Thanks to Eric Jacobson of the Battle of Franklin Trust for sending along this image of the GHS’s new marker interpreting Patrick Cleburne’s plan to arm slaves for the Confederate army. This should give you some things to think about as you compare this marker with that of the Georgia Historical Commission’s which I posted [...]
Search: "black confederates"
Update: Once again, thanks to Andy Hall for doing the leg work of looking into the documentation behind the claim that Clark Lee was a Confederate soldier. No surprise by what he did not find to support such a claim nor that what is available points to a very different picture of Lee’s presence in [...]
First, a bit of good news. Today I learned that my essay, “Black Confederates Out of the Attic and Into the Mainstream” has been accepted for publication in The Journal of the Civil War Era. I suspect I will have to wait some time before I see it in print. I argue that as historians [...]
Over the past few years, Leslie Madsen-Brooks has been working on an essay that explores the implications of the controversy surrounding black Confederates on our understanding of history in the digital age. It’s been available online as part of an open peer-review project and will soon be available, along with other essays, in Writing History [...]
I do enjoy perusing the Confederate Heritage Facebook pages. The topic of black Confederates is a favorite among these folks. Many of the images and other references are new to me, but more importantly their handling of this “evidence” serves as a reminder of just how incapable some people are in applying even the most [...]
The current Confederate heritage fetish with black Confederate soldiers and the confidence with which many assert the existence of these loyal and brave men in arms stands in sharp contrast with the fact that you are hard pressed to find anyone in Confederate ranks or on the home front who acknowledged the existence of these [...]
Update: I couldn’t be more pleased to learn that the class in question is being taught by Steve Kantrowitz. Professor Kantrowitz is the author of More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889, which was my pick as the best history book of 2012. The book is of particular interest to [...]
How do I know this? Fold3 is offering free access to all of its Confederate records during the month of April, which happens to be Confederate History Month. Well, it’s CHM in the few places that still acknowledge it. Check out the press release from the Georgia Division SCV. So much is portrayed by Hollywood [...]
It never fails that at some point during the Q&A following a talk about my Crater book an audience member brings up the subject of black Confederate soldiers. Most of the time the issue is raised in complete innocence. They heard about it from a fellow history enthusiast or, more likely, read about it online. [...]