The Black Confederate

Bill Yopp was the childhood friend and servant of his master, and followed him into battle

The United Daughters of the Confederacy, Sons of Confederate Veterans and Confederate

Spotsylvania resident Willie Levi Casey Jr. is an African-American member of the

Abraham Lincoln "was a racist who opposed equal rights for black people, who loved minstrel

shows, who used the N-word, who wanted to deport all blacks," a veteran journalist and historian

says. "There has been a systematic attempt to keep the American public from knowing the real

Lincoln and the depth of his commitment to white supremacy," says Lerone Bennett Jr., whose

new book, "Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's White Dream," examines Lincoln's record.

In Mississippi on Feb. 1, 1890 an appropriation for a monument to the Confederate dead was being

considered. A delegate had just spoken against the bill, when John F. Harris, A Negro Republican

How many Black soldiers served for the Confederacy in the War Between the States? Perhaps no

one will ever know. Estimates run anywhere from 30,000 to 100,000. However, because the victors

- the north - needed to give the world the impression the War was fought over slavery, a concerted

scheme was put into motion to suppress the figures by destroying records, thus giving credence to

their 'the war was fought over slavery' mantra. While a large number of government records were

distorted or destroyed, thousands of 'other' records in the form of letters and photos remain.

A team of biological anthropologists at Howard University in Washington are intensely focused on

a most grisly aspect of New York City's past. Led by Dr. Michael Blakey, the team has spent several

years examining the skeletal remains of more than 400 African slaves whose graves were accidentally

uncovered during the construction of a federal office tower in lower Manhattan nine years ago.

    Before William Clarke Quantrill and hundreds of his Missouri guerrillas raided Lawrence in 1863, John Noland rode ahead to scout out the town.

    Noland, Quantrill's primary scout, is just one of many blacks who served in Confederate units during the Civil War, said historian Ed Kennedy, who will speak at 6:30 p.m. today to the Civil War Roundtable of Eastern Kansas at the Koch Education Center at the Kansas History Center, 6425 S.W. 6th. Admission is free and the event is open to the public.

    Noland joined Quantrill because his family in Missouri had been abused by Jayhawkers, Kansas guerrillas who raided Missouri and later were mustered into the Union forces, Kennedy said. Photographs of Quantrill's raiders as they attended reunions after the Civil War show Noland sitting prominently with white members of the group.

    In the 1999 movie "Ride With the Devil," Noland is the basis for the character Daniel Holt, the freed black who along with his former owner rides with Quantrill's bushwhackers, Kennedy said.

    It is difficult to determine how many blacks fought in the Confederate forces, in part because many Confederate records were destroyed. Kennedy estimates seven percent to eight percent of the Confederate forces might have been black.

    Kennedy cites a number of sources, including diaries, letters, private publications, the "Official Records of the War of the Rebellion" and writings of black scholars.

    For instance:

    .. A Union sanitary commission officer saw 3,000 black armed combatants in the Confederate Army moving through Fredricksburg, Va., in 1862.

    .. An 1862 letter from Frederick Douglass to President Abraham Lincoln in which Douglass writes that many blacks serve in the Confederate Army as "real soldiers having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government."

    .. Pensions were paid to black Confederate soldiers.

    .. And photographs showed black veterans, who "wore their veterans badges as proudly as any whites."

    Blacks served in the Confederate Army "for the same reason they defended the United States colonies in the Revolutionary War," Kennedy said. "They were patriots," who thought their homes were being invaded by the Union. They felt like this was their home, that this was their country. They weren't fighting for slavery."

    The black Confederates were a combination of free blacks and slaves who were house servants accompanying white masters, Kennedy said. Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest freed 44 of his slaves after they served Forrest's cavalry forces, Kennedy said. Unlike blacks in the Union Army who served in all-black regiments, blacks in the Confederate Army fought in mixed units, he said.

    The topic of black Confederate soldiers is rarely talked about because "it's not politically correct," Kennedy said. Some people who hear about black soldiers fighting in the Confederate Army "just go ballistic," Kennedy said. He likens their reaction to people who didn't know blacks served in the Union Army before release of the 1989 movie "Glory," the film about the 54th Massachusetts, an all-black unit Union regiment. (The first black regiment to fight in the Civil War was the 1st Kansas Colored Infantry.)

    Civil War Historian Ed Kennedy is a retired lieutenant colonel in the Army and a former instructor of history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth. He teaches Army Reserve Officer Training Corps classes at Leavenworth High School and is co-owner of Historical Leadership Seminars, a private company that takes corporate executives to battlefields to teach leadership and decision-making skills.

Copyright 2001 Topeka Capital-Journal

[Black Confederates]

It has been estimated that over 65,000 Southern blacks were in the Confederate ranks, with some estimates being considerably higher. National Park Service historian, Ed Bearrs, stated, "I don't want to call it a conspiracy to ignore the role of Blacks both above and below the Mason-Dixon line, but it was definitely a tendency that began around 1910". Enter here to discover what the victors wanted no one to know - that the Civil War was not about slavery.

The debate over the role of the African Americans who served in Confederate armies has not subsided .... official records, newspaper articles, veterans accounts, and other surviving documents suggest that large numbers of slaves and freed men served as Southern allies - and in some instances as soldiers and sailors for the Confederacy.

J. J. Johnson

Walter Williams

[Black Neo-Confederate]

A marvelous site by J. J. Johnson, editor-in-chief, and Walter Williams, of The Sierra Times, dedicated to the Black Americans who love and stand up for Dixie.

True Georgia Flag - May Soon Wave Again

ATLANTA - Some Georgia business leaders are turning yellow over governor's proposed referendum on whether to bring back the old state flag with its big Confederate emblem.

The following article ran in the Vicksburg Post in August of 1982. Many thanks go to Eddy Cresap, a member of John C Pemberton SCV Camp 1354, for forwarding this article to the SCV Dispatch via Lamar Roberts of the 'Gray and Blue Naval Museum'. This is but another of thousands of pieces of the 'Black Soldier Serving the Confederacy' puzzle. For several more pieces of proof, please go to the Current Events link on the Home Page.

"Despite its simplicity, the obelisk in the grassy plot, enclosed by a pretty iron fence, is probably the most unusual Confederate monument in the United States: it is dedicated to black Confederates.

"Erected sometime before the turn of the century in Canton Miss., the granite monument was given by William H. Howcott, "to the memory of the good and loyal servants who followed the fortunes of Harvey's Scouts during the civil war."

"Howcott, who was a member of the Scouts and later became a successful real estate agent in New Orleans, inscribed on the other side that it was "A tribute to my faithful servant and friend Willis Howcott, a colored boy of rare loyalty and faithfulness, whose memory I cherish with deep gratitude." (It was not unusual for servants to take the name of the family which owned them)

"Though blacks were more conspicuous in the service of the Union (many freed male slaves were forced into Northern Blue), history is full of accounts of service by slaves and free men of color to the Southern Cause.

"In Vicksburg, two free blacks were among the first to buy Confederate bonds, and during the siege in 1863 a reporter for the New York Herald wrote" On our right a Negro sharpshooter has been observed whose exploits are deserving of notice. He mounts a breastwork regardless of all danger, and getting sight of a federal soldier, draws up his musket at arm's length and fires, never failing of hitting his mark …. It is certain that Negroes are fighting here, though probably only as sharpshooters."

"During the same period, Adm. Porter arrested a Negro minister as a Confederate spy, and during the occupation of Vicksburg three more backs were jailed for the same reason.

"Master spy for the Confederacy, Thomas Nelson Conrad, was one of thousands of Southerners who took a personal servant along to war with him. Conrad's slave, William was armed and fought alongside his master; many others, from all accounts, were just as trusted and faithful.

"The Confederate Government waited too late to organize and arm regiments of slaves, for when they finally agreed to do so it was March, 1865 - too late to turn the tide.

"At the Blue - Gray Reunion at Vicksburg in 1890, two black Confederate veterans, William Gant of Indianola and Henry Wyatt of Greenville, registered with their respective units, Gant with the Rodney Guards and Wyatt with company E, 21^st Mississippi. Gant had fought with General Albert Sidney Johnson in Utah before the war began and later saw service at Shiloh; at Gettysburg he was wounded in the left ankle. It was July 5, 1865 - three months after Lee surrendered - that Gant decided to call it quits. He was never paroled - he simply left North Carolina and walked home. Wyatt was best remembered for his attempt to rescue the body of a friend, Orderly Sgt. Beech of Company E of the 21^st Mississippi, when Beech was killed at Cedar Creek. Wyatt had hoped to bury his young friend; with bullets whizzing around, he bore the body on his shoulders as the Confederates retreated in a rout, and he relinquished his sad task only to avoid capture.

"The Vicksburg Post in 1890 commented that Wyatt and Gant will perhaps be a strange sight "to the Northern veterans, but that they typified 'many colored people who were faithful to the people who raised them,"

"The black Confederate soldiers, however, have been forgotten except by the Canton memorial and the recent wreath-laying in their memory."

Again, many thanks go to Eddy Cresap of the John C Pemberton SCV Camp 1354 in Vicksburg Ms, and Lamar Roberts of the Gray and Blue Naval Museum, for both finding this article and getting this article to the public.

The following article was contributed to the SCV Dispatch by Calvin E. Johnson, Jr. of the Chattahoochee Guards

In Mississippi on Feb. 1, 1890 an appropriation for a monument to the Confederate dead was being considered. A delegate had just spoken against the bill, when John F. Harris, a Negro Republican delegate from Washington, County, rose to speak:

"Mr. Speaker! I have arisen here in my place to offer a few words on the bill. I have come from a sick bed. Perhaps it was not prudent for me to come. But sir, I could not rest quietly in my room without contributing a few remarks of my own.

"I was sorry to hear the speech of the young gentlemen from Marshall County. I am sorry that any son of a soldier should go on record as opposed to the erection of a monument in honor of the brave dead. And, Sir, I am convinced that had he seen what I saw at Seven Pines, and in the Seven Day's fighting around Richmond, the battlefield covered with the mangled forms of those who fought for their country and for their country's honor, he would not have made the speech. When the news came that the South had been invaded, those men went forth to fight for what they believed, and they made no requests for monuments. But they died, and their virtues should be remembered.

"Sir, I went with them. I, too, wore the gray, the same color my master wore. We stayed four long years, and if that war had gone on till now I would have been there yet. I want to honor those brave men who died for their convictions.

"When my mother died I was a boy. Who, Sir, then acted the part of a mother to the orphaned slave boy, but my old MISSUS! Were she living now, or could speak to me from those high realms where are gathered the sainted dead, she would tell me to vote for this bill. And, Sir, I shall vote for it. I want it known to all the world that my vote is given in favor of the bill to erect a monument in HONOR OF THE CONFEDERATE DEAD."

When the applause died down, the measure passed overwhelmingly, and every Negro member voted "AYE".

[Black Confederates]

[Black Neo-Confederate]

A marvelous site by J. J. Johnson, editor-in-chief, and Walter Williams, of The Sierra Times, dedicated to the Black Americans who love and stand up for Dixie.

True Georgia Flag - May Soon Wave Again

ATLANTA - Some Georgia business leaders are turning yellow over governor's proposed referendum on whether to bring back the old state flag with its big Confederate emblem.

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