Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War

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Overview


In early 1864, as the Confederate Army of Tennessee licked its wounds after being routed at the Battle of Chattanooga, Major-General Patrick Cleburne (the "Stonewall of the West") proposed that "the most courageous of our slaves" be trained as soldiers and that "every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war" be freed.
In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at such Confederate plans to arm and free slaves. He shows that within a ...
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Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War

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Overview


In early 1864, as the Confederate Army of Tennessee licked its wounds after being routed at the Battle of Chattanooga, Major-General Patrick Cleburne (the "Stonewall of the West") proposed that "the most courageous of our slaves" be trained as soldiers and that "every slave in the South who shall remain true to the Confederacy in this war" be freed.
In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at such Confederate plans to arm and free slaves. He shows that within a year of Cleburne's proposal, which was initially rejected out of hand, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Robert E. Lee had all reached the same conclusions. At that point, the idea was debated widely in newspapers and drawing rooms across the South, as more and more slaves fled to Union lines and fought in the ranks of the Union army. Eventually, the soldiers of Lee's army voted on the proposal, and the Confederate government actually enacted a version of it in March. The Army issued the necessary orders just two weeks before Appomattox, too late to affect the course of the war. Throughout the book, Levine captures the voices of blacks and whites, wealthy planters and poor farmers, soldiers and officers, and newspaper editors and politicians from all across the South. In the process, he sheds light on such hot-button topics as what the Confederacy was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South.
Confederate Emancipation offers an engaging and illuminating account of a fascinating and politically charged idea, setting it firmly and vividly in the context of the Civil War and the part played in it by the issue of slavery and the actions of the slaves themselves.
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Editorial Reviews

David W. Blight
Levine breathes some welcome truths into this dispute over public memory. "The Confederacy had come into the world to protect slavery," he writes, and those leaders who urged arming slaves by freeing them did so "not despite their antebellum values but because of them. In pushing to enact this measure, they were trying to preserve as much of the Old South as they could." Confederates almost achieved the goals of Confederate emancipation, despite losing on the battlefield. This book reminds us, however, of the profound importance of Union victory.
— The Washington Post
KLIATT - Raymond Puffer
The problems and ramifications of slavery were to bedevil the Confederate government all through the Civil War. To begin with, the very existence of the South's "peculiar institution" was bedrock to the entire secession movement. For all the argument about State's Rights, economics, and geographical differences, no one south of the Mason-Dixon Line ever imagined that the Confederacy could survive if slavery were ended. At first, both North and South considered it to be a huge advantage to the rebels—cheap forced labor would keep the economy going and release huge numbers of farmers and workers to become soldiers. As the war dragged on, however, and more and more slaves fled to the Northern lines, this halcyon idea began to change. Southern politicians noted that neither farming nor manufacturing were going especially well, and the appearance of black freedmen in the Federal armies brought flickers of panic. For the rest of the war, a huge argument engulfed the southern states as to whether the Confederacy should arm its male slaves and put them into the front lines. Levine uses the ensuing debates to show that the South had never really come to grips with its black population, nor how to deal with their servitude. Might arming some slaves ignite a dreaded slave revolt, or would they prove a Godsend on the battlefield? On the other hand, were they even capable of fighting as well as whites? Should freedom be offered to them as a reward? If so, what of their families back in the slave quarters? Why would the southern oligarchy support such a move if it beggared them? As Southern defeat loomed ever nearer, some even began to argue desperately that black soldiers would indeed fightfor the Confederacy and then willingly return to their servitude. Levine, an historian at the University of Illinois, brilliantly demonstrates the turmoil and cross-purposes that hindered the Confederate government all through the war. Although he writes better than many academics, this book is by no means "popular history." Advanced YA readers will handle it, though, and it is recommended for AP classes as well as general university collections.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780195147629
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • Publication date: 1/1/2006
  • Pages: 272
  • Product dimensions: 9.40 (w) x 6.70 (h) x 1.00 (d)

Meet the Author

Bruce Levine is the James G. Randall Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War and The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of Civil War, and is co-author of Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society.

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Table of Contents

Introduction : the puzzle of Confederate emancipation 1
1 "A desperate expedient" : the heresy and its origins, 1861-1864 16
2 "What did we go to war for?" : the critics' indictment 40
3 Black and gray : slaves and the Confederate war effort 60
4 "We can devise the means" : the long-term plan 89
5 "On the footing of soldiers" : enacting and implementing new policy, 1864-1865 110
6 "Like a drowning man catching at straws" : could it have worked? 129
Conclusion : from black troops to black codes : "Confederate emancipation" in war and peace 148
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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 4.5
( 5 )
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Sort by: Showing all of 5 Customer Reviews

  • Anonymous

    Posted May 9, 2008

    Fascinating

    Confederate Emancipation is an groundbreaking look into how the Confederate government viewed emancipation. Levine proves that it was not only the Union government that was considering freeing some of the slaves. Levine does an excellent job in detailing allof the arguments and reasoning behind the Confederates arguement. I highly recommend this for both the lay person or the serious student.

    1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted May 12, 2013

    A true story

    Those are the kind of books that are good butt just have to be sad at the end

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 28, 2008

    The issues from both sides.

    Confederate Emancipation was my favorite book to read out of the selected readings for my history class because it covered emancipation from both the North and South. I never really knew anything about Southern issues of emancipation and rather they were willing or not. It was somewhat hard to follow because Levine jumps from year to year in no particular order. He would start with the year 1864 and then the next page would be discussing something in the year 1862. Besides the date confusion, it really covered both the North and South's opinions on, objections against, and arguments for arming and emancipating slaves. This book represented something not deeply focused on in history classes about the Civil War. As a professor, I would definitely use this book as a required reading for class. It was useful and educational.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted April 4, 2008

    South vs. North

    In this book, Levine did a good job on describing the reasons behind the favor and the opposition of arming the slaves in the Southern states during the Civil War. I recomend this book especially if you want to study the issues of slavery and civil war in more detail. I would use this book if I were a professor because it did a good job of explaining the tension that occured during the civil war and why arming slaves was one of the most debated issues during the war.

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  • Anonymous

    Posted July 20, 2009

    No text was provided for this review.

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