125,000 NEGRO CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS

Late last year, 2010, there was a bit of an uproar when a new Virginia textbook claimed that "thousands" of African Americans, during the Civil War, fought for the Confederacy. When questioned on the source of her work, the author's publisher cited three web sites the author used; all of the sites are from the Sons Of Confedrate Veterans. This Tennesee group has long claimed that Blacks fought, in large numbers for the South. Information is available to support whatever is wished. The Information Age presents us with real challenges.

Amazingly, cleaver methods have been used throughout history by small groups, mainly by those at the top of the economic chain, but also religious, racial, tribal, etc., differences have been used to get people to
fight. Only about twenty percent of Whites in the South owned slaves, yet they were able to get poor White farmers, laborers, who were looked down on by the wealthy, poor whites who could never prosper because they could never earn a fair wage due to the free labor provided by slaves. And yet, poor 'Johnny Reb' was convinced to fight in a most brutal war, to defend a system that was against his own best interests!

The following account of Blacks Soldiers was written and delivered in 1894, some 117 years ago, addressing the question of just how Blacks served in the Civil War, on the side of the Confederate.


Extract from an address by Hon. T.T. Fortune on Colored People's Day at the Cotton Palac, Waco, Texas -Texan Freeman, 1895

Ladies and gentlemen, it is often said of the Afro-American in the South that he has no past, that he has no history; but the fact remains and it is recorded in the books where it will remain "until the wreck matter and the crush of worlds" that in every crucial period in the history of this country he was very much in evidence.

He was the leader of the party that defied the British in the Boston harbor before actual war had been declared against the mother country, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has but recently dedicated a monument to commemorate the fact, upon whose front is engraved the names of Attucks, the black man, and Maveric and Caldwell who with him shed the first blood that led to the independance of the American colonies and to the establishment of a republic which is today one of the richest and most powerful on the globe. And more than that; there were more than 3,000 Afro-Americans soldiers enlisted in the revolutionary army commanded by Gen. George Washington, of whom it has been written that he was "first in war, first in peace, anf first in the hearts of his countrymen. We, too, have part with those who have launched the ship of state upon the ocean of nations.

Go read what Gen. Andrew Jackson said to the black freeman of New Orleans in the war of 1812, when the British troops invested tha stronghold; read the splendid promises he made them. Then read the valor they displayed in the great battle in which Old Hickory routed the red coats. Then saddest of all, go read how the promises were broken, as they have always been by the American white men, when made to black men! And in the same war of 1812, mark the part the black soldier played in the navy, especially in the splendid victory won by Commodore Perry on Lake Erie.

In all the Indian wars, especially that against the Seminols in Florida, and the Creeks and Choctaws of Alabama, we bore a valorius part. And then in the great war between the states, this vast audience knows that 200,000 black troups fought in the union army--fought like tigers--and that 200,000 of them remained in the fields in the South and made the supplies that kept the Confederates armies in the field, and protected the wives and children of those in the field. Did not these sable children wear the uniform of gray in a double sense?

We fought on both sides of the question. We did so knowing that the success of one side meant freedom to us, and that the success of the other meant continued servitude. Ladies and gentlemen, you will seek in vain for a parallel to this state of the case in all history. How shall we account for it? It is worth the pains to seek for cause of result so paradoxical and unusual in the history of manlkind. I think not. I think that philosophy and logic may both be silent in the presence of a phenomenon for which a dozen reasons may be given. We have the result.
The 200,000 who fought on the Union side received their reward, the gratitude of a reunited people in which a small annual pension reminds them; they received the emancipation of 4,500,000 of their bretheren from the bonds of chattel slavery; received the right to vote, to take part in all high and holy functions of citizenship, of mankind. And what have they who fought for the grey? This is a question upon which there is much difference of opinon.
A short time ago I read of the death and burial of a black man who acted a part in one of the Mississippi regiments. It does not matter what the part was. The man who digs out the foundation of the empire, who cooks the soldier's food or grooms the trooper's charger plays his part as much as the general who plans the battle and leads the army to victory. The mudsill of society is as necessary as the dome that rises to the sky; the Webster, the Calhouns, the Sumners, the Robert J. Walkers--well, this man died. When he breathed his last he was drawing a pension fro the treasury of Mississippi. The hearse that bore his remains to their final resting place was followed by a long line of veterans of the lost cause, battled scarred veterans of high and low degree, who regarded the dead black as one of them. They laid him to rest in the sod of his fellows; and the words of the poet sighed in the trees this requiem;

"On fame's eternal camping ground
His silent tent is spred
And glory marks with silence round
The bivouac of the dead."

When I read this silent tribute in a New York paper my heart swelled within me, and I forgot that the man honored had fought on the lost side of a great cause; I forgot that those who did him honor had had it in their hearts to enslave me and mine. I remembered only that the brave comrades of the brave dead, had stood at the grave of a fellow soldier with uncovered head, and paid him the last honors of war and friendship. I know that it is common to call aloud against the white man of the South for certain acts of his which conform neither to logic nor law, nor gratitude; but even when doing this, I cannot forget that in every state, and city, and hamlet, and plantation in the South, there has always been, and there is to-day a helpful sympathy and interest which sustains the weak, which cares for the sick, and in a measure respects the strong. And I believe the time will come, when every difference, now a bone of contention between the races, will have been composed to the satisfaction of all parties interested. My faith in this respect is strong, because I have seen so many changes for the better in the past thirty years.