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Slaves as Soldiers

The use of slaves as soldiers with the reward of freedom to those who survived, was strongly advocated at different times by members of the Confederacy during the Civil War. Slaves were employed as laborers on the fortifications in all parts of the Confederacy. Both slaves and free Negroes offered their services. A considerable number of the latter enrolled themselves.

In 1850 Jefferson Davis found that a group of hired hands were digging a trench across the narrow peninsula connecting Davis Bend to the mainland. This ditch would cut off, rechanneling the Mississippi so that it would not longer flow around his Davis Bend property.

Davis later wrote that "I presume I was the only person in the Confederacy who had ever armed and led negroes against white men, they were the slaves of my Brother and myself and the movement was against a band who were paid and employed secretly to make a cutoff behind our plantations. Sometimes I referred to that event as giving me assurance that megroes led by their masters including male members of the family would prove efficient in war."

The Charleston Mercury for January 3, 1861 announced that 150 able bodied free colored men of Charleston had offered their services gratuitously to the Governor to hasten forward the important work of throwing up defences along the coast. In Lynchburg and Petersburg, Virginia in April 1861 free Negroes enrolled for the purpose of offering their services to the Governor for the defence of the State. “ATTENTION, VOLUNTEERS: Resolved by the Committee of Safety, that C. Deloach, D. R. Cook, and William B. Greenlaw be authorized to organize a volunteer company composed of our patriotic freemen of color, of the city of Memphis, for the service of our common defence. All who have not enrolled their names will call at the office of W.B. Greenlaw & Co. F. W. FORSYTHE, Secretary.”

In June 1861, the Legislature of Tennessee passed an act authorizing the Governor to receive into military service free persons of color be. tween the ages of eighteen and fifty. Pay and rations were assigned them November 23, 1861, there was a review in New Orleans of 28,000 Cronfederate troops Among these was one regiment composed of 1,400 free colored men. On the 9th of February, 1862, there was another g and review of Confederate troops in New Orleans. The Picayune contained the following paragraph concerning this review:

“We must also pay a deserved compliment to the companies of free colored men, all very well drilled, and comfortably uniformed. Most of these companies, quite unaided by the administration, have supplied themselves with arms without regard to cost or trouble. One of these companies, commanded by the well-known veteran, Captain Jordan, was presented, a little before the parade, with a fine war-flag of the new style. This interesting ceremony took place at Mr. Cushing's store, on Camp, near Common Street. The presentation was made by Mr. Bigney, and Jordan made, on this occasion, one of his most felicitous speeches.” Mulattoes of Mobile whose ancestors were made free by the treaty with France in 1803 were enlisted in 1862 for the defense of that city. The next year, according to Flemming, they were received into the Confederate service as heavy artillerymen.

On 17 February 1864, the Confederate Congress passed an act making all male free Negroes (with certain exceptions) between the ages of eighteen and fifty liable to perform such duties in the army or in connection with the military defences of the country in the way of work upon the fortifications, or in government work, etc., as the Secretary of War might from time to time prescribe, and providing them rations, clothing and compensation. The Secretary of War was also authorized to employ for similar duty 20,000 male Negro slaves. The act of February 17, 1864, which authorized the employment of slaves, produced less results than had been anticipated. It, however, brought forward the question of the employment of the negroes as soldiers in the army, which was warmly advocated by some and as ardently opposed by others.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis expressed freely and frequently his views upon in intercourse with members of Congress, and emphatically in his message of November 7, 1864, when, urging upon Congress the consideration of the propriety of a radical modification of the theory of the law:

" The policy of engaging to liberate the negro on his discharge after service faithfully rendered seems to me preferable to that of granting immediate manumission, or that of retaining him in servitude. 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.

"A broad, moral distinction exists between the use of slaves as soldiers in defense of their homes and the incitement of the same persons to insurrection against their masters. The one is justifiable, if necessary, the other is iniquitous and unworthy of civilized people; and such is the judgment of all writers on public law, as well as that expressed and insisted on by our enemies in all wars prior to that now waged against us. By none have the practices of which they are now guilty been denounced with greater severity than by themselves in the two wars with Great Britain, in the last and in the present century, and in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, when an enumeration was made of the wrongs which justified the revolt from Great Britain. The climax of atrocity was deemed to be reached only when the English monarch was denounced as having 'excited domestic insurrection among us.'...

"I must dissent from those who advise a general levy and arming of the slaves for the duty of soldiers. Until our white population shall prove insufficient for the armies we require and can afford to keep in the field, to employ as a soldier the negro, who has merely been trained to labor, and, as a laborer, the white man accustomed from his youth to the use of arms, would scarcely be deemed wise or advantageous by any; and this is the question now before us. 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."

Davis later wrote that " To a member of the Senate (the House in which we most needed a vote) I stated, as I had done to many others, the fact of having led negroes against a lawless body of armed white men, and the assurance which the experiment gave me that they might, under proper conditions, be relied on in battle, and finally used to him the expression which I believe I can repeat exactly: "If the Confederacy falls, there should be written on its tombstone, 'Died of a theory.'"

"General Lee was brought before a committee to state his opinion as to the probable efficiency of negroes as soldiers, and disappointed the probable expectation by his unqualified advocacy of the proposed measure."

In February, 1865, at a meeting held in the African Church in Richmond to acquaint the people concerning the failure of the Peace Conference held at Fortress Monroe, Judah P. Benjamin, Secretary of State, proposed that legislation by the States be immediately effected so that the slaves could be armed. The next day a bill was presented in the House to give effect to Mr. Benjamin's suggestion, and providing for the volunteer enlistment of slaves for military service. A motion to reject was lost by ayes 21, nays 53; a motion to postpone the matter indefinitely was also lost; another to refer it to the Military Committee was also lost, and the motion of the original mover for a select committee passed.

A resolution had already been offered in the Senate instructing the Committee on Military Affairs to report a bill with the least possible delay to take into the military service of the Confederate States, by volunteer enlistment with the consent of the owners, or by conscription, not exceeding 200,000 Negro soldiers. The resolution was defeated.