Including the Diplomatic Correspondence, 1861–1865 (Nashville, TN, 1906) I, pp. Confederate vice-president Alexander Stephens had, if anything, put the matter even more bluntly in a speech delivered in Savannah the previous month. The Confederacy, he explained, was dedicated to preserving the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization Where Jefferson had talked of human equality, our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that . . . slavery—subordination to the superior race was the natural and normal condition of the African. Augusta, GA, Constitutionalist, March 30, The words belonged to Davis ’ s secretary of state and closest cabinet advisor, Judah P. Benjamin. Quoted in Robert F. Durden, The Gray and the Black The Debate over Confederate Emancipation (Baton Rouge, LA, 1972), p. Articles dedicated specifically to this subject include NW. Stephenson, The Question of Arming the Slaves American Historical Review 18 (January 1913), pp. 295–308; Thomas Robson Hay, The South and the Arming of the Slaves Mississippi Valley Historical Review 6 (June 1919), pp. 34–73; Charles H. Wesley, The Employment of Negroes as Soldiers in the Confederate Army Journal of Negro History 4 (July 1919), pp. 239–53; Bill G. Reid, “Confederate Opponents of Arming the Slaves, 1861–1865,” Journal of Mississippi History 22 (October 1960), pp. 260, 264; and Barbara C. Ruby, General Patrick Cleburne ’ s Proposal to Arm Southern Slaves Arkansas Historical Quarterly 30 (fall 1971), pp. Popularized accounts include Stephen E. Ambrose, By Enlisting Negroes, Could the South still Win the War Civil War Times, 3 (January 1965), pp. 16–21, and Steve Davis, “‘That Extraordinary Document W. HT. Walker and Patrick Cleburne’s Emancipation Proposal,” Civil War Times 16 (December 1977), pp. 14–20. The subject is also addressed in many other works, many of which will be discussed below. The year 1998 was the centenary of the publication of The War of the Rebellion A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, DC, hereafter cited as O.R.—in which the world first glimpsed a number of the documents generated by this controversy. In 1972 Robert F. Durden ’ s The Gray and the Black reprinted much of the documentary record. Confederate Emancipation • 243
Emory M. Thomas, review of Durden, Journal of Southern History, 39 (May 1973), pp. 300–1. W. S. Turner to Hon. LP. Walker, July 17, 1861, in Freedom: A Documentary History ofEmancipation, 1861–1867, Ser. 2, The Black Military Experience, ed. Ira Berlin, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (Cambridge, 1982), p. 283; C. Vann Woodward and Elisabeth Muhlenfeld, eds, The Private Mary Chesnut: The Unpublished Civil War Diaries (New York and Oxford, 1984), p. 213. See also C. Vann Woodward, ed, Mary Chesnut’s Civil War (New Haven, CT, 1981), pp. 255, Richard Taylor, Destruction and Reconstruction Personal Experiences of the Late War (1879, rpr. New York, 1955), p. 281; O. G. Eiland to Jefferson Davis, July 20, 1863, in Berlin et al., The Black Military Experience, p. Bell Irvin Wiley, Confederate Negroes, 1861–1865 (Baton Rouge, LA, 1938), p. 149; Edward Younger, ed, Inside the Confederate Government The Diary of Robert Garlick Hill Kean (New York and Oxford, 1957), p. 96; O.R., Ser. 4, Vol. 2, pp. 767. A sketch of Cleburne’s life written by his longtime commanding officer, Thomas W. Hardee, appeared as an appendix to John Francis Maguire, The Irish in America (London, 1868), pp. 642–53. Irving A. Buck, Negroes in our Army Southern Historical Society Papers 31 (1903), p. Thomas L. Connelly, Autumn of Glory The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865 (Baton Rouge, LA, pp. 235, 274–81, 290–1. Captain Buck was Cleburne’s adjutant. 11. Share with your friends: |