“Negro Pensioners are Not Classed as Confederate Soldiers”

Dear Sherree,

As a descendant of the Buffalo Ridge Cherokees and member of The Painted Gourd: Red Black Voices, I can tell you it is a long road to the understanding of why First Nation People took on the ominous task of slave holding. I can tell you that my research shows that most of the so-called five civilized tribes held slaves, educated their children in American schools and colleges and began to dress like the early white settlers to be like and get along. They thought that this behavior would make them accepted by white society. Unfortunately, they were wrong. My Choctaw ancestors were from Livingston, Alabama. Most Choctaws complied with every policy the whites established. It shocked me when I first learned that Choctaws were the first to be marched off to the reservations. Not all reservations where Native people were displaced, however, were in Oklahoma, some were in Arkansas and Georgia.

Records in Livingston, those that didnt get burned up in the two court house fires, showed a remarkably intercultural town with acknowledgment of the good, the bad and the ugly among most of the folks who lived there. I perform a one woman show about my ancestor, Poncohontas or Poky as she was called ( not Pocohantas though there does seem to be a Virginia connection) and the first 100 year history of Livingston.

Check out my website for information on issues pertaining to enslaved descendants from Virginia and parts south. I will soon be adding more to my main website, zsun-nee-matema.com. For 13 years (1991-2004), members of our group presented, performed and lectured our findings throughout the northeast and midwest US. We hosted a radio show, Indigenous Circle later, The Talking Feather, to answer questions just like the one you posed. Many of our audience members were as shocked as you to find that First Nation People held slaves. Its even harder for us to tell our mixed racial, family histories. There are many, Native, black and white who dont want to deal with what that implies. Im hoping that President Obamas mixed heritage can begin a dialogue on acceptance where little existed just a year ago.

I am encouraged by learning from a CNN story that a young Irish lad and over-the-seas supporter of Obama asked his dad if there were any African Americans in their town. When he learned that there were not, he told his dad that he was so disappointed because he was hoping to get to know them.

I wish you the best in your search for truth about your ancestors.
Aho,
Zunny

HOLD THE STINKIN BUS !!!!!!!!!!!
.Kevin !!!!!
I just read your comment about the S.C.V. not being concerned with history’s accuracy.
You better back up and punt !!
You stated
“ There can be no denying that the pension bureau saw him as anything but an eligible body servant - it is how they consistently describe him. In addition, the Attorney General’s ruling that they could not be soldiers suggests that a case for anything other than body servant cannot be made. Wary Clyburn was a slave in the 1860s and as late as 1930 the state of North Carolina recognized him as a slave during the Civil War.”

You seem to be overlooking an important factor.

After King Lincoln the First was Dethroned, a little thing called RECONSTRUCTION came along. The In place Government was replaced by military jurisdiction and districts were given to military officers to guide and control.
Southern preachers were rounded up and sent north for re-indoctrination.

The Government that failed to recognize Wary Clyburn as a Confederate Solider was a governing force that was put in place by the north !

Southern Black soldiers were paid the same sum as there white counterparts. Unlike the north who paid The blacks at a lower rate.

All in all you seem pretty fair in your observations. But you were asleep at the switch on this one.

Respectfully Submitted

David Tatum Jr.

Mr. Tatum,

No one disputes that Clyburn was a slave. Unfortunately, as I've pointed out in countless posts the SCV honored him as a soldier which is a gross distortion of the past. I am not willing to debate this issue with you, but I appreciate the comment.

Your claim about Southern black soldiers has little to do with the facts. I would ask that you explore previous posts on this issue as well as the few published studies that are available, including Bruce Levine's _Confederate Emancipation_ (Oxford University Press) Finally, I have no idea what you mean by "King Lincoln" or your claim that southern preachers were "rounded up and sent north." I respectfully ask that you leave this hyperbole away from my site. Thanks for your understanding.

Well from what I have read so far on line and here, we all will have to do a whole lot more digging before we get to the bottom of this issue across the Board.

Mike,

No, the burden must be on those who make the claims. They must present their findings and interpretation in a forum that can be openly critiqued. It is their responsibility to take the necessary steps to ensure that their conclusions satisfy the basic requirements of historical scholarship. Sounds like we are pretty much on the same page, but I want to make it clear that it is not my responsibility to do the research for those who claim to be the experts. That is exactly what has happened re: the claims of Earl Ijames. You need to demand that he justify his position.

James Bartek,

One petition from one unit cannot be used as across the board evidence of how blacks were viewed in the Confederate army.

But how did they enlist in the first place?...and how did they remain to May 1862?

Furthermore, who are they (so we can check their records)?

Ghost,

Of course, you must know that Civil War historians have written extensively about how whites responded to slaves in their camps throughout the war. You can start with Chandra Manning's recent study as well as books by Reid Mitchell, James McPherson, Earl Hess, Joseph Glatthaar, etc. I could go on, but that is a start.

Dan,

My guess is that it is marginal at best. The problem, of course, is that the Internet gives them access to a much broader audience that has no ability to judge what is claimed. Just Google "black Confederates" and you will see what I mean.

James,

I can't tell you how many times I've come across references that reflect this sentiment. This is exactly part of the broader context in which the more extravagant claims must be judged.

Here's another bit of evidence to ponder. I came across this while researching in the archives of the Museum of the Confederacy. Apologies for not being able to provide the names of the "mulattoes" in question. I failed to write them down at the time, being more interested in the substance of the petition.

Petition from Officers of Nelson’s BN, S.C. Vols, May 1862:
“We the undersigned Commissioned Officers of Nelson’s [7th South Carolina Infantry] Battalion being desirous of getting the following men out of the Battalion petition that they be removed from our midst on account of their not being white men and not liable to do duty as soldiers.”

Four officers qualified the request:
“We concur, but suggest they be detailed as teamsters.”

Major P.H. Nelson, commander:
“The within named enlisted members [. . .] are mulattoes. They are so regarded in the neighborhood from which they come, and are not allowed to vote. They are a drawback to the company, preventing white men from joining it."

Even free blacks of mixed ancestry who willingly volunteered (as I assume to be the case here) would've had trouble finding acceptance. Further, despite the views of the SCV on the matter and modern definitions of who qualifies as a "soldier," I think this would indicate that Confederates did NOT consider black teamsters [or cooks, or servants] to be "soldiers," as that was a privilege reserved for white men.

While I agree that the SCV is not serious about history, they are serious about myth-making.
That makes your research both interesting and important.
What I'm curious about is how many people buy into the Black Confederate myth and the slavery-wasn't-so-bad myth and the CW-wasn't-about-slavery myth, etc.
I'd like to think that they're so marginalized as to be insignificant, but I'm probably wrong about that. Any estimate of their numbers?

Such anomalies do exist within the Confederacy itself, as in the excellent book by Johnson and Roark - Black Masters: a Free Family of Color in the Old South. Examined therein is April William Ellison and his family - a Free black who owned slaves and supported the Southern cause in the war. Black Masters gives us context and understanding as to why this free black man was of his society - right down to his upward mobility through mechanical genius and aptitude but also through his acquisition of slaves. A similar study of a free black who served in the Confederate army would prove highly beneficial. If such a study could be crafted. It is precisely because of Johnson and Roark's work that I would entertain the idea of a free black man being a Confederate soldier. The shock is not that a free black might be a soldier but rather in understanding how he might fit in the social structure. But a free black man, who can control his destiny to a degree, and more so in NC for a while (with voting rights, etc.), in the Confederate army, is not a slave. I would be very interested indeed of a study that could illuminate such a man - it would serve perhaps to demonstrate many things about the slave society itself. When class trumps ethnicity then we get some very interesting looks at the people involved.
Oh my! Did I just write that?

Chris,

Excellent comment and I highly recommend _Black Masters_ to all of you. No one is denying that there may have been a few free blacks who served in the Confederate ranks as Chris notes. The challenge is in understanding the dynamics of their experiences given the laws that many southern states passed curtailing their freedom.

Peter
"These supposed masses did not commemorate their service or ask to be remembered as Confederate soldiers"
========================

They most certainly did. They attended reunions and were members of Camps of Confederate Veterans.

Kevin Levin

"Where is the muster roll sheet? Without a wartime document we can’t say much of anything about this individual. We have a similar problem with the case of Venable which is just posted."
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The point of my post was not to prove Tobe's claim but that the County and State Pension Boards counted him to be a soldier.

Ghost,

Sorry about that. I should have read your comment more carefully. Unfortunately, I don't know much about the South Carolina Pension Board system. Given the claim it would be interesting to learn more about how it made these decisions. Thanks for passing this document along.

Peter,

I know you weren't. You are making an important point.

Kevin,
I in no way meant to diminish the horrors of slavery.

I suppose what I was going for, was that if we do accept everything Mr. Ijames says, where does that get us? We've got black Confederate soldiers. Fine. These supposed masses did not commemorate their service or ask to be remembered as Confederate soldiers (and apparently, only laid claim to that distinction when it afforded the possibility of free money). In other words, even if we do accept all of these claims on the presence of black soldiers, there is absolutely nothing to speak towards their ideological motivations (either during the war or after). It is much like the UFO debate, as you pointed out earlier. You talk to a believer and admit that you agree - you are convinced that aliens are visiting us on a regular basis. Now what? Some lunatic fantasy about what the swarms of UFOs really mean for us.

So, Mr. Ijames, if you are still reading this, or anyone else for that matter -- for the sake of argument, I accept that all of these cases of blacks you claim as Confederate soldiers are indeed true. What does that mean and why is it important?

Don Shaffer:
"This SCV chapter can’t get Clyburn’s permission to use him for their memory purposes, so they reach out to his descendants instead."
***************************

Is that what happened?...or did Clyburn's descendants reach out to the SCV?

Richard raises an issue that has so far gone unexamined. He says "They were still exposed, in some measure, to danger and, in some measure, contributed to the Southern effort." I don't think anyone will deny that African Americans, enslaved and free, materially aided in the Confederate cause, predominantly unwillingly. So the question then becomes, would any of these black Southerners want their contributions to the Confederacy honored? The answer, of course, is no. How often did African Americans in the South commemorate their forced service to the Confederate cause? And I think the reliance on the pension records here is damning; African Americans only claimed affiliation with the Confederacy in order to secure some kind of monetary advantage because of it. In other words, why is that we feel it a duty to commemorate the supposed support of blacks for the Confederacy when they themselves did not?

Here is a black Confederate soldier:

Thomas Tobe, Comapany G, Holcombe's Legion (South Carolina)

"...[the witnesses] know of their own knowledge that he was a soldier..."

"...he was a bona fide soldier in the late war between the States"

"This was a free negro who volunteered in this company and served until the end of the war." -County Pension Board statement.

The application was approved.

Here's the application (just click on each thumbnail)-

http://www.archivesindex.sc.gov/onlinearchives/...

Peter,

The other point that I would make is that exposure on the battlefield was just another obstacle that a slave had to deal with in order to survive. Plantation life offered its challenges as did the battlefield. That is one of the horrors of slavery that they were forced to confront such a situation.

Ghost,

Where is the muster roll sheet? Without a wartime document we can't say much of anything about this individual. We have a similar problem with the case of Venable which is just posted.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether Clyburn's descendants went to the SCV. If they were in fact interested in getting the history right they would not have deceived this family.

Kevin, Robert:

I've stayed out of this debate lately because it's my view that the same arguments and statements are being made over and over with nothing new being added. That view really hasn't changed. I've expressed my thoughts here before in the exchange with Professor Carmichael, no need to rehash all that again.

I have been someone who has readily acknowledged that most blacks who "served" (in whatever capacity), did so due to coercion and the master/slave relationship. Nonetheless, my position is, and remains, that these men still deserve recognition for their service in the Confederate Army. They were still exposed, in some measure, to danger and, in some measure, contributed to the Southern effort. I still think they deserve to be called "soldier", with the caveat that most had no choice. Again, I've given my reasoning before and am not going to take up space here for that.

I would add that a good number of these men, though coerced initially, got "caught up" in the struggle to one degree or another. How many is impossible to say, but I've read a number of accounts that would indicate that took place. Jackson's body servant, Jim Lewis, is a classic example of this emotional connection to those with whom he served.

Though this document is interesting, I don't see it as anything new or surprising. You probably didn't either. Since Virginia didn't offer ANY pensions to blacks until the 1920's, I think it's a given that they were not recognized for any "service", much less that of a "soldier" even in those few occasions where they should have been.

However, given the racial views that were prevalent in the 1930's, isn't it quite likely that there were still many whites who did not WANT to accept blacks as worthy of pensions, for whatever service, including those few that were soldiers, and that this letter was simply a reflection of those views?

In other words, what motivated those government officials to deny even the deserving blacks pensions? The answer is obvious. So as long as all that's on the table, shouldn't that slight and injustice be corrected now by honoring these men with a ceremony, placing a marker on their grave, acknowledging whatever role they played, etc?

Best,
RGW

Richard,

Whether your speculation is right or wrong re: the unknown number of legitimate black Confederate soldiers, my point in this post is that Wary Clyburn was not one of them and the SCV is claiming that he was. What I find startling is that you have nothing to say about it. The SCV is essentially deceiving the public as well as Clyburn's descendants. My guess is most people see your definition of soldier as much too broad and as far as I am concerned meaningless. Clyburn was not a soldier, he was a slave. I do believe that slaves should be honored, but let's at least be honest about who they were. I would love to know if the word slave was mentioned once in the SCV commemoration.

Actually, given that you've never done serious research on this topic I'm not sure that your opinion matters one bit - with all due respect. It's all speculation. What I've said from the outset is that we need serious research.

Hi everyone. I'm sure a lot of readers to Kevin's blog will be familiar with my work on black Union veterans. My book, After the Glory: The Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans (Kansas, 2004) touches on this subject. The impression I get of what the SVC is doing with Clyburn is the latest version of a recurring story. It sometimes serves the Confederate memory of the Civil War to suggest that at least some African Americans favored their cause. Hence, Confederates (and more recently neo-Confederates) sought black participation in their celebrations of memory when it suited this purposes. The United Confederate Veterans sometimes would invite former body servants to attend their meetings and later white Southerners pushed for these men to receive state pensions available the Confederate veterans (no doubt to encourage and reward African Americans who identified with the Confederate cause). White Southerners who interviewed African Americans in the 1930s for the WPA also sought out former servants in the Confederate army. This SCV chapter can't get Clyburn's permission to use him for their memory purposes, so they reach out to his descendants instead. The purpose though is the same: promoting the notion of African-American support for the Confederacy. The message rigs as hollow now as it did back in the late 19th century.

Hi Don,

Great to hear from you and I am so pleased that you decided to chime in on this one given your research. For those of you interested in black Union soldiers in the postwar period this book is a must read.

Kevin, This reaffirms what I pointed out in a post last summer... No need for interpretation when the facts were made clear some 90 years ago

Robert,

The SCV can do whatever it wants with the memory of Clyburn as long as they don't try to pass it off as remembrance steeped in anything resembling history.