Real Confederates Never Knew Any Black Confederate Soldiers

10-16-15
by Kevin M. Levin

On June 1, 1864 the Richmond Daily Dispatch reprinted an item that originally appeared in the Houston Telegraph concerning reports in Northern newspapers that black men were serving as soldiers and officers in the Confederate army. The publication of the story was clearly an attempt on the part of the editors to add a little humor for their readers and to deny that the rumors had any merit ...

The author of the article attempted to explain away rumors of black soldiers and officers with the story of a Confederate Brigadier General in the Army of Tennessee, whose camp servant, Cuffee, was known to wear his master's "old uniform coat" ...

Readers could afford a brief chuckle after finishing the story owing to their shared understanding of how black men, both free and enslaved, had already been utilized by the Confederate government. Tens of thousands of slaves had been impressed by the government to work on various war-related projects such as the building of earthworks or working in foundries producing weapons as well as maintaining rail lines ...

What is important about this debate is that at no point did soldiers in the field report that blacks were already serving as soldiers. No tales of heroic acts by camp servants on the march or even on the battlefield surfaced demonstrating that slaves could make good soldiers or that they executed tactical orders within the command structure of an assault ... The Richmond Examiner spoke for many when it declared in November 1864 that, "If a negro is fit to be a soldier he is not fit to be a slave...." "The employment of negroes as soldiers in our armies, either with or without prospective emancipation," continued the editor, "would be the first step, but a step which would involve all the rest, to universal abolition" ...

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