Phillip Thomas Tucker’s Black Confederate Mess

Correction: America Through Time is an imprint of Fonthill Media, not The History Press. Arcadia Publishing & The History Press distributes these titles for Fonthill.

A few weeks ago I briefly mentioned the forthcoming release of Phillip T. Tucker’s book Blacks in Gray Uniforms: A New Look at the South’s Most Forgotten Combat Troops 1861-1865. I expressed concern over the use of the iconic image of Andrew and Silas Chandler as the book’s cover art since Silas never served as a soldier during the war and that it did not bode well for the rest of the book.

At the time a few people suggested that I was criticizing a book simply because it had beaten me to the punch. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, I am always on the lookout for new studies that promise to provide insight into this subject. Given the delay in preparing my own manuscript for publication I fully anticipated that I might be competing with another author.

I was hoping that this book might include some useful analysis or point me to new sources, but unfortunately Tucker’s contribution is an absolute mess. In fact, it is one of the worst history books that I have ever read in any subject area. This is made all the more painful given that Tucker holds a PhD in American history from St. Louis University.

Tucker is convinced that “a strict politically-based correctness have crept into the field of Civil War historiography to ordain what is considered to be acceptable in compliance with the day’s most popular and fashionable political climate that has little, if anything, to do with actual history.” (p. 14) The author fails to provide a single shred of evidence in support of this claim or even explain what it means, but that doesn’t prevent him from repeating it on practically every other page.

The narrative itself is unorganized and passage after passage is left without any reference. As for the bibliography, Tucker relies on a small number of sources, but the most popular one is …wait for it… John Stauffer’s 2015 essay “Yes, there were Black Confederates. Here’s Why,” which was published in The Root. This source is cited throughout the book along with a short piece published in the Harvard Gazette from 2011. Tucker accepts Stauffer’s claim that somewhere between 3-6,000 black men fought as soldiers in the Confederate army without any question, even though Stauffer himself never provides an explanation for these numbers. The author also makes use of some of the most popular references on the Internet from Lewis Steiner to Frederick Douglass. They are all present.

There are also some truly bizarre claims in this book. Here is a sample from the introduction in which Tucker attempts to explain why it is necessary to move beyond our “politically-based explanations of history.”

As previously mentioned, the notable example of the large numbers of Jewish soldiers who served with distinction and courage in the ranks of Germany’s Wehrmacht has also provided another appropriate analogy that has similarly overturned a host of simplistic stereotypes, misconceptions, and popular assumptions. After all, some of Hitler’s Jewish soldiers won medals for courage on the battlefield, even while the Holocaust’s unspeakable horrors were in full swing in one of the cruelest paradoxes of World War II. Like the Confederate experience, so the German experience in the 1940s was more complex than has been generally assumed. (p. 13)

Tucker fails to provide any sort of reference for this claim.

The author appears to have no understanding of the evolution of Confederate military policy toward free and enslaved blacks during the war. Any evidence that a black man stepped foot on a battlefield or brandished a weapon is considered sufficient evidence of service as a soldier. Tucker refers to cases where an individual’s enslaved status is clear as a “slave-soldier” or “servant-soldier.” This is an ahistorical reference if ever there was one. In addition, while he acknowledges that the Confederacy never approved of the recruitment of slaves as soldiers until March 1865, Tucker maintains that these men served as soldiers in an “unofficial capacity.”

Tucker never deals seriously with the enlistment debate and fails to offer any guidance on how so many black men could have served in such a capacity without anyone acknowledging it during this very public and divisive debate.

Ultimately, Tucker’s research into specific people is what best reflects his skill (or lack thereof) as a historian. And here we come to Silas Chandler. Before we proceed let’s keep in mind how easy it now is to get this story right. You have the recent episode of The History Detectives, the classification of the photograph of Andrew and Silas by the Library of Congress, and you even have my own article, which I co-authored with one of Silas’s descendants for Civil War Times magazine.

Here are a few excerpts from Tucker’s extensive “analysis” of the image and available evidence:

One of the most remarkable photographs of the Civil War has depicted a fully-armed black and fully-uniformed Confederate soldier, Silas Chandler.

This photo shows Silas Chandler and Andrew Martin Chandler sitting together in uniforms of gray and in full battle gear:  a rare view of two Confederate soldiers, one black and one white and side-by-side and about to meet the Yankee invaders. Even more, the tintype has revealed a physical representation of an invisible, but all-important, bond of brothers in arms that has been expressed in many Confederate letters of enlisted men and officers. Significantly, this image has also revealed ties that bound two men of different races together and as one at a crucial turning point in American history. In fact, Silas is wearing a uniform that is more formal than that of his youthful master, presenting an overall more professional military look, including the military brass buttons of a uniform jacket buttoned all the way up to his neck in contrast to his more casually-attired owner. (pp. 120-21)

Nowhere does Tucker acknowledge Silas’s legal status or attempt to interpret the image within the analytical framework of the master-slave relationship and the coercive nature of slavery.

Tucker offers the following for those who disagree with his analysis:

Ironically, these Black Confederate deniers, especially on the internet and blogs, where they had a disproportionate influence thanks to their savvy manipulation of social media and faithful cronies to champion their cause and parrot their views, are themselves the true revisionists, and more for political purposes rather than anything to do with history.

In consequence, they have routinely and casually dismissed the obvious validity of the Chandler photograph for what it actually represented of a genuine Black Confederate, despite no evidence to make their typical anti-historical claim that Silas was allegedly merely dressed up for show: allegedly, nothing more than a facade and funny lark to fool the public, as the dissenters always claim with smug, but ill-founded and unhistorical confidence. (pp. 122-23)

Guess I should take a bow. This would be funny and could easily be brushed aside if it was discovered on one of the Facebook pages or books from within the neo-Confederate community, but Tucker claims to be offering an objective and serious analysis of the subject and advertises his PhD in American history in its support.

This book is published by America Through Time, which is an imprint of The History Press. It should be noted that this publisher does not put their publications through any kind of peer review. It is left to individual authors to fact check and ensure that their claims are sound. Tucker’s advanced degree will certainly appeal to those people desperate to find credentialed historians who support this narrative in the same way that the author relies without question on John Stauffer’s Harvard affiliation.

This does not change the fact that Blacks in Gray Uniforms is the worst book on this subject to ever have been published.

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59 comments… add one
  • E. Johnson Jan 17, 2020 @ 6:22

    From here I am headed to Amazon to write a review of Tucker’s latest, “Custer at Gettysburg.” I’d never heard of Tucker before but am not at all surprised by Mr. Levin’s review of this book. I cannot get enough Civil War writing and refuse to put this one down until it’s done. That said, Tucker’s writing is redundant, paranoid and lacking in sufficient research. I suggest others steer clear. Accordingly, with Mr. Levin’s review, I shall do the same with this book.

  • woodrowfan Mar 26, 2018 @ 14:51

    Perhaps Tucker should send his book to the Smithsonian’s African-American History Museum. I was there today and the Civil War (excuse me, the War Between the States) section does not even mention black confederates! And the section on tariffs causing the war is also entirely missing!

    Seriously, it’s a wonderful museum. Exceptionally well done and often moving. I’d never seen the original Emancipation Proclamation before…

    • Kevin Levin Mar 26, 2018 @ 14:54

      I am sure the SCV would love a copy with which to design the exhibits for their planned museum in Elm Park. 🙂

      • David Hubbard Apr 1, 2018 @ 19:13

        Kevin Levin, the wannabe historian only produces his own mindset of what he considers facts. Pathetic is the word I describe him with. Was not raised in the south, and only “thinks” he knows what the mindset of all southerners and Southern history is.
        Maybe the Northern newspapers lied also, right Wannabe?
        https://newspapers.library.in.gov/cgi-bin/indiana?a=d&d=WJR18630501.1.3
        P.S., If the Northern schools in Boston didn’t take time to show you how to read, here’s what the article says:
        “The report is that they are planting siege guns around us in order to shell U3 out, but they will find that two cau play at that game. I hear, upon good authority, that Gen. Sickles will be here to-night with 12,00′) men, and that we will attack the enemy to-morrow. And I think that we shall undoubtedly whip them. A train has just arrived, of 32 cars, loaded with troops…
        ” I can assure you, of a certainty, that the rebels have negro soldiers iu tbeir army. One of their best sharp shooters, and the boldest of them all here, is a negro. Ho dug himself a ride-pit last night just across the river, and has been annoying our pickets opposite him very much to-day. You can see him plain enough with the naked eye. occasionally, to make sure that he ia a “wooly,” and with a spy-glass there is no mistaking him.

        • Kevin Levin Apr 2, 2018 @ 1:49

          First, I wasn’t born or raised in Boston. I hope you feel better.

        • Mike Furlan Apr 3, 2018 @ 5:14

          Hi David,

          I think you believe that enlistment in the Confederate States of America army worked kind a like this old comedic song:

          “I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy.”
          “You can see by my outfit I’m a cowboy too.”
          “You can see by our outfits that we are both cowboys.”
          “Get yourself an outfit, and be a cowboy too.”

          Didn’t work that way. Jeff Davis said, “No Cowboy” to the black ones on his side of the lines.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streets_of_Laredo_%28song%29#Derivative_musical_works

          • David Hubbard Apr 3, 2018 @ 18:49

            So, evidently, the Northern Newspapers(Hoosier State Chronicals/Winchester Journal, and the Harpers Weekly January 10,1863 all just “fantasized” and lied about their reports. Same with Frederick Douglas.
            You people are hilarious the way you want to deny these things, belittle southerners as a race of people who didn’t want to do anything but beat/degrade colored people as though Southerners were nothing but inhumane animals.
            Maybe, you never talked to people from that era, or heard their side of the story first hand. I was fortunate.

            • Kevin Levin Apr 4, 2018 @ 2:21

              No one has argued that the newspapers lied. The problem is that you believe that the historians’ job ends with reading a document and taking it at face value without any follow up or additional questions. Many of these newspaper northern newspaper accounts date to the spring/summer 1862. Glenn David Brasher deals with this period and topic in his book The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation. I recommend that you read it. The Douglass reference is widespread but also widely misunderstood.

            • Mike Furlan Apr 4, 2018 @ 13:53

              “So, evidently, the Northern Newspapers(Hoosier State Chronicals/Winchester Journal, and the Harpers Weekly January 10,1863 all just “fantasized” and lied about their reports. Same with Frederick Douglas.”
              Their reporting has nothing to do with how White Southerners in charge of enlistment in the Confederate States of America’s Army determined who was a soldier and who was not. They did not, until the end of the war enlist any black troops.
              “You people are hilarious the way you want to deny these things,”
              Name one Black Confederate Soldier from 1863.
              “… belittle southerners as a race of people who didn’t want to do anything but beat/degrade colored people as though Southerners were nothing but inhumane animals.”
              Mississippi was clearer than most: “Our Position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery…”
              And slavery, to paraphrase O. Patterson was the permanent, violent domination of a dishonored people stripped of family, friends, culture and language. Other scholars have shown how the slave system functioned through systematic torture, torture that got more intense as time when on.
              “Maybe, you never talked to people from that era, or heard their side of the story first hand. I was fortunate.”
              What some old man might have told you 70 years ago obviously has nothing to do with the existence of Black Confederate Soldiers. Really, just name one. If you can’t name one, you must accept that it is all just a fantasy.

  • AD Powell Mar 26, 2018 @ 13:07

    Confederates soldiers between white and black:

    The Ellison family contributed more than a laborer or a fireman. On March 27, 1863, John Wilson Buckner enlisted as a private in the 1st South Carolina Artillery. He was wounded in action on July 12, 1863, at Battery Wagner. He remained in the army, according to his official Confederate military record, until October 19, 1864. Because his “furlough expired,” he officially became a deserter.66 However, his desertion was a technicality because years later he was praised by local whites—who were in a position to have known the truth—as a “faithful soldier.”67 For most free Negroes, even to attempt to join the army was dangerous. When three brothers who were “very dark skinned” and “at the Turpentine business” tried to enter the Camden militia in 1859, a white man objected, claiming “they were not white and had no right to muster.” In the fight that ensued, one man was shot.68 Buckner served in the companies of Capt. P. P. Galliard and Capt. A. H. Boykin, local white men who were acquaintances of Buckner and the other Ellisons.69 Although everybody knew Buckner was a Negro, personal associations and a sterling family reputation nullified the law and made Buckner an honorary white man as a soldier. Seven Benenhalys also enlisted (and only one returned), but the Turks claimed they were white, and prominent white men from the area defended their assertions.70 Whatever Buckner’s motivation for enlisting—heartfelt loyalty, an itch for adventure, a desire to escape his stingy uncles, or a courageous assertion of manliness—he gave whites an unmistakable confirmation of the Ellisons’ political sympathies.

    Johnson, Michael P.. Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (p. 307). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

    • Kevin Levin Mar 26, 2018 @ 13:11

      Although everybody knew Buckner was a Negro, personal associations and a sterling family reputation nullified the law and made Buckner an honorary white man as a soldier.

      This is the important point that is often overlooked re: Buckner.

      • Paul Taylor Mar 27, 2018 @ 3:31

        Kevin – My perception is that even though a relative handful “free people of color” or “mulattoes” enlisted in the CS army (based on the 1860 census), these men never had to prove their racial heritage to the enlistment officers. In essence, if a man looked white enough, he was accepted. And given the prejudices of the era, it is not surprising to see that these individuals stressed their whiteness, or perhaps more accurately, they stressed that they were not a Negro. Here in Detroit, for example, the man charged with murdering two young girls – an event that led to the infamous March 1863 anti-black riot – proclaimed he was of mixed Spanish-Indian blood, while the local Dem paper always referred to him as a Negro. Is this your understanding, as well?

        • Kevin Levin Mar 27, 2018 @ 4:36

          I have said much of the same all along.

  • AD Powell Mar 26, 2018 @ 12:51

    Creating “black” Confederates retroactively:

    Once the intermarriage prohibition was passed, a discussion ensued as to the definition of a “negro.” The original committee had proposed a one-eighth blood-fraction rule, bringing South Carolina into line with North Carolina to the north and Georgia to the south. But now Mr. Johnstone, the young delegate from Newberry, proposed amending this to a one-drop rule of endogamous group membership. He proposed to forbid “marriage between a white person and a person having any negro blood at all in his or her veins.” A hush settled over the White delegates and the Black delegates sat back to observe their discomfort.[914] It was an eerie re-play of the Virginia debates of 1853.[915] “Pitchfork” Ben rose and tried to persuade Johnstone to withdraw his motion. Johnstone was adamant. Another delegate spoke quietly to Johnstone privately, to no avail. George Dionysius Tillman realized that such a definition would relocate many valued White citizens to the Black side of the endogamous color line. Perceiving the injustice of this proposal as well as its threat to White supremacy, and foreseeing that it could socially rip his state apart, he rose to his feet and gave the best-remembered speech of his political career: If the law is made as it now stands respectable families in Aiken, Barnwell, Colleton, and Orangeburg will be denied the right to intermarry among people with whom they are now associated and identified. At least one hundred families would be affected to my knowledge. They have sent good soldiers to served creditably, and it would be unjust and disgraceful to embarrass them in this way. It is a scientific fact that there is not one full-blooded Caucasian on the floor of this convention. Every member has in him a certain mixture of… colored blood. The pure-blooded white has needed and received a certain infusion of darker blood to give him readiness and purpose. It would be a cruel injustice and the source of endless litigation, of scandal, horror, feud, and bloodshed to undertake to annul or forbid marriage for a remote, perhaps obsolete trace of Negro blood. The doors would be open to scandal, malice and greed; to statements on the witness stand that the father or grandfather or grandmother had said that A or B had Negro blood in their veins. Any man who is half a man would be ready to blow up half the world with dynamite to prevent or avenge attacks upon the honor of his mother in the legitimacy or purity of the blood of his father.[916]

    Sweet, Frank W. Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule (Kindle Locations 6675-6682). Backintyme. Kindle Edition.

  • AD Powell Mar 26, 2018 @ 12:44

    “Black” Confederates. How do you define “black”?

    Throughout the United States, sons and husbands went to war. Like countless other American families, the Osbornes of St. Augustine were torn between loyalty to their state and to their country. The Osborne family was of Hispanic heritage, light-brown complexion, and middle-class status. They were listed as members of the White endogamous group in the 1850 and 1860 censuses. The father, Samuel Osborne was a shipwright. His elder son, Sam Jr., was a journeyman in his father’s trade. His younger son, Manuel, was an apprentice who drilled once a month with the local militia unit, the St. Augustine Grays. When war broke out, the Grays were activated into the Third Florida Infantry, Company “A,” and young Manuel marched off as a White solder to fight for the Confederacy. A few months later, in March of 1862, a U.S. Army regiment under General David Hunter landed in St. Augustine and recruited for the Union. Samuel and his elder son joined the fight to end slavery. To the Yankee eyes of the U.S. Army, the two Osborne men looked Black, despite the family’s census records. And so, the Army shipped them to X Corps HQ in Hilton Head, South Carolina, for basic training.[847] They were posted to the First South Carolina Volunteer Infantry (later renamed the 33rd US Colored Troops), and served as Black soldiers until war’s end. The divided brothers and father never met in battle. All survived and they reconciled after the war. Manuel moved to Ft. Lauderdale, then retired back home to St. Augustine. All three men received military pensions; two from the U.S. Army, one from the former Confederate State of Florida. Manuel’s name appears prominently in the town’s muster roll of heroes who wore gray; the Confederacy saw him as White. His father and brother, who wore blue, only recently received recognition from the city; the Union saw them as Black. During Reconstruction, an avalanche of well-meaning Northerners buried Florida’s lower South culture. The 1870 and 1880 censuses list the entire Osborne family as “Negroes.”[848] Times were changing and the color line was shifting in the direction of the one-drop rule.

    Sweet, Frank W. Legal History of the Color Line: The Rise and Triumph of the One-Drop Rule (Kindle Locations 6330-6333). Backintyme. Kindle Edition.

  • AD Powell Mar 26, 2018 @ 12:23

    In regard to Hitler’s “Jewish” soldiers, it depends on how you define “Jew.” The vast majority of these so-called Jews were of mixed ancestry (defined by the Nazis as mixed-race) and did NOT consider themselves Jewish at all.

    https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent-Military/dp/0700611789/ref=sr_1_1

    https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Hitlers-Jewish-Soldiers-Descent/dp/0700616381/

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryan_Mark_Rigg

    • Kevin Levin Mar 26, 2018 @ 12:25

      Thanks for the references. My issue with the claim is with its lack of clarity and complete lack of references.

    • Mike Furlan Mar 26, 2018 @ 14:08

      AD, you are absolutely correct.
      Also, some of the “Black” men said to be “Black Confederate Soldiers” did not consider themselves “Black.”
      But, unfortunately the men in each case did not get to make that choice.

  • Boyd Harris Mar 26, 2018 @ 5:36

    Stop saying bad stuff about my books. What a snowflake. This is taken directly from his Amazon.com bio.

    “CORRUPT RIVALS AND THEIR FAKE NEWS
    The author’s ground-breaking works have presented hard-hitting truths that have angered old school traditionalists, including one corrupt Civil War publisher/editor and his cronies and authors. By launching fake negative Amazon reviews, they hope to silence the author’s fresh “NEW LOOK” historical truths. Emboldened by keyboard courage and anonymity, this good old boy establishment has been behind years of posting negative fake Amazon reviews. Revealing the source and proof of agenda, the editorial (instead of history) obsession of these negative reviews (ironically, repetitive reviews that complain of repetition and emphasize “don’t read this book,” “don’t waste your time” and “needs to be reduced” to reveal the fixated financial and non-historical concerns of a single-minded publisher/editor) that concentrate on mundane editorial minutiae to reveal the true source: an unethical editor/publisher and rival obsessed with making profits and twisting the truth. Just so happens that this publisher’s many books (relatively cheap small-sized glossy paperbacks) all have disproportionately inflated 5-star Amazon reviews to reveal the inverse corruption of the attack reviews on the author’s books. This corrupt entrenched establishment hides in the dark shadows of cyber space, while attempting to manipulate/abuse Amazon and social media to fool the public.”

    • Andy Hall Mar 26, 2018 @ 6:35

      Oh, FFS. He also describes this book as “ground-breaking,” a “well-researched scholarly work,” offering a “unique historical narrative.” It doesn’t actually sound like there’s anything new in it at all.

    • Andy Hall Mar 26, 2018 @ 6:44

      I LOLed:

      “By digging deeper in the historical record than most historians. . . .”

    • Pat Young Mar 26, 2018 @ 9:29

      Who is that mysterious publisher behind the anti-Tucker conspiracy?

  • Joyce Harrison Mar 26, 2018 @ 5:07

    “[A] strict politically-based correctness [has] crept into the field of Civil War historiography to ordain what is considered to be acceptable in compliance with the day’s most popular and fashionable political climate that has little, if anything, to do with actual history.” Does he really want his audience to comprise those who agree with that statement? Wow.

    • Kevin Levin Mar 26, 2018 @ 5:12

      What is even worse is that Tucker repeats this over and over throughout the book. This is exactly what you would expect to hear from the neo-Confederate community, but not from a PhD in American history who supposedly was taught how to make a sound historical argument.

  • Stephanie McCurry Mar 25, 2018 @ 18:44

    I am hopeful that previous scholarship, my own included, will be properly acknowledged in this fight. In writing and in the classroom I have done my best to puncture this bubble.

    • Kevin Levin Mar 26, 2018 @ 1:59

      Professor McCurry,

      You probably won’t be surprised that your book does not appear in this particular bibliography. I certainly have benefited from Confederate Reckoning during the course of my research. It also fails to cite Bruce Levine, Glenn David Brasher and countless others. Thanks for taking the time to comment.

    • Msb Mar 26, 2018 @ 7:42

      Professor, please accept my thanks for your wonderful book, Confederate Reckoning. It was just great.

  • Scott A. MacKenzie Mar 25, 2018 @ 15:18

    This book looks awful, but the sad part isn’t its historical flaws – it’s its sales numbers and subsequent influence on the uninitiated.

    • Kevin Levin Mar 25, 2018 @ 15:19

      Exactly.

  • London John Mar 25, 2018 @ 11:35

    So what is this History Press? Do their publications get into bookshops? What are their sales like? Or is it a Vanity Publisher?

    • Kevin Levin Mar 25, 2018 @ 12:01

      You can find their books in stores. Some of them are quite good, but it depends entirely on the efforts of the author.

    • Andy Hall Mar 25, 2018 @ 14:43

      No, it’s not a vanity publisher. But it’s very commercially oriented, with a streamlined production process that adheres to a highly-standardized format, fast production turnaround. Their business model is to published tons and tons of titles on niche subjects, often of local or regional interest. They handle marketing and distribution (including big online sellers like Amazon and B&N), but also expect the authors to put forth effort to promote the title through speaking events, book signings, etc.

      As Kevin says, some HP material is very good and well-researched, but that’s due to the effort of the authors, not due to any internal review or evaluation by the publisher.

      • woodrowfan Mar 26, 2018 @ 14:41

        I have found some HP titles to be useful, especially on local history. They’ve published some useful books on DC written by good amateur public historians. But they only edit for grammar, flow, etc–they do not edit for the same things as an academic press, such as accuracy.

  • HankC Mar 25, 2018 @ 11:24

    seems like a pretty weak reed to claim black confederates because there were Jewish soldiers in the German ranks 80 years later.

    is there any new data in the book or merely rehashes of frequent Facebook and blog posts?

  • Shoshana Bee Mar 25, 2018 @ 11:21

    I think what bothers me most is that this book now enters the paradigm as yet more “proof” to enhance the Black Confederate myth. We saw this when other credentialed individuals weighed in on their opinions on the topic, adding a level of credence that strengthens otherwise unsupported claims. It will be interesting to see whether the position that Dr. Tucker has chosen damages his reputation, or advances the conversation on an academic level.

    • Kevin Levin Mar 25, 2018 @ 12:01

      It certainly will.

  • Larry Cebula Mar 25, 2018 @ 7:17

    I wish he were on Twitter. Because that would be fun.

  • Louis Drew Mar 25, 2018 @ 3:38

    Thank you for this important commentary/review.

  • William Kerrigan Mar 25, 2018 @ 3:24

    Dr. Tucker has made cranking out history books in a wide range of topics a mini-industry. He appears to have published at least seven in the last three or four years. I don’t care if you are an insomniac who works 24 hours a day, it is just not possible to thoroughly ground yourself in the general scholarship of a subject area, complete all research for your specific topic, and produce a book deeply grounded in the sources on that kind of timetable.

    • Kevin Levin Mar 25, 2018 @ 3:57

      Based on my reading of this book I am not even sure that Tucker understands how to interpret primary sources.

  • gdbrasher Mar 24, 2018 @ 18:48

    Please tell me I don’t show up in this guy’s bibliography (if he even has one).

    • Kevin Levin Mar 25, 2018 @ 2:02

      No. Tucker goes on and on about the Peninsula Campaign. He definitely needed your book to help him wade through the evidence from that particular period.

  • rblee22468 Mar 24, 2018 @ 16:01

    I don’t know. I think ‘Robert E. Lee’s Orderly’ by Al Arnold might take the cake.

    • Kevin Levin Mar 24, 2018 @ 16:53

      Al Arnold doesn’t have a PhD in American history. I wasn’t expecting even a basic understanding of history from him.

  • Thomas Heaney Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:44

    Yeah, I’ve no evidence that this is actually what Tucker was referring to, but it does make sense.
    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/museums/10682975/The-Jews-who-fought-for-Hitler-We-did-not-help-the-Germans.-We-had-a-common-enemy.html

    • Kevin Levin Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:46

      Thanks for the link. It certainly doesn’t help his case to be viewed as a serious historian.

      • James F. Epperson Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:57

        I believe that there are documented cases of Germans with (partial) Jewish ancestry who served in the Wehrmacht. I don’t know if they or the army knew knew of their Jewish connections.

        • Kevin Levin Mar 24, 2018 @ 14:01

          Interesting. It would be helpful if Tucker realized the importance of providing citations to support his claims rather than leaving the reader to wonder what it is that he is talking about.

          • Chris S Mar 24, 2018 @ 14:13

            How can a person with a PhD in history not realize the importance of citations?

            • DBP Mar 24, 2018 @ 17:37

              My guess is that he KNOWS about the importance but doesn’t care. There’s a lot of money to be made if you’re a scruple-less hack. Plus it’s less effort than thoughtful and honest history.
              He’ll be able to live off of this hacky crap for years.

        • Mike Furlan Mar 24, 2018 @ 14:44

          Phillip Thomas Tucker is a bad guy in the mold of Side Show Bob. If there is a rake in the frame, he will always step on it. And that is what he did by bringing up the issue of Jewish Nazi Soldiers. Check out the following, to see that the Nazis had more tolerant rules about race than did the CSA.

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Laws#Classifications_under_the_laws

          As for the CSA, I’ll just repost this:

          Bruce Levine on blacks in the CSA army:
          “In response to an offer seeking the authority to raise a company of legally free “creoles” in Mobile, Alabama, for service in the Confederate armed forces, Confederate Secretary of War James A Seddon wrote this on November 24, 1863:

          “Our position with the North and before the world will not allow the employment of armed soldiers of negroes. If these creoles can be naturally and properly discriminated from negroes, the authority may be considered as conferred; otherwise not…”

        • Mike Furlan Mar 25, 2018 @ 3:41

          “According to historian Bryan Mark Rigg, an Israeli Army and United States Marine Corps veteran, up to 160,000 soldiers who were one-quarter, one-half, and even fully Jewish served in the German armed forces during World War II. This included several generals, admirals, and at least one field marshal, Erhard Milch.”

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischling

          Narrowly viewed, the Nazis were open minded compared to the CSA.

      • Thomas Heaney Mar 24, 2018 @ 14:15

        Oh, that wasn’t my aim . . .

        • Kevin Levin Mar 24, 2018 @ 14:17

          I know. 🙂

  • Thomas Heaney Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:32

    Given that there were no Jews in the Nazi Germany’s army, I would guess that his bizarre claim about “Hitler’s Jewish soldiers” comes from the stories of Jewish Finns serving in the Army of Finland which was allied with Germany and fought during the war on Russia (1941-45). The German Army actually offered Iron Crosses to a number of Finnish soldiers who happen to be Jewish, and who refused them.

    Tucker has simply misunderstood, mis-remembered, and misused this historical information in the same way he’s treated all of his other “source.’

    • Kevin Levin Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:34

      I have no idea what he is referring to apart from what he clearly states in the book.

  • Waymon Hinson Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:31

    In searching out family history and the CSA recently, I ran across a document from Polk County Texas that listed various regiments and all. Under Company H, Texas Regular Infantry, Hood’s Brigade, there were four names listed as “servants.” Would these have been enslaved Africans accompanying their masters?

    • Kevin Levin Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:32

      Yes.

  • James F. Epperson Mar 24, 2018 @ 13:30

    Sadly, I am not in the least surprised.

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