OCTOBER 17, 1864:
The Governors of the
Confederate States of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia,
Alabama, and Mississippi meet in Augusta, Georgia. “The Augusta Conference”
discusses increasing the level of Poor Relief, the raising of additional
brigades of State Militia, the possibility of State-by-State-supported blockade
running, the growing problem of military desertions in the C.S.A. army, and, by
far most revolutionary, the emancipation of slaves to aid in the war effort.
The
idea of Confederate emancipation is gaining currency. Quietly discussed in
correspondence and in diaries since the early days of the war --- “Free our negroes and put them in the army,”
wrote Mary Chesnut in December 1861 --- most Southerners nonetheless remain
aghast at the idea.
Still,
Confederate emancipation was bruited about frequently enough in the early days
of the war to concern Ralph Waldo Emerson, who feared in 1862 that the South
would emancipate its slaves, seize the moral high ground in the conflict, and
win the war with European support.
Like
much else, the idea of Confederate emancipation ebbed and flowed alongside
Confederate military fortunes. Contemplated in 1861, the idea became moribund
in 1862 as Robert E. Lee began a string of brilliant field victories. After Gettysburg,
the idea of freeing the slaves began to spread again, aided in part by the
religious revivalism that was sweeping the Confederate ranks.
In
January of 1864, the iconoclastic General Patrick Cleburne C.S.A. had openly called
for Confederate emancipation: “Satisfy
the negro that if he faithfully adheres to our standard during the war he shall
receive his freedom and that of his race . . .
and we change the race from a dreaded weakness to a position of
strength.”
Cleburne’s
comments, endorsed by some, rejected by many, created a firestorm in the
Confederate Officer Corps so severe that Jefferson Davis had to issue an Order
that the subject was off limits. But the evaporation of the Confederacy’s
fighting forces --- through battle deaths, disease, defeats, and desertions ---
had created a desperate need for a new reserve of troops.
That
reserve, logically, was the slave population. Numbering four million in total
in 1860, the Confederacy had the option to call upon hundreds of thousands --- possibly
as many as one million --- fit and healthy black men in that population to take
up arms in the Southern cause. Not long after the Augusta Conference, Jefferson
Davis discussed the proposal with Robert E. Lee, who enthusiastically gave it
his support.
Confederate
emancipation, as Lee and Davis divined it, was not intended to grant equal
rights to the former slaves, but rather to place them into a condition of
“peonage” in which the white population could choose (or not) to bestow limited
property rights and domestic relations rights upon the newly-freed blacks. This
was seen as a far better alternative than allowing the victorious Yankees to
dictate racial policy after the South’s defeat in the war.
“The time has come,” the Governor of
Louisiana announced, “for us to put into
the army every able-bodied negro man as a soldier.”
The
editor of the Jackson Mississippian summed
up the South’s Hobson’s Choice perfectly, opining that “We must save ourselves from the rapacious North --- WHATEVER THE
COST.”
But
will blacks fight for the South? By mid-October 1864, it is clear to most
slaves that the North will win. The story is told of a Southern slaveowner who
explained to a field hand, “If you fight
for us you will be free,” to which the slave replied, “That’s as may be, Massa. But if I don’t fight for you, we’re all
going to be free!”
Despite
Lee’s very public support for the Confederate emancipation plan, there are
Southerners who stringently believe that the “peculiar institution” is the raison d’etre of the Confederacy, and
still others who consider the idea of arming slaves “monstrous,” and “revolting
to Southern sentiment, Southern pride, and Southern honor.” Such men
continue to insist, even in mid-October 1864, that “We are not whipped and can never be whipped.”
