Pat Cleburne was a hard-fighting Irish immigrant who rose to the rank of Major General in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. In 1864 he shocked his commander and the Confederate government by proposing to free enslaved Blacks in the Confederacy and allow them to enlist in the Confederate forces. His detailed plan all but answers the question of whether there were Black Confederates. This is the first episode of the new Civil War Reconstruction podcast.
Show Notes:
The most important document to read is Pat Cleburne’s proposal to arm Black men to fight for the Confederacy. It is detailed, but well-written and accessible to most readers.
I’m only going to state this at this time, though Patrick Cleburne’s outline and notions about a plan of Emancipationism for ending slavery in the South is definitely worthy of further critical reflection, particularly when considered in the holistic context of the end of American slavery.
Personally, I do not consider the term ‘myth’ to be of any use anymore in either history or historiography. And this is by no means contingent on one historical topic or another, (ie. about a year or two ago, I saw the book and article announcing the ‘myth’ of the Wilderness in Virginia).
My attitude is one and the same to all applications of the term. And I feel so as ‘myth’ has been so disregarded from it’s original definition that it apparently is used to convey the following towards any subject it is applied to:
‘An account that has been associated in times past with a person/place/thing/etc, that is so absolutely incorrect that the person putting such forward is to be derided and no further examination of the account is necessary, in any context, whatsoever the question.’
I screen-captured the definition of ‘myth’ from the online American Heritage Dictionary a few years back and retain that. There were a number of sub-definitions to the term. All taken together and boiled down, they essentially convey that what a ‘myth’ means is-
1) What is commonly ascribed to a person/place/thing/etc, can not be validated based on the known evidence about that person/etc.
2) The unknown, or unverifiable, aspects of that person/etc, is more important in what is commonly ascribed to them than what can be definitively established, given the known evidence.
That’s why I don’t like using the term ‘myth’ anymore as a historian. I would rather to use the terms, ‘inaccurate’, etc.
Fair points. I used the term in the sense that it is an organizing principle for a certain “Rainbow Confederate” view of the Civil War irrespective of its facticity.
I understand what you’re getting at. It’s the same in the sense of viewing the war as ‘romantic and dashing’. As the description liner for the film, ‘Andersonville’, puts it, ‘There was nothing civil about the Civil War’.
I also eschew the use of the term ‘myth’ in many other historical fields, ie. it is ‘incorrect’ to state that the British forces didn’t know what Michael Collins looked like during the Anglo-Irish war, and as shown in the film of the same name starring Liam Neeson.
it is ‘inaccurate’ to state that the British were so avowedly racist towards Aboriginal Australians that they never contemplated recognizing their sovereignty over their traditional lands. That description of Contact in 1770 doesn’t make sense when considering the very wording of the Royal Proclamation in North America just 7 years earlier and utterly disproven upon review of the Captain Cook’s Secret Instructions:
“You are also with the Consent of the Natives to take Possession of Convenient Situations in
the Country in the Name of the King of Great Britain…”
Allow me to please make one further comment about this podcast.
Again, I am not interested in engaging in the historical dispute about Black Confederates. But I will protest about the infusion in this podcast about comparing Black Confederates to Jewish prisoners forced to labor for the Nazis, (as generally depicted in the films, ‘Sorbibor’, ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’).
My point of contention herein is the useage of the Nazis as a point of comparison. No one, including myself, is minimising the wrongfulness of slavery in any capacity.
The point of my contention is that once the imagery/subject of the Nazis has been invoked by comparing the Confederates to them, the more one may press for this as an apt comparison, it comes back to haunt in nightmarish context those whom use it.
For, if one will argue that the South was the Nazi Germany of the 19th Ce., then by extension, what does this mean the North was…?
Vichy France! Guilty of collaboration in the inhuman practices upon Humankind!
Having agreed to form a country in the first place with the South, (knowing full-well what slavery meant and conveyed); giving constitutional, national placement and protection to the institution, (via the 3/5 and Fugitive Slave tenets since 1789 in the Constitution and what exactly these conveyed on all Americans, no matter their professed beliefs), being willing to abide by the Missouri Compromise and Congressional Gag Rule, what the 1846-48 Mexican-American War was in truth fought for by troops in blue under the Stars and Stripes, (appropriation of new American lands to create new American slave states out of), passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act and how this was funded by the federal government, being willing to reconvene all the rights to slavery that had already been given and make them irrevocable via the Corwin and Crittenden Measures…
…there is no way, whatsoever, that slavery could have existed in the South unless the South had been enabled by the North in one and the same country.
This isn’t anything but collaboration; Vichy France to Nazi Germany.
Now, I put it; is this an apt and accurate comparison? Does this enable us to understand the war in the most accurate vantage point? No. Especially when we stop to consider that the North forced Black Americans into service and/or pressed labour in exactly the same fashion, (such as when Abraham Lincoln enabled that Black American slaves could be pressed into service when needed in Missouri in 1861, but then had to be returned to the slave owner if that person be a Union supporter, or, when he instigated an investigation into Union recruiters forcing by torture emancipated Black Americans into joining the Army by such measures as riding the rails.)
I understand the point of the Admin, that being that he contests if persons whom are impressed against their will into actions supporting a given military can be accurately seen as ‘supporting’ that military cause.
This is a good historical question to examine. I would simply put that the Nazis are not an apt point of comparison to invoke into examining this in the Civil War/War Between the States. I would humbly suggest a much more accurate historical example to make his point of comparison with would be the British POWS as Allied Servicemen in the Japanese prison camps as described in the book, ‘Unbroken’, by Lauren Hillenbrand.
Excellent point. Much like how I think the term ‘genocide’ gets abused and misused a lot by political idealouges who try to use history to promote a political agenda.
RKH-
I understand what you’re getting at.
If writers are using the term ‘genocide’ towards a historical argument, then that necessitates explaining they are aware of what genocide, per the UN’s definitions of it in physical and/or cultural form, is and how it applies to the topic cited.
But let’s get back to the focal point of the post, I understand completely the argument of the author that he was making against Black Confederates in his view. I simply feel another historical example is far better suited to convey the point.