What This Cruel War Was Over

by Chandra Manning

  By February of 1865, almost every link in the chain connecting ordinary soldiers to the notion of a Confederacy had come unfastened—individual interests had been trampled, homes had been destroyed by advancing armies or by poverty, governmental power had ballooned, and families were suffering—but one last link still held, and the Hampton Roads conference and the Thirteenth Amendment made clear exactly what it was. Whatever else Richmond or the war itself might destroy, as long as it could get free from the Union, the Confederacy would preserve black slavery, the institution that white southern men regarded as vital to their liberties, material interests, families’ welfare, womenfolk’s virtue, and individual identities as men. The war had weakened slavery, and in some places Union occupation had all but destroyed it, but Confederates still believed that if only they could wrench free from the Union, the institution would survive. After all, it had been adapting to changed circumstances since the seventeenth century, and in areas of the Confederacy untouched by a Union presence, the institution had actually grown more robust. For example, slavery strengthened in western North Carolina, as slave owners from the occupied South fled with their human property to the relative safety of the mountains, while more local nonslaveholders than ever before became able to buy slaves. 133 But all bets were off if the Union won, as Pvt. David Thompson made clear when, echoing the sentiments of countless others, he warned, “If the Yankees conquer us we will be worse than Negroes.” 134 As long as the Confederacy offered an alternative to that fate, enlisted men had reason to fight, and they held on.

  In March 1865, the Confederate Congress found itself forced to cut that last reliable link. By that time, the pool of available white men simply could not fill the Army’s depleted ranks, and without an Army, the Confederacy would cease to exist. To meet the shortfall, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a bill authorizing the enlistment of no more than 25 percent of black male slaves between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. The act did not free slave soldiers, who could be enlisted only with the permission of their masters, but Adjutant General Samuel Cooper issued General Orders No. 14 requiring a black recruit’s master to confer “by written instrument…as far as he may, the rights of a freedman.” The order could be interpreted as approximating manumission, though it purposely left a gaping loophole. 135 The black enlistment question precipitated a social crisis that finally broke the Confederate rank and file. 136

  As radical as the idea of Confederate black enlistment was, it did not come completely out of the blue. Discussion dated back more than a year, to December 1863, when the Confederate general Patrick Cleburne suggested to other members of the Army of Tennessee that the Confederacy consider alleviating its manpower shortage by arming slaves. Cleburne reasoned that unless things turned around, the Confederacy would lose and the Union would impose abolition, so the Confederacy might as well use every resource at its disposal to prevent Union victory. President Davis hushed the proposal partly because it contradicted the basis and spirit of the Confederacy, but also because authorities feared the effect that such a reversal would have on southern morale. 137 As a result, very few ordinary soldiers learned of the plan, but the reactions of the few who did justified Davis’s worries. Alabama sergeant Edward Brown told his wife that the black enlistment proposition was “bound to ruin us,” and it made him feel “more despondant…than ever before.” 138 Relieved when the proposal was smothered, Brown still feared that, despite the proposal’s “garb of secrecy,” leaked rumors about it made the Confederacy’s chances look “hopeless.” Desertions climbed, and even among soldiers who stayed in the ranks, the “morale of the army is anything but good now,” Brown reported. 139

  As Confederate military fortunes brightened in the spring and summer months, the proposition faded, but the outlook changed once again as autumn’s military catastrophes and the suddenly likely reelection of Abraham Lincoln threw the Confederacy back into dire straits. A few prominent Confederates, such as Governor Henry Allen of Louisiana, began to urge reconsideration of General Cleburne’s proposal in order to address the disastrous shortfall of troops facing the Confederacy. 140 The Confederate Army had, after all, relied on slave and free black teamsters, bridge and fortification builders, hospital workers, and general laborers since the war began. 141 At the behest of officials like Allen, the Confederate Congress began seriously to debate black enlistment in the fall of 1864. This time, news of the proposed bill made it into army camps. 142

  As Congress debated the practical workings of black enlistment, soldiers lashed out at the idea that their own leaders might pass a bill that did such violence to the racial hierarchy the Confederacy was supposed to protect. As with most issues of any importance, differences of opinion arose. One Georgia sergeant who gave the matter serious thought admitted that he preferred using blacks as army laborers, but that if arming slaves proved to be the only way to avoid surrendering to the Yankees, “I say put them in and make them fight.” 143 He was an exception. Charles Baughman responded in more typical fashion. “I think it is the worse measure that could be proposed,” he fumed, and he hoped Congress would dismiss the notion immediately. The idea of armed blacks serving in an equal station with white men disgusted him. “I never want to see one with a gun in his hand…I never want to fight side by side with one,” he insisted. His regiment agreed with him. “The army would not submit to it and half if not more than half would lay down their guns if forced to fight with negroes.” 144 Peter Cross made the same point more succinctly when he declared, “if the negro will be put in the army then I shall quit.” 145

  Shortly after Hampton Roads, the black enlistment bill’s chances for success rose dramatically when the most influential Confederate, Gen. Robert E. Lee, endorsed it. 146 On February 18, 1865, Lee wrote to a Congressional supporter of the bill to say that the enlistment of slaves was “not only expedient but necessary.” 147 The Richmond Examiner responded by wondering if Lee was really a good Southerner after all, but the paper also recognized that Lee’s prestige meant that Congress would pass the bill. Some soldiers thought so, too. Virginia lieutenant William Andrews still held that black enlistment was a bad idea, but when he learned that Robert E. Lee advocated black enlistment out of military necessity, Andrews concluded that it would most likely come to pass no matter how much soldiers opposed it, since “Congress will be certain to give [Lee] whatever he asks for.” 148

  In the wake of Lee’s public approval, Richmond papers like the Examiner and Sentinel published resolutions from the Army of Northern Virginia in which soldiers reaffirmed their loyalty to Lee and their willingness to fight. A few such resolutions even acquiesced in the enlistment of black soldiers. On February 14, a meeting of the members of the Eleventh, Twenty-sixth, and Forty-second Mississippi concluded, “the time has come when the war material of our country, regardless of color should be fully developed.” The meeting resolved, “we are in favor of the introduction of the negro, as a soldier, into the military service of the Confederacy, upon such conditions as Congress and the wisdom of our rulers may see fit to determine.” 149 Meanwhile, a meeting of Thomas’s Brigade determined that “when, in the opinion of President Davis and General R. E. Lee, it shall become necessary to arm a portion or all of the slaves capable of bearing arms, and make soldiers of them, we will accept it as a necessity and cheerfully acquiesce, preferring, as we do, any and all sacrifices to subjugation.” 150

  A small sampling of resolutions passed by regiments in January and February 1865 even made it into The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, from which perch they have convinced many subsequent observers that the Confederate rank and file supported the enlistment of black soldiers as a last-ditch effort to win the war and secure Confederate independence. 151 Yet while the resolutions (which came exclusively from the Army of Northern Virginia) that made it into the Official Records certainly signified a marked shift in some soldiers’ opinions, they do not provide a very a
ccurate picture of what most of the Confederate rank and file thought about arming black soldiers. For one thing, very few of the resolutions printed in the newspapers made it into the Official Records, and the ones that did are not typical, because most of the resolutions passed in camps in January and February avoided any mention of black soldiers altogether. 152 The subject of regimental consolidation claimed more ink and column space than black enlistment did. 153 Further, several regiments and brigades passed resolutions opposing black enlistment, sometimes even offering alternative solutions. The men in Jordan’s Battery announced “that we view with the utmost abhorrence the idea of arriving at a settlement of our difficulties by sacrificing slavery,” and in February another soldier wrote to say that more discipline among white troops, not the introduction of black soldiers, held the key to Confederate victory. 154 South Carolina soldiers used the pages of the Charleston Mercury to declare that they would not “fight beside a nigger—to talk of emancipation is to disband our army. We are free men and we choose to fight for ourselves, we want no slaves to fight for us.” 155

  Finally, many soldiers complained that officers and newspaper editors manufactured false resolutions. North Carolina private J. C. Wright told his sister that at Lee’s request his brigade had voted on “the negroe question,” and that the men were “opposed to bringing them in, or rather a majority of them [are].” But he knew that what Lee said generally reigned, so he and others determined that they had “better keep silent.” 156 One member of Wise’s Brigade was so annoyed that the Examiner had falsely stated that the brigade had voted unanimously in favor of black enlistment that he wrote to the editor to demand correction of the false report. He admitted that “the negro clause” was “the only objectionable part” of the resolutions, which otherwise emphasized continued soldier support for the war effort, but it was an important enough point for him to write to the newspaper requesting that it do “justice” to the actual views of the regiment. 157

  In their personal letters, Confederate troops spoke even more bluntly, often promising to leave the Army if black enlistment passed. The “negrow question [of ] whether they will raise them in the army or not” so incensed Daniel Abernethy that the illiterate private dictated a letter in which he informed his parents, “the white men says they wonte stay under such circumstances.” 158 The idea of black enlistment appalled Pvt. Joseph Maides because “if they are put in the army the[y] will be on the same footing with the white man.” As Maides explained to his mother, “I did not volunteer my services to fight for A free Negroes free country, but to fight for A free white mans free country & I do not think I love my country well enough to fight with black soldiers.” Neither did most of his fellow enlisted men. “It is pointedly against the wills of nearly all the soldiers,” he claimed, and rather than “submit to such wrongs,” men were deserting “every night.” 159 Simply put, black enlistment would, according to a Louisianan, deal “the death blow to our cause.” 160

  As passage of the black enlistment bill looked increasingly likely, some Confederate soldiers searched for silver linings. If losing to the Yankees would make emancipation inevitable, some enlisted men reasoned, then at least putting black men in the path of Union bullets would reduce the number of blacks left to enjoy freedom after the war. After all, one private told his mother, it would be better to have the war kill “able bodied [black] men…than to have them all set free among us, and we be mad to submit to them as our equals.” 161 Edward Brown agreed that, repulsive as black enlistment remained to him, at least the measure might lead to “the massacre of the Negro race,” which would be necessary for whites’ “self defense” once slavery was no longer around to prevent race war. 162

  Faced with the inevitability of black enlistment, a small number of Confederate troops tried to square the idea of black soldiers with the Confederacy’s racial assumptions and social order. One slave-owning Georgia private sent an elaborate justification to the Augusta Daily Constitutionalist. Recognizing that whites who objected to the bill generally “oppose the measure upon the grounds that we thereby recognize or admit Negro equality,” the private argued that putting black slaves into the ranks would do no such thing: “We own him as a slave, we fight with him as a slave, and when his term of service has expired, he returns to his master still a slave. His social status remains unchanged.” The private proposed that, rather than being freed, slaves who served well would be rewarded with the privilege of choosing a new master, while old masters would be financially compensated. The plan would provide bondsmen with an incentive because they would be sure to “fight valiantly upon the assurance of being permitted to select a kind and humble master.” This soldier did not fear that black enlistment would lead to racial equality, because he simply refused to recognize a “negro as [my] equal.” 163 His plan ingeniously addressed the manpower shortage, reaffirmed belief in the fitness of blacks for slavery, confirmed the property rights of slave owners, and saved the racial hierarchy on which whites relied, all at the same time.

  Texas chaplain Robert Bunting went even further, arguing that God willed black enlistment as the best way to save the divinely sanctioned institution of slavery. If considered properly, Bunting maintained, slavery was a “repelling power which God has committed to our trust,” and it ought to be put to every possible use. It could save “the wealth already acquired” and “lay the basis of yet larger accumulations,” if Confederates would only use it “as a fighting institution.” Willful blindness to the Army’s need for soldiers was “tantamount” to “abolition,” because it would lead to Union victory and complete emancipation. Enlisting up to 25 percent of slave men in order to fill the southern ranks and defeat the Union ensured that 75 percent of all adult male slaves (not to mention women and children) remained in bondage. That way, reasoned Bunting, the institution would endure, even if its numbers temporarily shrank. What mattered most was that slavery “survive the war,” and that meant that “duty to ourselves, to the negro, [and] to the civilization of the continent, demands of us the immediate arming of our slaves.” 164

  But to most of the Confederate rank and file, Bunting missed the point. The purpose of slavery, from the perspective of the nonslaveholding southern soldier, had less to do with the wealth that it generated for owners and more to do with assuring the identity of white southern men and serving what he saw as his family’s best, even if nonmaterial, interests. Slavery mattered because it foreclosed racial equality; it preserved for the southern white man his central identity as a protector and controller of dependents and as a free being in a population where most people (African Americans, women, and children) lacked the autonomy and enfranchisement due to white men. Most of all, it mattered to white nonslaveholding men because they believed it was absolutely necessary to the safety and well-being of their families. Numerous white soldiers protested black enlistment specifically because they viewed it as the attempt of the wealthy to rob ordinary Southerners of the only valuable possession left to them, their white skin. Clothing blacks in identical uniforms and placing them in the ranks alongside ordinary white soldiers—presumably at the same rank as the white privates who made up most of the Army—eliminated the only remaining reason for white nonslaveholders, especially those worried about suffering families at home, to fight. “We would have to drill and fight side by side with the stinking things,” a shocked Grant Taylor exclaimed when he heard that the “officers are in favor of putting negroes into our brigade as soldiers.” “To think we have been fighting four years to prevent the slaves from being freed, now to turn round and” enlist those same slaves as soldiers was “outrageous.” Infuriated though he was, he knew exactly where to place the blame. “The big bugs say things have changed, that we must bring the negroes in and make them fight or we will be made slaves of ourselves.” He made short work of such logic, writing, “well if we are reduced to that extremity…stop the war at once and let us come home for if we are to depend on the slaves for our freedom it is gone anyway.�
�� 165 To ordinary Confederate soldiers, black enlistment meant that the surrender of the war’s purpose had already happened, which made the surrender of its Army nothing more than a matter of time.

  BY THE spring of 1865, the war had created a world almost no American could have recognized in 1861. White Union troops who might once have eschewed radical abolitionism now took pride in fighting to redeem the nation from the sin of slavery, and many took seriously the obligation to make ideals like freedom and equality into realities for black as well as white Americans. Black Union soldiers, more than 80 percent of whom had once been slaves, confidently looked to a purified nation that they had helped to save, and in which they expected to continue progressing toward equal rights. Confederates, in contrast, surveyed a world in tatters, and few could any longer convince themselves of any remaining reason to fight, especially once the Confederacy adopted black enlistment. Even though the Confederacy’s resources were exhausted and all that its white citizens cherished lay in ruins, to the very end Confederates resisted giving up slavery and the racial hierarchy that black bondage enforced, despite the fact that black enlistment clearly stood out as the obvious and only remaining way to redress the Confederacy’s most critical shortage, manpower. 166 It was not until April 3 that North Carolina lieutenant J. G. Sills sighed, “if we intend to carry on the war, we will have to put [black soldiers] in so the sooner it is done the better.” 167

  By April 3, “sooner” was not soon enough. Shortly after the black enlistment bill passed on March 13, attrition and rapidly increasing desertions had so crippled Confederate numbers that General Lee knew his depleted lines could not hold Richmond. 168 The only available options were the abandonment of Richmond, Petersburg, and the long line protecting the two cities, or encirclement. On the night of March 24–25, eleven days after Davis signed the black enlistment bill, Lee planned a surprise attack on Fort Stedman, just east of Petersburg, in hopes of forcing the Union to contract its lines and create a hole through which the Army of Northern Virginia could escape. Fort Stedman failed, and what was more, cost the Army of Northern Virginia nearly five thousand troops. Now Gen. U. S. Grant knew his army could break the Confederate lines, and he did so at Five Forks just days later. On April 2, 1865, the Army of Northern Virginia evacuated Richmond. When Union troops entered Richmond the following day, April 3, African American Union soldiers were among the first to march through the streets of the Confederate capital.