Many of you are familiar with the Abbeville Institute. Among other things they offer an annual conference that brings together a short list of people, who push a decidedly Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War and slavery under the guise of serious scholarship. Last year’s annual conference included a talk by Donald Livingston on the debate within the Confederacy to arm slaves, which was just uploaded to YouTube today.
The part of the talk that focuses specifically on the debate begins at around the 30 minute mark. I am not going to go through the many problems with this presentation. A thorough reading or re-reading of Bruce Levine’s, Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War, would be a great place for Livingston to start.
The fundamental flaw in Livington’s understanding of the debate is his failure to address the stiff resistance and the reasons behind the resistance to this plan that was expressed by people in the army, on the home front and in every level of government. Rather, Livingston simply cherry picks evidence in support of the plan. For example, he cites Gen. Patrick Cleburne’s plan to arm slaves, but conveniently ignores President Davis’s order to cease discussion within the army.
Given the Lost Cause theme that courses throughout, what I found interesting is that at no point does Livingston suggest that blacks were already fighting in the army as soldiers. At the very end he makes a vague claim about what state and local governments may have been up to during the war, but that’s about it.
As far as I can tell, Livingston does not believe that black men fought as soldiers before March 1865. That might be the only redeeming aspect of this presentation.
Mr. Levin, I think you are confused. The south had what we would today call combat support. They did not have boot camps like we do today. Slaves were used to make defensive positions and fortifications. We would call this combat engineer today. They were used as Wagon Drivers. This would be called Motor Transportation today. They were used as medics and hospital transporters. This is called a combat medic and is considered a combat position today. Nathan Bedford Forrest fought with his slaves during the war. These troops were paid the same unlike the north. There were quite a few free blacks. I am sure some of these free men participated in the war. There were free blacks that owned slaves in the south.
I don’t care what it would be called today. I am interested in how the Confederate military classified enslaved laborers. You are free to engage as much presentism as you like, but please don’t call it history.
And there we many men like Lee in the Union and many men like Grant in the Confederacy ,all along
I have no idea what this means.
Unfortunately to the uninformed and those to lazy to become informed this type of lecture has a degree of creditability.
And that’s precisely why they’re dangerous. I’m glad Kevin decided to deal with this lecture.
As always, I await the call to recognize the equine confederates, who gace their all for the cause… at least there’s evidence for that!
Keep fighting the good fight. One interesting case study in memory will be how the modern day neo-confederates will react to Free State of Jones when it comes out in June; Dr. Bynum’s work has been attacked, of course, but a major release will bring the historical reality of resistnance to the rebels by both white and black southerners to a greater number of people than probably anything else in the past century.
I can only imagine the “counters” that will come up: the equivalent of a vanity press movie?
Best,