slavery, New England made and operated merchant ships that bore the Africans over from Africa to be slaves. Slavery was a national institution, though by the 1860s the South was the only section to find it profitable. Economic factors contributed most predominately to the banning of slavery in the North. This banning was not for the interest of black Americans, who at the time were not wanted by the American white population. The majority of white America, North and South, held natural racial prejudices for the time. While many did not like slavery, they very much did not want to free the slaves and then let them be equal to themselves. This is why you have Colonization societies in the US since independence. The problem was not just slavery, but racial tension that would play out nationally, in the rural South and urban Northern ghettos, for the next century.

The Mexican-American War was not purely, or even predominately, a Southern filibusterer attempt. It was part of a larger jingoistic American trend. Polk was just as willing to go to war with Great Britain over Oregon as he was Mexico for Texas ("Fifty-four forty or fight!), although ended up coming to an agreement with Britain (Oregon Treaty). The Mexican war was brought about by Democrats in the North and South. Southern interests in expanding slave states (thus keeping equilibrium in their eye) and Democrats in the North for Manifest Destiny, lucrative ports and railroads to them, as well as maintaining party cohesion.

As Lincoln so often stressed, the sins of the nation are the sins of the whole American people.