The idea of a slave going around the Army of Tennessee or any Confederate army announcing he wanted to be a soldier stretches credulity beyond recognition.

From Symonds’ characterization, Cleburne, as a relative newcomer to the South, was indifferent to slavery & to slaves, although he realized as a practical matter that no proposal to make slaves into soldiers could possibly be successful without a commitment to free the slaves and their families. His focus was on the fact that the Confederacy was rapidly exhausting its supply of white males of military age & that, if it did not come up with an another source of supply, defeat and the end of an independent South was inevitable. Cleburne seems to have totally failed to comprehend what the implications of his proposal would mean to fellow officers born and raised under Calhoun’s doctrine of slavery as a positive good.

Likewise, General Walker is made into a severe villain. There is a black guy named Ned trying to be a Reb solider, and Walker hates him. He tries to pay him to leave, and when that doesn’t work, he puts a gun to his head and says “get on home, nigger.” I don’t anything about Walker, but it seems wrong to write such violent and racist actions into someone’s life if it never happened. Even if he was a violent and racist man, I don’t like making up damning things about real people. Murphy should’ve used a fictional character for that scene.

Speaking of Ned the token Black Guy, he is so hated by the other Rebs that someone kills his mule (probably General Walker). If Murphy was trying to show a kinder, gentler South, he didn’t succeed. Cleburne ends up being a lone Oscar Schindler in a sea of Nazis. At the end of the novel, Cleburne gives Ned the location of his lost wife and children, and allows Ned to dessert before the Battle of Franklin. Cleburne laments the failure of his proposal, and says he failed Ned. Ned replies, “No sir, you didn’t fail, you saw us as something no one else would … you saw us as men. God be with you, General.” And Cleburne replies, “And you, Soldier.” (The dialog was sugary enough to cause diabetes). But its pretty obvious that there weren’t any Black Confederates (except for the fictional Ned) and that no one wanted them.

On the last page, Murphy recommends a book about Black Confederates, “Black Southerners In Gray” by Arthur W. Bergeron Jr (which has Silas Chandler on the cover). So Murphy has a Black Confederate agenda, but he pretty much left it out of the story. If I was a total newbie reading his novel, I would come away thinking there were NOT any Black Confederate soldiers.

Also, did you read the actual graphic novel? All historical issues aside, the book was damn good (for the illustrations if nothing else). And it didn’t really make any false Black Confederate claims in the comic itself. There was one black confederate “soldier” who was clearly equal to the whites, but NEVER accepted. And the context of the story made it pretty clear that he alone in his “support” of whites who didn’t want him. Most of the Rebs were blatantly racist and opposed to any notion of black soldiers.

Granted it’s full of ungodly errors, and Cleburne is made into a Christ-like hero, but I was in a comic book store looking for a comic book with good art and no Spandex, which I found. I’d like to hear your thoughts if you ever do read it.

1) It was the official position of the Confederate Government that Negroes were NOT to be enlisted until March of 1865.
2) Generally, only officers and men of the Confederate Army who were a few pecans short of a full pie would DOCUMENT any Negroes actually being enlisted as soldiers.
3) Therefore, official records of the Confederate Government would NOT be as reliable in this area as either observations by Union troops, or civilian sources from either side.