The Myth of the Black Confederate Soldier
If you’ve ever researched Civil War history, you might have stumbled across the assertion that Black soldiers took up arms and fought in the Confederate armies. As the debate surrounding Confederate symbols in public spaces has increasingly become a part of our conversations regarding racial injustice and violence, many defenders of these symbols have pushed back on the notion that Confederate symbols represent a cause which aimed to preserve slavery. One of the ways they do this is by pointing to the supposed existence of Black Confederate soldiers.
Although this myth evaporates when subjected to the barest historical scrutiny, it continues to endure as an outgrowth of the ‘Southern Lost Cause’ theory - a debunked yet regrettably durable interpretation of the Civil War which (for generations) has sought to downplay the centrality of the slavery issue while elevating a narrative of white Southern heroism. It’s pseudo-historical nonsense.
Here are the facts.
Black men did serve the Confederacy in the Civil War but they were forced to due to the fact that they were enslaved. Legally barred from serving as conventional soldiers, Black men in the Confederate army were forced to aid the war effort by serving in roles as cooks, teamsters, and manual laborers. Their forced labor was crucial to the Confederate army’s ability to operate as a fighting force. However, for many the simple presence of Black men alongside white men in the Confederate army is considered enough evidence to argue that Black men were present within the Confederate ranks as soldiers and therefore were equal to their white counterparts. Under this version of events, the notion that the Black Confederate soldier fought willingly alongside white men represents an attempt to downplay the role of slavery in the Confederate cause. The logic is that if Black people supported the Confederate cause, it could not be as bad as historians or Northerners say it is. But what this analysis ignores is the fact the legal status of these Black men present in the Confederate war effort.
The photo in question which shows Andrew Chandler sitting with Silas Chandler. Silas was an enslaved man who accompanied Andrew to war.
Take for example, a photograph which has become an enduring symbol of the Black Confederate myth in which Confederate soldier Andrew Chandler is depicted alongside a Black man named Silas Chandler. This photo has become central to those who wish “to reimagine the nature of Black Confederate service” as it depicts a white man and a Black man sitting side by side in what appears to be Confederate uniform. However, many interpretations of this photo ignore the fact that Silas Chandler was an enslaved person. This can be seen in the caption given to the photograph by a Florida chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans which describes the image as “Andrew Chandler and his lifelong friend, Silas Chandler, who accompanied Andrew to war and remained true to the South his entire life.”
In this way, we are able to see how the stories of Black Confederate soldiers are an extension of the “loyal slave narrative” which came to prominence as a direct response to how study of the Civil War heavily focused on the legacy of slavery and race. It is yet another way in which the Lost Cause attempts to minimize the central role that the institution of slavery played in the Southern states. If we neglect the fact that Black men who aided the Confederacy were forced to do as on the account of being enslaved, the “coercive nature of the master-slave relationship” is omitted from the narrative.
A group of Black teamsters who accompanied Confederate armies in Virginia
The prevalence of the Black Confederate narrative can be seen in the fact that even the National Park Service falsely labelled the photograph of Silas and Andrew Chandler as recently as 2010, stating that Silas was a former slave and omitting the crucial master-slave distinction by asserting that “both boys fought together at Chickamauga” as well as falsely claiming that Silas received a “Mississippi Confederate Veteran Pension” following the war. Ignoring the enslaved nature of the Black men who were forced to lend their labor to the Confederate army allows for the spread of misinformation in the historical sphere. However on a much more crucial note, it glosses over the horrors of slavery as well as how central the institution was to the social order of the pre-Civil War South.
From the very moment that the first enslaved Africans stepped onto American soil, slavery was rationalized as a “civilizing force.” It was argued through the institution of slavery, the enslaved person had their soul saved as they were forcibly converted to Christianity and as a result, white southerners could benefit off the fruits of their forced labor. Here we see that the legal status of enslaved people in the South was directly linked to the status of white people. This fact becomes more evident upon the examination of how Confederate authorities viewed the status of the enslaved men that labored for their armies. Many people argue the existence of Black Confederate soldiers by pointing to the fact that several Black men received Confederate pensions in the 1920s, however this argument largely omits the fact that every Black man identified on these pensions was listed as a slave or servant -- not as a soldier. Additionally, every Black man who received a Confederate pension had to list the name of the man who had owned him. This shows that without a white person to be attached to, Black men in the Confederacy did not exist as people in their own right and that the status of the Black people in the South was irrevocably linked to the white people who subjugated them.
Black laborers bury the dead in Fredericksburg, Virginia around 1862
Additionally, omitting the fact that Black Confederates were enslaved laborers for the South’s war effort conveniently downplays the inherently coercive nature of the slave-master relationship. Black men did not accompany the Confederate army willingly. In fact, a key way in which slave owners exercised control was through their ability to sell an enslaved person at any time. Historian David Goldfield points out that “the threat of the auction block weighed more heavily on [the enslaved] than the threat of the lash.” Many of the enslaved men who accompanied the Confederate armies were forced to leave their family members behind. These Black men would have been well aware of the fact that their family was considered property and that either themselves or their loved ones could be sold if they stepped out of line. In fact, the separation of enslaved families was so common that following the Civil War several accounts from Union soldiers told of “former slaves streaming in both directions” in search of the family members from which they had been forcefully separated.
Moreover, historical records from within the Confederacy further poke holes in the existence of Black Confederate soldiers. Attempts to enlist Black men into the Confederate army at an official capacity were touted by Confederate officers, but these opinions were a small minority. The most notable example of this is Patrick Cleburne, an Irish born Confederate general, who put forth a proposal to arm and recruit Southern slaves. In response to the effect of the Emancipation Proclamation in the North, which had allowed for Black men to enlist in the ranks of the Union army, Cleburne formulated a manuscript in which he suggested that the Confederate army allow Black men to fight for the Southern cause in exchange for their freedom. His suggestion was immediately opposed by fellow Confederate leaders. Major General William H. T. Walker wrote to tell Cleburne that the suggestion was so “incendiary” that he felt it was his duty to report it to Confederate President Jefferson Davis. Brigadier General Clement H. Stevens responded by stating “I do not want independence, if it is to be won by the help of the Negro.”
A portrait of Major General Patrick Cleburne
As a result, Jefferson Davis ordered that Cleburne’s manuscript be suppressed and kept private. We only know about it because a copy of the manuscript resurfaced about three decades after the war in California among the papers of Major Calhoun Benham. He had requested a copy of the proposal from Cleburne so that he could formulate a dissenting reply to be presented at a later occasion. The Confederacy would eventually adopt a proposal similar to Cleburne’s in March 1865 when two Black Confederate regiments were raised in Richmond, VA but never saw combat as the war ended just two months later. However, this action does not confirm that Black Confederate soldiers existed in the capacity many people claim but rather it proves that allowing Black men to take up arms in an official capacity for the Confederate cause was a desperate last resort.
Yet even then, the decision was meant with dissent from Confederate leadership. A statement by Robert Toombs, the first Confederate Secretary of State and a general under Robert E. Lee, in response to policy appeared in the a June 1865 copy of the Augusta Chronicle: “The negro, first, is unfitted for a soldier. Secondly, if I am wrong in that, if he is capable of making a soldier, he ought to be and will be a Yankee soldier… In my opinion, the worst calamity that could befall us would be to gain our independence by the valor of our slaves, instead of our own. If we are conquered by the fortunes of war, we may save our honor and leave the cause to our descendants, who may be wiser and braver than we are and may avail themselves of the accidents of human affairs, and yet win what we are ignominiously throwing away. The day that the army of Virginia allows a negro regiment to enter their lines as soldiers they will be degraded, ruined and disgraced.”
We have evidence of all Black units in the Union army but nothing of the sort among the Confederate troops. Photographed here is Company E of the Fourth U.S. Colored Infantry Regiment. The regiment was raised in Baltimore, Maryland and saw action in both North Carolina and Virginia.
When examining the historical records available today, there are only vague anecdotal accounts of Black men taking up arms for the Confederacy compared to the primary sources that show the existence of all-Black regiments in the Union Army. This is not to say that there were absolutely no enslaved Black men who accompanied Confederate armies or fired a gun for the Confederacy - but these men are an exception . If such instances occurred, the enslaved man in question would have to operate under the scrutiny of Confederate authorities because a Black man serving within their ranks was considered inherently unequal and untrustworthy . No Confederate officer ever references Black soldiers in the official records from the war, yet commonly references Black laborers who accompanied the Confederate units.
The evidence overwhelmingly shows that the Confederacy did not want Black men fighting amongst their ranks as allowing this would have fundamentally undermined the white supremacist ideals on which the Confederate States of America were founded. Yet, the Black Confederate movement has been adopted as “an effort to get the Confederacy right on race retrospectively” according to history professor Gary Gallagher. In other words, the notion that Black and white men served in the Confederate army willingly as equals has come to prominence as a way to disassociate the Confederate cause from white supremacy and slavery.