Saturday, November 8, 2014

November 7, 1864---“If the negro would make a good soldier then . . . it is the end of the revolution.”



NOVEMBER 7, 1864:       

President Jefferson Davis addresses the Confederate Congress. In his speech, reproduced in part below, Davis does ask for slaves to be placed into the Confederate Army --- but he pulls his punch, asking for only 40,000 to be purchased by the Confederacy as service staff such as cooks, teamsters, quartermasters, and the like. This is a far cry from the plan he discussed with General Lee, to arm and emancipate 300,000 black men. Still, Davis’ speech is revolutionary if for nothing more than his assertion of the slave’s relationship as a person to the Confederate nation. And there is more:

  


Viewed merely as property, and therefore as the subject of impressment, the service or labor of the slave has been frequently claimed for short periods in the construction of defensive works. The slave, however, bears another relation to the state --- that of a person . . .  


 . . . [F]or the purposes  . . .  of camping, marching, and packing trains . . .  length of service adds greatly to the value of the negro's labor. Hazard is also encountered in all . . .  the duties required of them [and these] demand loyalty and zeal.


. . . Whenever the entire property in the service of a slave is . . .  acquired by the Government, the question is presented by what tenure he should be held. Should he be retained in servitude, or should his emancipation be held out to him as a reward for faithful service, or should it be granted at once on the promise of such service; and if emancipated what action should be taken to secure for the freed man the permission of the State from which he was drawn to reside within its limits after the close of his public service? The permission would doubtless be more readily accorded as a reward for past faithful service, and a double motive for zealous discharge of duty would thus be offered to those employed by the Government  . . . If this policy should commend itself to the judgment of Congress, it is suggested that, in addition to the duties heretofore performed by the slave, he might be advantageously employed as a pioneer and engineer laborer, and, in that event, that the number should be augmented to forty thousand.


[T]he use of slaves as soldiers . . . is justifiable,  if necessary . . . The subject is to be viewed by us, therefore, solely in the light of policy and our social economy. When so regarded, I must dissent from those who advise a general levy and arming of the slaves for the duty of soldiers [u]ntil our white population shall prove insufficient for the armies we require and can afford to keep in the field . . . But should the alternative ever be presented of subjugation, or of the employment of the slave as a soldier, there seems no reason to doubt what should then be our decision . . .  If the subject involved no other consideration than the mere right of property, the sacrifices heretofore made by our people have been such as to permit no doubt of their readiness to surrender every possession in order to secure independence . . . [Part of this is t]he fulfillment of the task which has been so happily begun --- that of Christianizing and improving the condition of the Africans who have by the will of Providence been placed in our charge . . . [T]he people of the several States of the Confederacy have abundant reason to be satisfied  . . . These considerations, however, are rather applicable to the improbable contingency of our need of resorting to this element of assistance . . . 


It is so much doubletalk, and the Confederate Congress hears it as such. Despite Davis’ assertion that he “must dissent” from conscripting slaves, the entire speech addresses nothing much but the very issue expressed in one tortured sentence: 


“[T]he use of slaves as soldiers . . . is justifiable,  if . . . our white population shall prove insufficient for the armies we require.”


Everyone knows this is the present reality, not simply an if.  The result is explosive. The Confederate Congress immediately adjourns into closed-door sessions to acrimoniously debate the issue.   


Judah P. Benjamin, Davis’ Secretary of War, asserts, “We want means!”  but a Mississippi Congressman retorts, “Victory itself will be robbed of its glory if shared with slaves.”  

The fire-eating Georgia Congressman, Robert Toombs agrees with his Mississippi colleague that “The worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves.”  
 



General Howell Cobb adds, “If the negro would make a good soldier then our whole theory of slavery is wrong. It is the beginning of the end of the revolution.” Several members of Congress call for the end of the war and reunification with the United States in lieu of slave emancipation. 



The debate soon reaches beyond the closed doors of Congress. The Richmond Post-Dispatch goes so far as to question General Lee’s nationalism, calling him “a Unionist . . . a hereditary Federalist . . . and an emancipationist”  but then ends its diatribe lamely, “There is no doubt that the country will give General Lee what he asks --- whatever he asks.”   

 The Charleston Mercury, the most fire-eating of all Confederate newspapers, thunders: “We want no Confederate government without our institutions --- and we will have none!”  

R.M.T Hunter, the President pro tempore of the Confederate Senate asks rhetorically, “If not for our property rights . . . then what are we fighting for?”



By asking the question, Hunter has come, unconsciously, to the crux of the matter. Is the Confederacy fighting for the perpetuation of slavery or for its independence?  Tellingly, the Confederate Congress reaches no decisions at this critical juncture. It just continues to debate. 



And perhaps most ironically of all, the United States House of Representatives will be engaged in its own vociferous debate this session, regarding the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and the end of slavery.






















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