The Irrelevance of Silas Chandler

News comes via Kevin Levin’s Civil War Memory that his long awaited (and much-mentioned) article on Silas Chandler, coauthored with Myra Chandler Sampson, is about to appear.  I’m sure that the article will offer a far richer context about Silas Chandler’s story than did the episode on PBS’s History Detectives, which offered little in terms of information that anyone armed with a computer, a search engine, and access to the internet would not have found on their own.

However, I have a sneaky feeling that however compelling this article may be, it will be far from the last word on Silas Chandler, let alone on the tales of African Americans, enslaved and free, who flocked to serve the Confederacy as soldiers and who embraced the goals of the Confederacy.  In fact, I take that as a sure bet after reading this post, including the comments section, where someone who sounds a bit like a proslavery apologist declares that slavery was no more than an “unfortunate circumstance.”

Well, that’s one way to put it.

So now that we are at this point in time, I think it behooves serious scholars to discuss what, if anything, they might have to say about the experience of black people in the Confederacy.  What lines of inquiry do you think should be followed?  How much of this research should be driven by a debate among non-scholars, many of whom show no interest in actual scholarship, and how much should be driven by scholarly curiosity and a quest for understanding?

Yes, I understand that it’s important to deal with debates on the public sphere, no matter how tangential those debates may be when it comes to historical reality.  I’m not discounting that (or its impact on issues of history education).  However, I’m not interested in privileging it, either, and I think it’s a different discussion to wrestle with that issue, about which I have some different ideas and a well-circulated proposal.

The Black Confederate Myth Controversy: Update and Observations

As the debate over Silas Chandler subsides, along comes Harvard’s version of John Stauffer’s comments about Black Confederates this past August at a luncheon at Harvard.  A review of the article reveals very little that is new, helpful, or different.  Indeed, I was a little amused to see that the talk as represented followed a rather standard format: characterize the existing argument in such a way as to maximize the significance of your own insight.  At times, unfortunately, that may involve a rather strained characterization of the current debate.  So it seems to be in this case.  Stauffer posits a debate between “neo-Confederates” (his term), who attempt to prove that blacks served as Confederate soldiers in an effort to whitewash the Confederacy of its connections to slavery and racism, and scholars who seem to dismiss altogether the role of blacks in the Confederate armed forces, “including one scholar who called it ‘a fiction, a myth, utter nonsense.’” (Note: I have been unable to date to identify this unnamed scholar: a Google search did not turn up this quote except as coming from this article, but it could always be on a video presentation Update: long-time commenter “Border Ruffian” offers a reasonable suggestion in the comments … thanks!)  Having characterized the debate to his best advantage, Stauffer (who is unapologetically identified in the article as a historian) offers his own take: that between 3,000 and 10,000 blacks served as soldiers in the Confederate army, while between 20,000 and 50,000 blacks served in support functions (teamsters, cooks, servants and the like).  There’s no hint in the article how Stauffer arrived at these numbers. Among the specific sources he cites are Frederick Douglass’s remarks in 1861 and the story of John Parker at First Manassas.

Stauffer complains that when he advanced this notion at a conference several months ago in Washington, D. C., he was “beaten up,” which I assume he meant figuratively (although not all people are so sure).  He also argues that one should not take the involvement of blacks in the Confederate army as an endorsement of the aims of the Confederacy, but rather as a result of blacks’ assessment of their own interests (as if slaves had a choice in all cases).

John Stauffer ought to name names and address specific arguments.  His complaint about feeling beaten up struck me as amusing, because, as many of us know, he has no problem defending himself and in fact is not shy about taking the offensive, including assailing the character of his targets.  Stauffer also claimed that he “rarely reads blogs,” but the announcement of his talk had no problem quoting a statement I offered on Crossroads about the use of evidence by advocates of the Black Confederate Myth (note he never directly challenged me by name, and perhaps he should have read my other posts on this topic before pretending to characterize what scholars say … perhaps someone else came up with this quote).

The problem with John Stauffer’s argument is that he doesn’t offer a lot of support for his position.  How did he come up with the estimates he presented?  Does his argument rest in the end on the Louisiana Native Guards and Frederick Douglass’s comments?  Nor does he offer much in the way of support about his characterization of what scholars have said about the presence and role of free and enslaved African Americans in Confederate service.  I don’t know of any scholars who do not agree that blacks were present with Confederate armies as teamsters, cooks, servants, and other roles.  The real debate is about the question of service as soldiers, and here Stauffer sheds no new light on the discussion (the Parker story is well known, and Parker represents himself not as a soldier, but someone who was forced to fight lest he receive a worse fate … not exactly part of the Black Confederate Myth).  In short, Stauffer is as careless in his use of evidence as are many of the proponents of the Black Confederate Myth, and for much the same reason: because he subordinates the careful handling of historical evidence to find out what happened in favor of advancing an argument. Or perhaps his home institution has misrepresented him.

Discussions of Stauffer’s claims, first reported on Kevin Levin’s blog, soon appeared elsewhere, but it’s good to read a friendly account of his remarks.  It would be even better to read the remarks themselves.

What I find most amusing about this is that John Stauffer and I have met, and he’s heard me discuss this issue over lunch earlier this year at ASU.  I didn’t hear him offer a different perspective at the time.  Clearly he knows how to access this blog, since a quote from it appeared on publicity for his lecture.  Yet he didn’t seem inclined to challenge me face-to-face or in the comments section.

Draw your own conclusions.

In other (and oddly related) news, Kevin Levin called attention to a very interesting article that uses the debate over the Black Confederate Myth in cyberspace as away to approach how non-professional historians participate in historical discussions.  Author Leslie Madsen-Brooks may now have to retract her claim that “no academic historians have subscribed to the narrative that there were thousands of black Confederate soldiers” in light of Stauffer’s assertions (please … if Harvard identifies John Stauffer as a historian, he’s a historian).  However, other participants in these discussions should read the article, if for no other reason than to learn how a historian evaluates these exchanges.

The Chandler Boys … Mystery Solved?

Well, the History Detectives show on Silas and Andrew Chandler has come and gone, and it looks as if the folks who like to claim that there were many black Confederate soldiers are not happy.  Sampling their responses from the usual sources yields a rather predictable pattern of outbursts and whining.  However, I haven’t heard anything challenging the evidence presented.

The short summary: Silas was a slave; he was not a soldier; he was Andrew’s servant; some family accounts of the relationships in the family after the war require modification.

I doubt this is going to change many minds about the larger issue of the role played by slaves in the Confederate army, although it seems to me that it will be harder to make certain claims about Silas Chandler in the face of the show’s findings.  However, the research itself concerning Silas Chandler’s status during the Civil War was the sort of thing anyone armed with a laptop and an internet connection could do.

UPDATE:

Here’s a transcript of the show; at Civil War Memory Kevin Levin has much the same reaction as I do.

Black Confederates: Free Versus Enslaved

If you set aside the usual discussion about black Confederates in favor of serious scholarly inquiry, one subject worth studying would be free blacks who sought to serve as Confederate soldiers.  After all, students of southern race relations are aware that during the late 1850s black southerners who were free found themselves under increased scrutiny from white southerners ( most work on black slaveholders concentrates on South Carolina); at the same time references to “the South” tend to flatten regional variations and complicating issues, including the Creole population (primarily in Louisiana), where a substantial free black population provided the source for the oft-cited Louisiana Native Guards.  Moreover, given contemporary definitions of race, one could be predominantly “white” in terms of ancestry while being defined as “black” legally; we know of plenty of cases of people of mixed racial heritage attempting to “pass” as white.

Concentrating on free blacks in Confederate service offers a way to explore certain questions in a different way.  Such people were not fighting to perpetuate their own enslavement (as they were not slaves); they would not under normal circumstances have been likely to volunteer to be servants, and it would be interesting how many blacks listed as cooks, teamsters, and musicians were free.  Yet these people might well have sought to join the armed forces as a sign of loyalty to deflect queries about their disloyalty; better to be seen as a friend than as a potential enemy.  Moreover, the tendency to blur distinctions of circumstance and status when it comes to black Confederates does a disservice to history and to the study of those individuals.

In short, we might try to be a little more careful, not only in documenting the fact of service (including whether the individual involved was a soldier or served/supported the CSA war effort in some other capacity), but also in discussion about what such service meant.  Individuals may serve without supporting the goals of the belligerent/nation in whose army they serve.

Kevin Levin on John Stauffer and Black Confederates

Kevin Levin took a break from the Yankees-Red Sox series to make his way over to Harvard University, where he heard John Stauffer’s presentation on black Confederates.  You can read his observations here.

I have to say that I’m a little disappointed that Stauffer did not do a little more research on the examples he cited, for they have been discussed before, on the very blogs he cites.  Generally speaking, people actually read what they cite (and even quote) and glean what information they can from what’s already out there.  To leave the impression that one’s surveyed what’s out there (and I’d include the fine work of Andy Hall in Dead Confederates as of prime importance) and then fail to wrestle with it does not seem to me to be sound research practice.  Perhaps this is a case of the promotional material promising more than Stauffer was prepared to deliver … except guess who usually prepares the promotional material?

I’ll be interested to see whether more comes of this initial foray, or if a text or video of these remarks will appear anywhere.

John Stauffer Enters the Black Confederate Fray

It seems that another academic historian is about to enter the fray on the subject of black Confederates.  Tomorrow John Stauffer, Professor of English and American Literature and Language and of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, will speak on “Black Confederates in History and Myth.”  Kevin Levin, who alerted me to this presentation, has blogged about it and will be present.  Here’s the abstract for the talk:

“Black Confederates” is one of the most controversial ideas of the Civil War era and American memory more generally. Today, neo-Confederates claim that thousands of blacks loyally fought as soldiers for the South and that hundreds of thousands more served the Confederacy as laborers. These claims have become a staple among Southern heritage groups and are taught in some Southern schools. Their function is to purge the Confederacy from its association with slavery and redeem the white South from guilt over its past. In this they have been partly successful: according to a recent poll, 70% of white Southerners continue to believe that the Confederacy was motivated by states rights rather than slavery.

Academic historians, in reaction to these claims, have totally dismissed the idea that more than a handful of African Americans could have served as Confederate soldiers. To suggest otherwise, they say, is to engage in “a pattern of distortion, deception, and deceit” in the use of evidence.

But according to African Americans themselves, writing during the war, thousands of blacks did fight as soldiers for the South. In my presentation, I assess and contextualize the sources, examine case studies of blacks fighting for the Confederacy, and explain how and why it happened and how Northern black leaders understood this phenomenon. Along the way I reveal the richly diverse ways in which blacks acted on their understandings of freedom.

Gee, a pattern of distortion, deception, and deceit … where have I heard that before?

I’ll be curious to hear Kevin’s report on the lecture.  In the meantime, I’ll note that once more blogging historians have sparked a discussion by perfectly respectable scholars on an issue of such interest that they even talk about it at Harvard.

And they might even be wrong.

 

A Primer in Basic Research

Over the last several weeks there’s been a rather heated exchange between several contributors to this Facebook group, which celebrates “southern heritage” (although it seems more like “Confederate heritage” to me) and a number of bloggers who have become known for their research disproving or qualifying claims about various supposed “black Confederates” (as in supposed soldiers).  There’s something to be said for the observation that this is an online debate and little more … except, of course, that so many students do so much of their research online these days that they are bound to come across this stuff, including claims about black Confederate soldiers.

Here’s an example.

Ann DeWitt, who is responsible for a leading website devoted to documenting the widespread existence of black Confederates in military service, shared her most recent research with her fellow Facebook compatriots (posting under the name “Royal Diadem”).  As she declares:

Captain P.P. Brotherson’s Confederate Officers record states eleven (11) blacks served with the 1st Texas Heavy Artillery in the “Negro Cooks Regiment.” This annotation can be viewed on footnote.com. See the third line on the left. Also, the record is cataloged in the National Archives Catalog ID 586957 and microfilm number M331 under “Confederate General and Staff Officers, and Nonregimental Enlisted Men.”

Could this be one of the types of regiments many Confederate historians have documented as part of Confederate History?

Well, could it?

Apparently not, according to Andy Hall, who began by taking a careful look at the document Ms. DeWitt shared with her friends.  Let’s look at it ourselves:

Hmm.  As Andy points out, somehow eleven black cooks for a heavy artillery unit stationed at Galveston, Texas, commanded by one Colonel Joseph Jarvis Cook, have been transformed into a “Negro Cooks Regiment.”

Read Andy’s post for the rest of the story.

As Gary Adams, the president of the Southern Heritage Preservation Group, says, in regard to a topic discussed here,

Everyone does realize one of the quotes here is a myth posted to demostrate why research from reputable sites is important.

Precisely.  Indeed, according to Mr. Adams, the discovery that Ulysses S. Grant did not actually say comments attributed to him moved him to create his group.  He should be applauded for that.

Now we’ll see what to make of his commitment to historical accuracy in this case … one celebrated on the Facebook page of the very group he founded to ensure a commitment to historical accuracy.

Update: Judging from this post, at least some of the members of the SHPG are aware of this misadventure in research.  We’ll see whether they have a commitment to real scholarship.

 

Research Question: Here We Go Again …

I had good reason to suspect that as soon as I used the phrase “Black Confederate Myth” or “myth of black Confederates” that someone would offer the usual snippets from the official records, undigested, usually from Union sources, to claim that there were blacks in Confederate military service.  I was not disappointed.  Rather than bury this essay in the comments section, I think it deserves its own post, so that everyone can discuss what’s been presented.  Here it is:

The War of the Rebellion:
A Compilation of the Official Records
of Union and Confederate Armies
Sept. 1862 Series I, Volume XIII
Major General Samuel R. Curtis (2nd Iowa Infantry) We are not likely to use one negro where the rebels have used a thousand. When I left Arkansas they were still enrolling negroes to fortify the rebellion.

August 1861 Series I, Volume IV
Colonel John W. Phelps (1st Vermont Infantry) They—the enemy—talked of having 9,000 men. They had twenty pieces of artillery, among which was the Richmond Howitzer Battery, manned by negroes.

May 1862 Series I, Volume XIV
Colonel Benjamin C. Christ (50th Regiment Pennsylvania Volunteers) There were six companies of mounted riflemen, besides infantry, among which were a considerable number of colored men.”

July 1862 Series I, Volume XVI
Lieutenant Colonel John G. Parkhurst (9th Michigan Infantry) There were also quite a number of negroes attached to the Texas and Georgia troops, who were armed and equipped, and took part in the several engagements with my forces during the day.

July 1862 Series III, Volume II
Richard Yates, Governor of Illinois Excerpt from a Letter to President Abraham Lincoln:
They [CSA] arm negroes and merciless savages in their behalf. Mr. Lincoln, the crisis demands greater efforts and sterner measures.

Sept. 1862 Series I, Volume XV
Major Frederick Frye (9th Regiment Connecticut Volunteers) Pickets were thrown out that night, and Captain Hennessy, Company E, of the Ninth Connecticut, having been sent out with his company, captured a colored rebel scout, well mounted, who had been sent out to watch our movements.”

Oct. 1862 Series I, Volume XIX, Part I-Reports
Lieutenant Colonel Stephen Wheeler Downey (3rd Maryland Infantry, Potomac Home Brigade) Question by the Judge Advocate.: Do you know of any individual of the enemy having been killed or wounded during the siege of Harpers Ferry?
Answer. I have strong reasons to believe that there was a negro killed, who had wounded 2 or 3 of my men. I know that an officer took deliberate aim at him, and he fell over. He was one of the skirmishers of the enemy, and wounded 3 of my men. I know there must have been some of the enemy killed.
Question. How do you know the negro was killed?
Answer. The officer saw him fall.

Jan. 1863 Series I, Volume XVII
Brigadier General D. Stuart (U.S. Army 4th Brigade and Second Division) It had to be prosecuted under the fire of the enemy’s sharpshooters, protected as well as the men might be by our skirmishers on the bank, who were ordered to keep up so vigorous a fire that the enemy should not dare to lift their heads above their rifle-pits; but the enemy, and especially their armed negroes, did dare to rise and fire, and did serious execution upon our men.

June 1863 Series II, Volume VI
(Prisoners of War) Lieutenant-Colonel William H Ludlow (Agent for Exchange of Prisoners / 73rd New York Volunteer Infantry) And more recently the Confederate legislature of Tennessee have passed an act forcing into their military service (I quote literally) all male free persons of color between the ages of fifteen and fifty, or such number as may be necessary, who may be sound in body and capable of actual service; and they further enacted that in the event a sufficient number of free persons of color to meet the wants of the State shall not tender their services, then the Governor is empowered through the sheriff’s of different counties to impress such persons until the required number is obtained.

September 1863 Series III, Volume III
Thomas H. Hicks (United States Senator, Maryland) Excerpt from a Letter to President Abraham Lincoln:
I do and have believed that we ought to use the colored people, after the rebels commenced to use them against us.

Aug. 1864 Series I, Volume XXXV, Part I, Reports, Correspondence, etc.
Brigadier General Alexander Asboth (U.S. Army, District of West Florida) We pursued them closely for 7 miles, and captured 4 privates of Goldsby’s company and 3 colored men, mounted and armed, with 7 horses and 5 mules with equipments, and 20 Austrian rifles

Nov. 1864 Series I, Volume XLI, Part IV, Correspondence, Etc.
Captain P. L. Powers (47th Missouri Infantry, Company H) We have turned up eleven bushwhackers to dry and one rebel negro.

April 1865 Series I, Volume XLIX, Part II
Major A. M. Jackson (10th U. S. Colored Heavy Artillery) The rebels are recruiting negro troops at Enterprise, Mississippi, and the negroes are all enrolled in the State.

I leave it to you to weigh the worth of these snippets as evidence.  Have at it … and no, the poster did not want to identify himself.  I wonder why.  Most people who live in Richardson, Texas, are not quite so shy, but Mr. Brown evidently is.

Making A List and Checking It Twice

Sometimes history repeats itself.

Readers of this blog will remember the visit paid by George Purvis and the “Southern Heritage Advancement Preservation and Education” group and its website.  Mr. Purvis claims he’s very interested in finding out evidence about black Confederates, and he’s currently engaged in making a list called “Negros in Gray.”  Mr. Purvis assures us that he “has spent countless hours researching what we have listed on this site, and we will continue to do so for the sake of educating our visitors and guests. We ask that you the viewer join us in applying as much factual detail to our site as possible.”

Well, Andy Hall appears to have taken Mr. Purvis up on his invitation.  The results are not good for Mr. Purvis.  Andy picked out a fellow named Peter Phelps, who was of interest to him because he hailed from Andy’s own county.  The result was a rather nice piece of research which nicely debunks Mr. Purvis’s claim that Peter Phelps was a black Confederate.

It will be interesting to see what Mr. Purvis says in response, or whether his fellow travelers, like “BorderRuffian,” scamper away again like cockroaches exposed to light.  For now, however, another Black Confederate claim is debunked.  Nice work, Andy.

What Should We Call It?

In the comments section, Matt Gallman offers the following observation:

There is a separate issue, that has been raised here and on Kevin’s site and elsewhere: Is there something in the act of debating that legitimizing beliefs that have no claim to legitimacy? Probably. And are there folks who pay no attention to the debate who get a sense that there is in fact a debate going on with two real sides? Probably that too.

I know of no answer to that problem, beyond the simple suggestion that folks who are fighting the good fight might want to keep using words like “myth” rather than “debate” in their titles (of lectures, articles, posts whatever) so that folks who are just glancing and not reading don’t come away with the idea that there is a legitimate debate here.

Matt has a good point here, in that suggesting there is a “debate” implies that there are two sides to this story, as opposed to what we usually see … some wild claims, a few people playing hit-and-run here and there, and so on.

So what would you call it?  How would you characterize this enterprise?