November 5, 1864---The Fort Smith Expedition; The Debate Over Confederate Emancipation Goes On

NOVEMBER 5, 1864:        

The Fort Smith Expedition. Truly tired by the constant reappearance of General Sterling Price C.S.A.’s ineffective but harassing column, a Union column from Fort Smith begins beating the bounds for Price. A number of skirmishes occur with scattered C.S. forces, and Brigadier General Lewis Cabell C.S.A. is captured, along with a wagon train of Confederate civilians trying to flee further south. Price’s column manages to elude the Union force. At this point Price’s column has passed into Indian Territory searching for food for its men and fodder for its horses, both of which are desperately short.

Harper’s Weekly publishes a cartoon lampooning Confederate efforts to enlist blacks in the C.S. armies.

Since the Augusta Conference of October 17^th the idea of enlisting slaves to fight for the Confederacy has been gaining ground. Robert E. Lee has endorsed the idea in conversations with Jefferson Davis, and Lee has quietly begun laying the groundwork for admitting slaves into the army. Quite remarkably, in the midst of the Siege of Petersburg, Lee conducts a straw poll of the men in the Army of Northern Virginia. The response to the idea of having slaves fight is overwhelmingly positive. Heartened, Lee solicits comments, which run the gamut from the articulate (“Now is no time to be ruled by our primitive prejudices” writes a Virginia Colonel) to the crude but heartfelt (“Let the coons fight!” wrote a Mississippi Private). Several men want to know if they will be furloughed to go home once the black soldiers arrive, and a handful recommend turning the fighting entirely over to the slaves. Lee has no intention of doing so, but unlike the Union army’s segregated U.S.C.T. units he anticipates a series of integrated units in which his battle-hardened veterans can help train, assist, and supervise (read “oversee”) the African-Americans. Expecting that the Confederate Congress will respond with alacrity to ease the dire manpower needs of the Southern armies, Lee writes up a plan to induct 300,000 slaves into the army (all of whom will be conditionally emancipated). It is a revolutionary plan on many levels, not least because if Lee gets the numbers he wants the black soldiery will outnumber the whites nearly two-to-one. Lee submits his plan to Jefferson Davis. And waits . . .