Look at any standard reference to American slave revolts, and chances are, the Black Seminole rebellion of 1835-1838 does not even make the list. Below are some representative sites that can be readily checked online:[1]

• Brittanica.com's entry under "slave rebellions."
• Chronology on the history of slavery and racism from The Holt House.
• Major revolts and escapes from AFRO-Americ@: Black resistance.
• Slave Revolts and Rebellions from The African-American: A Journey from Slavery to Freedom.

The oversight is not unexpected given that the major scholars of American slavery, on whose writings the reference works rely, have likewise missed or misinterpreted the Black Seminole slave rebellion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perceptions of the Civil War have changed, to be polite, several times since the war. What was thought to be a valid portrayal of the period in films such as THE BIRTH OF A NATION or even GONE WITH THE WIND are now seen as hokum. The first side to change the reality of the South after the war were "The Lost Causers". To find a meaning in the deaths and horrors faced by the losing side stories emphasizing honor, duty and loyalty replaced stories of defeat.

 

One of the leaders of this hallucination was a Preacher, J. William Jones even incorporated the names of Confederate leaders in his prayers! A consequence of the brutal march to the sea of General Sherman it took over 100 years to understand. If you attack or bomb people, it rallies them. The South would unite just as we united after 911, just as the British united in World War 2. The consequence in the South was that the South united as a group for over 75 years and managed to win in a very dark way, the reconstruction. One party rule became the reality of the South.

 

Find out more about the "Lost Cause" phase of the Reconstruction here:

Lincoln Lovers have long ago used word games to hide the true history of the war. SLAVERY ENDED! Wait a second, what about apartheid after the war? Oh, that was reconstruction. I don't know anything about that. Weren't there Blacks that fought for the South, in the fields of battle and the plantations? Of course not! It's a myth!

 

The introduction of hatred of Blacks came from the North. To convince the gerneration that had been children during the war that Blacks were the enemy and establish the Democratic Party as sole ruler of the South, the Black Confederate, as well as the slaves that were raped by the North, and the slaves that fought the North on the plantations, had to be eliminated.

 

DO NOT LOOK AT THIS PICTURE! IT MUST NOT BE TRUE!

 

If we listen to yankees, these pics were photoshopped- A CENTURY BEFORE PHOTOSHOPPING EXISTED!

 

Dead Black Confederates at Petersburg

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Before statues and stories were cleaned up to eliminate the Black soldier- one statue put one in!

 

 

 

What would these guys say to those who say they never existed?

 

 

They deny these comments were ever made:

Lets start with the author. His research is exacting, methodical, and painstaking. He brought zero bias to the enterprise and the result is a stunning achievement that is both scholarly and readable. Douglas, the "accidental" prison camp began as a training camp for IL. volunteers. Donalson and Island #10 changed that. The long war no one expected combined with artic cold, primitive medical care and the barbarity of the captors created in the authors own words "a death camp." Stanton's and Grant's policy of halting the prisoner exchange behind the pretense of Fort Pillow accelerated the suffering. In the latest edition Levy found the long lost hospital records at the National Archives which prove conclusively that casualties were deliberately under reported. Prisoners were tortured, brutality was tolerated and corruption was widespread. The handling of the dead rivals stories of Nazi Germany. The largest mass grave in the Western Hemisphere is filled with....the bodies of Camp Douglas dead, 4200 known and 1800 unknown. No one should be allowed to speak of Andersonville until they have absorbed the horror of Douglas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Black Confederates? Why haven't we heard more about them? National Park Service historian, Ed Bearrs, stated, "I don't want to call it a conspiracy to ignore the role of Blacks both above and below the Mason-Dixon line, but it was definitely a tendency that began around 1910" Historian, Erwin L. Jordan, Jr., calls it a "cover-up" which started back in 1865. He writes, "During my research, I came across instances where Black men stated they were soldiers, but you can plainly see where 'soldier' is crossed out and 'body servant' inserted, or 'teamster' on pension applications." Another black historian, Roland Young, says he is not surprised that blacks fought. He explains that "…some, if not most, Black southerners would support their country" and that by doing so they were "demonstrating it's possible to hate the system of slavery and love one's country." This is the very same reaction that most African Americans showed during the American Revolution, where they fought for the colonies, even though the British offered them freedom if they fought for them.
 

     It has been estimated that over 65,000 Southern blacks were in the Confederate ranks. Over 13,000 of these, "saw the elephant" also known as meeting the enemy in combat. These Black Confederates included both slave and free. The Confederate Congress did not approve blacks to be officially enlisted as soldiers (except as musicians), until late in the war. But in the ranks it was a different story. Many Confederate officers did not obey the mandates of politicians, they frequently enlisted blacks with the simple criteria, "Will you fight?" Historian Ervin Jordan, explains that "biracial units" were frequently organized "by local Confederate and State militia Commanders in response to immediate threats in the form of Union raids…". Dr. Leonard Haynes, a African-American professor at Southern University, stated, "When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South."
 

As the war came to an end, the Confederacy took progressive measures to build back up it's army. The creation of the Confederate States Colored Troops, copied after the segregated northern colored troops, came too late to be successful. Had the Confederacy been successful, it would have created the world's largest armies (at the time) consisting of black soldiers, even larger than that of the North. This would have given the future of the Confederacy a vastly different appearance than what modern day racist or anti-Confederate liberals conjecture. Not only did Jefferson Davis envision black Confederate veterans receiving bounty lands for their service, there would have been no future for slavery after the goal of 300,000 armed black CSA veterans came home after the war.

Noted Examples:

1. The "Richmond Howitzers" were partially manned by black militiamen. They saw action at 1st Manassas (or 1st Battle of Bull Run) where they operated battery no. 2. In addition two black "regiments", one free and one slave, participated in the battle on behalf of the South. "Many colored people were killed in the action", recorded John Parker, a former slave.

2. At least one Black Confederate was a non-commissioned officer. James Washington, Co. D 35th Texas Cavalry,  Confederate States Army, became it's 3rd Sergeant. Higher ranking black commissioned officers served in militia units, but this was on the State militia level (Louisiana) and not in the regular C.S. Army.

3. Free black musicians, cooks, soldiers and teamsters earned the same pay as white confederate privates. This was not the case in the Union army where blacks did not receive equal pay. At the Confederate Buffalo Forge in Rockbridge County, Virginia, skilled black workers "earned on average three times the wages of white Confederate soldiers and more than most Confederate army officers ($350- $600 a year).

4. Dr. Lewis Steiner, Chief Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission while observing Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson's occupation of Frederick, Maryland, in 1862: "Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this number [Confederate troops]. 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, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc.....and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army."

5. Frederick Douglas reported, "There are at the present moment many Colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but real soldiers, having musket on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down any loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the…rebels."

6. Black and white militiamen returned heavy fire on Union troops at the Battle of Griswoldsville (near Macon, GA). Approximately 600 boys and elderly men were killed in this skirmish.

7. In 1864, President Jefferson Davis approved a plan that proposed the emancipation of slaves, in return for the official recognition of the Confederacy by Britain and France. France showed interest but Britain refused.

8. The Jackson Battalion included two companies of black soldiers. They saw combat at Petersburg under Col. Shipp. "My men acted with utmost promptness and goodwill...Allow me to state sir that they behaved in an extraordinary acceptable manner."

9. Recently the National Park Service, with a recent discovery, recognized that blacks were asked to help defend the city of Petersburg, Virginia and were offered their freedom if they did so. Regardless of their official classification, black Americans performed support functions that in today's army many would be classified as official military service. The successes of white Confederate troops in battle, could only have been achieved with the support these loyal black Southerners.

10. Confederate General John B. Gordon (Army of Northern Virginia) reported that all of his troops were in favor of Colored troops and that it's adoption would have "greatly encouraged the army". Gen. Lee was anxious to receive regiments of black soldiers. The Richmond Sentinel reported on 24 Mar 1864, "None…will deny that our servants are more worthy of respect than the motley hordes which come against us." "Bad faith [to black Confederates] must be avoided as an indelible dishonor."

11. In March 1865, Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary Of State, promised freedom for blacks who served from the State of Virginia. Authority for this was finally received from the State of Virginia and on April 1st 1865, $100 bounties were offered to black soldiers. Benjamin exclaimed, "Let us say to every Negro who wants to go into the ranks, go and fight, and you are free…Fight for your masters and you shall have your freedom." Confederate Officers were ordered to treat them humanely and protect them from "injustice and oppression".

12. A quota was set for 300,000 black soldiers for the Confederate States Colored Troops. 83% of Richmond's male slave population volunteered for duty. A special ball was held in Richmond to raise money for uniforms for these men. Before Richmond fell, black Confederates in gray uniforms drilled in the streets. Due to the war ending, it is believed only companies or squads of these troops ever saw any action. Many more black soldiers fought for the North, but that difference was simply a difference because the North instituted this progressive policy more sooner than the more conservative South. Black soldiers from both sides received discrimination from whites who opposed the concept .

13. Union General U.S. Grant in Feb 1865, ordered the capture of "all the Negro men… before the enemy can put them in their ranks." Frederick Douglas warned Lincoln that unless slaves were guaranteed freedom (those in Union controlled areas were still slaves) and land bounties, "they would take up arms for the rebels".

14. On April 4, 1865 (Amelia County, VA), a Confederate supply train was exclusively manned and guarded by black Infantry. When attacked by Federal Cavalry, they stood their ground and fought off the charge, but on the second charge they were overwhelmed. These soldiers are believed to be from "Major Turner's" Confederate command.

15. A Black Confederate, George _____, when captured by Federals was bribed to desert to the other side. He defiantly spoke, "Sir, you want me to desert, and I ain't no deserter. Down South, deserters disgrace their families and I am never going to do that."

16. Former slave, Horace King, accumulated great wealth as a contractor to the Confederate Navy. He was also an expert engineer and became known as the "Bridge builder of the Confederacy." One of his bridges was burned in a Yankee raid. His home was pillaged by Union troops, as his wife pleaded for mercy.

17. One black  C. S. Navy seaman was among the last Confederates to surrender, aboard the CSS Shenandoah, six months after the war ended. At least two blacks served as Navy pilots with the rank of Warrant Officer. One, William Bugg, piloted the CSS Sampson, and another, Moses Dallas, was considered the best inland pilot of the C.S. Navy. Dallas piloted the Savannah River squadron and was paid $100 a month until the time he was killed by the enemy during the capture of USS Water Witch.

18. Nearly 180,000 Black Southerners, from Virginia alone, provided logistical support for the Confederate military. Many were highly skilled workers. These included a wide range of jobs: nurses, military engineers, teamsters, ordnance department workers, brakemen, firemen, harness makers, blacksmiths, wagonmakers, boatmen, mechanics, wheelwrights, ect. In the 1920'S Confederate pensions were finally allowed to some of those workers that were still living. Many thousands more served in other Confederate States.

 

19. During the early 1900's, many members of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV) advocated awarding former slaves rural acreage and a home. There was hope that justice could be given those slaves that were once promised "forty acres and a mule" but never received any. In the 1913 Confederate Veteran magazine published by the UCV, it was printed that this plan "If not Democratic, it is [the] Confederate" thing to do. There was much gratitude toward former slaves, which "thousands were loyal, to the last degree", now living with total poverty of the big cities. Unfortunately, their proposal fell on deaf ears on Capitol Hill.

20. During the 5oth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913, arrangements were made for a joint reunion of Union and Confederate veterans. The commission in charge of the event made sure they had enough accommodations for the black Union veterans, but were completely surprised when unexpected black Confederates arrived. The white Confederates immediately welcomed their old comrades, gave them one of their tents, and "saw to their every need". Nearly every Confederate reunion including those blacks that served with them, wearing the gray.

21. The first military monument in the US Capitol that honors an African-American soldier is the Confederate monument at Arlington National cemetery. The monument was designed 1914 by Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish Confederate. Who wanted to correctly portray the "racial makeup" in the Confederate Army. A black Confederate soldier is depicted marching in step with white Confederate soldiers. Also shown is one "white soldier giving his child to a black woman for protection".- source: Edward Smith, African American professor at the American University, Washington DC.

22. Black Confederate heritage is beginning to receive the attention it deserves. For instance, Terri Williams, a black journalist for the Suffolk "Virginia Pilot" newspaper, writes: "I've had to re-examine my feelings toward the [Confederate] flag…It started when I read a newspaper article about an elderly black man whose ancestor worked with the Confederate forces. The man spoke with pride about his family member's contribution to the cause, was photographed with the [Confederate] flag draped over his lap…that's why I now have no definite stand on just what the flag symbolizes, because it no longer is their history, or my history, but our history."
 
 

Resources:

Charles Kelly Barrow, et.al. Forgotten Confederates: An Anthology About Black Southerners (1995). Currently the best book on the subject.
Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (1995). Well researched and very good source of information on Black Confederates, but has a strong Union bias.
Richard Rollins. Black Southerners in Gray (1994). Excellent source.
Dr. Edward Smith and Nelson Winbush, "Black Southern Heritage". An excellent educational video. Mr. Winbush is a descendent of a Black Confederate and a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV).

Author, Historian William C. Davis on Black Confederates:

     Noted Civil War historian/Author William C. Davis writes about the forgotten black Confederates: "One of the lost chapters of Civil War history has been the passive and even active support that many southern blacks, free and slave, gave to the Confederacy. "Forgotten Confederates" illuminates the overlooked facet of this seemingly contradictory behavior by a group of African Americans who appear to have thought of themselves as Southerners first and blacks second. Neither Confederate history, nor black studies, can afford to ignore it."

On April 13, 1873, the United States experienced the worst one-day slaughter of blacks by whites in its history. In tiny Colfax, La., white paramilitaries attacked lightly armed African American freedmen who had assembled in a local courthouse to defend their elected officeholders. By the time the Colfax Massacre was over, more than 60 black men lay dead. Most were killed after they had surrendered.

 

Perhaps even more shocking than the bloodshed in Louisiana was the ultimate resolution of the case. Initially, Northern public opinion was outraged, and the Grant administration vowed swift punishment for the guilty. But as Louisiana whites rallied around the massacre’s perpetrators, the costs—financial and political—of prosecution mounted. Washington gradually lost interest. Denied the funds and military support he needed, New Orleans-based U.S. Attorney James R. Beckwith valiantly tried to win convictions, but succeeded against only three of the 98 men he indicted. Even that paltry result was overturned by Supreme Court Justice Joseph P. Bradley in mid-1874; his ruling gave a green light to Klan-like groups in Mississippi and South Carolina, which overthrew those states’ pro-civil rights Republican governments in 1875 and 1876, respectively. When the full court upheld Bradley’s ruling in 1876, it dealt a lasting blow to federal law enforcement authority throughout the South.

Thus did a white supremacist crime mutate into a white supremacist triumph. This is why I called my book about the Colfax Massacre, The Day Freedom Died.

My goal was to provide the first definitive account of the massacre--from its origins in the antebellum plantation economy of Louisiana’s Red River Valley, to its repercussions in constitutional law today. It is too late to correct a 135-year-old injustice. But I felt an urgent need to correct the record. For the injustice at Colfax was compounded by cover-up. White Louisianans have systematically distorted the event, blaming rampant “Negroes” for provoking their own murders and erecting marble monuments and historical markers in honor of the guilty. This cover-up, unfortunately, was abetted for many years by historians, Northern and Southern, who taught that Reconstruction had collapsed due to its own misguided attempt to include unworthy black men in government. In that sense, I was following the revisionist trail blazed by historians such as John Hope Franklin, Kenneth Stampp, and Eric Foner. Thanks to them, the rights and wrongs of Reconstruction are now more accurately comprehended; the old fable of carpetbaggers and scalawags has lost currency and respectability.

But as I completed the book, I also wondered whether the time has come to take the interpretation of Reconstruction in a new direction. The work of Franklin, Stampp and Foner properly emphasized the political and economic weaknesses of Reconstruction, such as the Radical Republican Congress’s failure to distribute land to Southern blacks, or the Grant Administration’s evolution from a revolutionary force to a patronage machine.

However, Reconstruction not only failed because of such flaws in its design; it failed because it was resisted. It was resisted bitterly in the courts, where Southern lawyers made use of every conceivable cause of action—plausible or not—to tie Republican state governments in knots and to generate favorable propaganda. And it was resisted through cruel but sophisticated paramilitary campaigns, starting with the Ku Klux Klan’s rampage through the southeastern states in the late 1860s and culminating in the Red Shirts’ seizure of power in South Carolina in 1876. Southern litigation and southern terrorism attacked Reconstruction at its weakest points: a post-Civil War constitutional structure whose new rules of state-federal relations were open to judicial interpretation, and a Northern political climate in which sympathy for beleaguered freedmen did not exceed the desire to avoid a new Civil War. The rulings of Justice Bradley and his Supreme Court colleagues reflected Northerners’ interest in an exit from the intractable morass of the South.

For all the savagery they visited upon black freedmen and their white Republican supporters, for all their warfare against Republican-led state militia units, the white Reconstruction-era paramilitaries in Louisiana—as far as I can determine—never killed or wounded a single Federal soldier. Indeed, white supremacist politicians went out of their way to praise U.S. generals in their public statements, even as they may have cursed them in private. The reason was simple: the white supremacists assumed that, as long as they did not actually harm U.S. troops, white Northern public opinion would not support the all-out invasion that could have crushed them. And they were right.

Eventually, the U.S. government retreated from the post-Civil War South just as it would retreat from Vietnam and Somalia a century later—and as it may yet retreat from Iraq. What began as a bold effort at democratization and nation-building ended as a politico-military quagmire. I mean this as a provocative analogy, not an exact one: Washington’s duty to its own citizens, regardless of the cost, was more apparent than its duty to Southeast Asia or Africa. Still, for the idealistic men (and women) who traveled South from New England during and after the Civil War, places such as Coushatta, Louisiana and Vicksburg, Mississippi were almost as alien, culturally, as Mogadishu and Baghdad are to U.S. soldiers and diplomats today.

Surveying the ruins of Reconstruction after he left the White House, Ulysses S. Grant concluded that the South had needed neither home rule nor episodic federal intervention, but benevolent dictatorship. “Looking back, over the whole policy of Reconstruction, it seems to me that the wisest thing would have been to have continued for some time the military rule,” he said. “That would have enabled the Southern people to pull themselves together and repair material losses. Military rule would have been just to all: the Negro who wanted freedom the white man who wanted protection, the Northern man who wanted Union. As state after state showed a willingness to come into the Union, not on their terms but upon ours, I would have admitted them. The trouble about the military rule in the South was that our people did not like it. It was not in accordance with our institutions. I am clear now that it would have been better to have postponed suffrage, reconstruction, State governments, for ten years, and held the South in a territorial condition. But we made our scheme, and must do what we can with it.”

Grant’s analysis—a characteristic mixture of hard-headed militarism and wishful idealism—has its attractions. But, as Grant acknowledged, “our people did not like it.” The white South was firmly united behind “redemption,” while the Republican Party was an agglomeration of industrialists, farmers, Negro freedmen, and Northern-born officeholders in the South. This coalition lacked unity; it lacked conviction; it lacked certitude. And certitude was the one thing the white South had in abundance. The South pushed and pushed on Republican fault lines until they cracked. The Confederate States of America lost the Civil War. But the South won Reconstruction.