ken_sylvania wrote: ↑Thu May 02, 2024 6:17 pmOK, sounds good. The quote below in its context seems to imply that JohnHurt had made some kind of a claim that there were Confederate units full of Black soldiers. I don't think that JohnHurt said anything of the kind.
OK, let's look at what JohnHurt actually wrote. Here is his complete paragraph:
There were many black Confederate soldiers that fought for the South, and fought for the same reasons as the 95% of Southerners that did not own slaves but still fought against the Union. The black Confederate soldiers fought for their own freedom from a tyrannical government that was taxing them to death. White Southerners have always respected their black Confederate comrades, then and now.
"many Black Confederate Soldiers that fought for the South"
"fighting for their own freedom against a tyrannical government that was taxing them to death"
In point of fact, it was against the law to arm Black soldiers in the Confederacy until the Confederate Congress in a last gasp of desperation passed a law to authorize Black troops in the final weeks of the war but there is no evidence any were ever enlisted. Let's look at the timeline. Atlanta was burned on Nov 15, 1864. Sherman's march to the sea happened November 15 – December 21, 1864. The Confederate Congress finally authorized the enlistment of Black troops on March 13, 1865 and then Lee surrendered at Appomattox less than 4 weeks later on April 9 1865. You do the math. Even had they tried to enlist Black troops (and there is no evidence that they did) how would they have recruited, trained, equipped, and deployed such troops in that time frame? When much of the South was already in ruin and Lee was engaged in a last desperate set of rear guard actions trying to escape to the west until Grant finally caught up to him?
If you read the first link I provided above you will find this question definitely answered. And there are also entire books dedicated to debunking this myth:
Some black Southerners aided the Confederacy. Most of these were forced to accompany their masters or were forced to toil behind the lines. Black men were not legally allowed to serve as combat soldiers in the Confederate Army--they were cooks, teamsters, and manual laborers. There were no black Confederate combat units in service during the war and no documentation whatsoever exists for any black man being paid or pensioned as a Confederate soldier, although some did receive pensions for their work as laborers. Nevertheless, the black servants and the Confederate soldiers formed bonds in the shared crucible of conflict, and many servants later attended regimental reunions with their wartime comrades.
This is not to say that no black man ever fired a gun for the Confederacy. To be specific, in the “Official Records of the War of the Rebellion,” a collection of military records from both sides which spans more than 50 volumes and more than 50,000 pages, there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of black Confederates. Three of these reports mention black men shooting at Union soldiers, one report mentions capturing a handful of armed black men along with some soldiers, and the other three reports mention seeing unarmed black laborers. There is no record of Union soldiers encountering an all-black line of battle or anything close to it.
In those same Official Records, no Confederate ever references having black soldiers under his command or in his unit, although references to black laborers are common. The non-existence of black combat units is further indicated by the records of debates in the Confederate Congress over the issue of black enlistment. The idea was repeatedly rejected until, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law to allow black men to serve in combat roles, although with the provision “that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners,” i.e. that black soldiers would still be slaves.
Active fighting ended less than three weeks after the law was passed, and there is no evidence that any black units were accepted into the Confederate Army as a result of the law. Whatever black combat service might have occurred during the war, it was not sanctioned by the Confederate government. Even beyond the Official Records, there is no known letter, diary entry, or any other primary source in which a Confederate mentions serving with black soldiers.
As for John Hurt's second point? That poor southern Whites and Blacks were being "
taxed to death" by the Federal government? Perhaps JohnHurt would like to share with us what those taxes were. There was no income tax. The first income tax did not start until the US imposed one in 1861. A 3% tax on income above $800 which was about 4-times the average wage at that time. But of course that wasn't imposed on the Confederacy. The main Federal taxes at that time were tariffs which were imposed on imported manufactured goods, mainly from Britain, but also France and Germany. Basically no different from the Trump tariffs. They were taxes paid at the docks in custom houses by importers, not by poor farmers in Tennessee. And just like today, they did not apply to goods made in the USA. So tell us John. What Federal taxes would a poor White or Black farmer in Tennessee have been subject to in 1860?