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“Impetuous Charge of the First Colored Rebel Regiment"
No caption.
As early as 1863, a few voices in
the Confederacy had called for the enlistment of black slaves into the
Confederate armed forces, but most remained opposed to such a policy,
which would have violated the predominant assumption that blacks were
racially inferior. However,
as the military situation worsened for the Confederacy in the fall of
1864, the controversial idea resurfaced with greater force.
That September, Union newspapers published a letter confiscated
from Governor Henry W. Allen of Louisiana in which he urged the
Confederacy to arm “every able-bodied Negro.” A few weeks later, the influential Richmond Enquirer
expanded the suggestion to endorse emancipation and equal treatment of
black soldiers in return for military service to the Confederacy.
Both the governor’s letter
and the newspaper editorial are excerpted in the featured cartoon’s
caption. In contrast to
those statements of confidence in black loyalty to the Confederacy, the
illustration envisions the “First Colored Rebel Regiment” gleefully
seeking genuine freedom by crossing the battle line into Union
territory, where a black Union soldier welcomes them.
The federal Congress had approved the use of blacks in the Union
military in July 1862, and their recruitment began in
earnest after the Emancipation Proclamation
of January 1,
1863. Almost 200,000 black
men served as soldiers, sailors, or laborers for the Union armed forces
during the Civil War.
The first major proposal for
arming slaves and free blacks in the Confederacy was the “Cleburne
Memorial” presented by General Patrick Cleburne, an Army of Tennessee
division commander, to an officers’ meeting on January 2, 1864.
By that time, there was a serious need to replace the dwindling
number of servicemen in the Confederate military, which was about a
third of the size of the Union forces.
Cleburne told the assembled officers that the Confederacy was
losing because of the lack of soldiers and that slavery, which had been
a source of strength at the beginning of the war, was now a detriment to
survival. In order for the
Confederacy to defend its independence, it would have to give up slavery
and arm black men.
The Cleburne Memorial was
notable because it was made by a well-respected military leader, not a
politician or journalist, and it went beyond any previous proposal to
urge complete emancipation, rather than conscription without
emancipation or emancipation only for servicemen.
Cleburne’s commanding officer, General Joseph E. Johnston,
refused to forward the memorandum to the Confederate government in
Richmond, Virginia, but an angry fellow general, W. H. T. Walker of
Georgia, did, along with his vehement protest. President Jefferson Davis ordered the suppression of the
proposal and any discussion of it, although it continued to be debated
acrimoniously among Confederate officers.
Cleburne stayed out of the fray, but was passed over for
promotion three times during the following eight months.
In February 1864, the
Confederate Congress did authorize, at Davis’s request, the use of
20,000 free blacks and slaves (who remained the legal property of their
owners) in noncombatant roles, such as cooks, laborers, nurses, and
teamsters. In September
1864, Atlanta fell to the Union, General William T. Sherman began his
March to the Sea, and the Confederacy suffered other military setbacks.
At that point, some Southerners became more vocal about the need
to consider the use of black troops.
Besides Governor Allen, a group of six other governors endorsed a
“change of policy” concerning the use of slave in the “public
service.” The Richmond
Enquirer’s approval of arming the slaves was echoed by the Mobile
Register and other journals.
On November 7, 1864, President
Davis unveiled a surprise in his otherwise predictable address to the
Confederate Congress. He argued that the use of slaves in noncombatant roles for
limited periods had not worked as well as expected, so he asked the
Confederate Congress to purchase 40,000 slaves to be used for extended
tours of noncombatant duty. The
“due compensation” for the increased hazards and commitment should
be emancipation at the end of their loyal service.
Davis did not request authorization to use the slaves as
soldiers, but he held out that possibility if the only alternative was
“subjugation” of the Confederacy.
The Confederate Congress did not act on the plan, but the issue
of arming the slaves was thereafter debated vigorously until the end of
the war.
Opposition to arming the slaves
remained strong, led in the press by the Richmond Examiner and
the Charleston Mercury, and in the political arena by Congressman
R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, speaker pro tem of the Confederate Senate,
and Governors Zebulon Vance of North Carolina and Joe Brown of Georgia.
Howell Cobb warned, “If slaves will make good soldiers[, then]
our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”
On the other hand, most of Davis’s cabinet supported the
policy, although Secretary of War James Seddon was unenthusiastic.
As the Confederate military
situation went from bad to worse in the winter of 1864-1865, President
Davis sent Confederate Congressman Duncan Kenner of Louisiana, a
long-time advocate of arming slaves, on a secret diplomatic mission in
late January 1865. In a
last ditch effort to convince Britain and France to issue formal
recognition of Confederate independence, Davis was willing to offer
emancipation of the slaves. Through
indirect channels, Napoleon III of France deferred to Britain, whose
prime minister, Lord Palmerston, resolutely refused.
Although disappointed by the outcome of the Kenner mission (which
had become publicly known), it was the failure of the Hampton Roads
Peace Conference in early February—a final attempt to secure
Confederate independence and a negotiated end to the war—that
amplified the call for arming the slaves.
Mass meeting were held across the Confederacy at which, amidst a
general show of Southern patriotism, the radical policy was supported.
On February 10, 1865, Ethelbert
Barksdale of Mississippi introduced a bill on the floor of the
Confederate Congress to arm the slaves.
Within days, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate
armed forces, endorsed the measure and the Davis administration put its
authority behind the bill. Former foes in the press, like the Richmond Examiner,
now switched their editorial position to favor arming the slaves.
The bill passed on March 13, but with opposition still
substantial (winning by just a vote in the Senate) and without rewarding
the armed slaves with emancipation.
However, on March 23, the Davis administration’s executive
order to implement the act added the stipulations that a slave must
agree to enlistment and that his master must consent in writing to grant
him, “as far as he may, the rights of a freedman.”
The executive order also required that the black soldiers receive
equal treatment with their white comrades.
The
recruitment of black Confederate soldiers began, with the first black
company formed in Richmond on March 25.
The Confederate capital fell just over one week later, and
General Lee surrendered to the Union commander, General Ulysses S.
Grant, on April 9, 1865. To
most white Confederates, the arming of black slaves and their promised emancipation was
a desperate measure taken out of military necessary in the final days of
the Civil War. It did not
offer emancipation to all of the slaves, nor did it abolish slavery as an
institution. The latter was accomplished after the war by the Thirteenth Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution in December 1865, with much reluctance on the part
of white politicians in the South.
Robert C. Kennedy
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