[Hat-Tip to Civil Warriors]
Check out this excellent online paper which analyzes the apparent manipulation of an image of black Union soldiers:
In this paper we discuss a graphic example of Blight’s contention by examining a Civil War-era posed studio photograph of black Union soldiers with a white officer. We maintain that this photograph has been deliberately falsified in recent years by an unknown person/s sympathetic to the Confederacy. This falsified or fabricated photo, purporting to be of the 1st Louisiana Native Guards (Confederate), has been taken to promote Neo-Confederate views, to accuse Union propagandists of duplicity, and to show that black soldiers were involved in the armed defense of the Confederacy. As of the date of this website this photograph is being sold on the web by an on-line retailer, www.rebelstore.com, which promotes itself as “The Internet’s Original Rebel Store,” and advertises this photograph as a legitimate photo of “Members of the first all Black Confederate Unit organized in New Orleans in 1861.”
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Rebelstore also manages to label several images of manservants as soldiers as well. Just more neo confederate history invention.
Unfortunately, you see such images used all over the internet as evidence for large numbers of so-called black Confederates. Their use is the result of little analysis and no understanding of the debate surrounding the recruitment of black soldiers in the Confederacy.
On another CW discussion forum, CW Talk, a poster arguing for the existence of tens of thousands of black confederate soldier posted the photo described above. Other, more ah, “reality based” posters noted that its doubtful that Louisiana troops would have greatcoats, and the photo looked retouched. When the forgery was exposed last week, the neo-con simply said, yes, that was a forgery, but this one isn’t, and posted a photo of a southern soldier and his black bodyservant.
There is no there there.