 Good afternoon. I'm David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, and I'm honored to welcome you to William G. McGowan Theater this afternoon, whether you're here physically in the theater or joining us on our Facebook or YouTube channels. Before we hear from Kevin Levin about his new book, The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth, I'd like to tell you about two other programs coming up here in the McGowan Theater. On Wednesday, September 25th at 7 p.m., we'll show the feature documentary film, A Towering Task, The Story of the Peace Corps. The film tells the agency's story from its founding almost 60 years ago to today's Peace Corps volunteers. And on Thursday, October 3rd at noon, Sarah Milov will be here to tell us about her new book, The Cigarette of Political History. Check our website at archives.gov or sign up at the table outside the theater to get email updates. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. And another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports all of our education and outreach activities, and you can find more information at archivesfoundation.org. A historian asks what really happened. And to find the answers to that question, a historian looks into the evidence. Written documents, photographs, artifacts, preserved in archives, libraries, and historical collections. Sifting through that evidence, uncovering the facts, helping us separate myth from reality. Often the process is long or difficult, but the diligent researcher will be rewarded. Today we'll hear from Kevin about the results of his research and his quest to find out what really happened regarding black soldiers in the Confederate Army. Kevin is a historian and educator based in Boston. Over the past few years, he's worked extensively with teachers and students across the country to better understand the ongoing controversy surrounding Confederate monuments. He's led history workshops with a number of organizations, including the National Park Service, Ford's Theater, the Georgia Historical Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society. He's the author of Remembering the Battle of the Crater, War as Murder, and Editor of Interpreting the Civil War at Museums and Historic Sites. His writings have appeared in the Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Daily Beast, and The New York Times, and it has appeared, as a guest, on NPR, C-SPAN, and Al Jazeera. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Kevin Reuben. Hi, everyone. Good afternoon. And thanks for being here. I want to thank the National Archives for the invitation. It really is a great honor to be able to speak here in the National Archives. I can't think of a better place to talk about American history than in the National Archives. So I probably don't need to remind anyone in this room that especially over the last few years, Americans have been mired in a very emotional, very divisive debate about the Civil War, specifically through the issue of monuments and memorials. Over the last few years, especially since the horrible murders in Charleston in June of 2015, we've seen Confederate battle flags lowered from public spaces throughout mainly the South, and we've also seen a number of monuments and memorials removed, vandalized. There are a lot of opinions about this issue, and people are wedded to their respective views, and it has led in many cases to just outright violence. It seems to me that at the root of this debate is the issue of how we remember, to what extent we've come to terms with the history of slavery and white supremacy in the United States. It's essentially what this discussion has been about. It certainly didn't start with the Dillon Roof murders in Charleston in 2015. This is a debate that goes back in many cases to the day that these monuments and memorials were dedicated roughly 100 years ago, but it certainly has picked up pace, and certainly the largest number of Americans are paying attention only as a result of the events of the last few years. In addition to Charleston, of course, there was the violent white nationalist rally in Charlottesville in August of 2017, and that certainly has kept this debate alive. So what I want to talk about, the book that I just finished, is in large part about this issue, this issue of how we remember our Civil War, how we remember Reconstruction, how we remember the history of slavery itself. The book is called Searching for Black Confederates, and you can see, of course, the cover in front of you. I want to start with the image on the cover of the book, because for many people this is the most important photograph in this debate about whether or not African Americans fought as soldiers in the Confederate Army, and for those people who are the most convinced that in fact these men served, and you'll hear numbers ranging anywhere between roughly 500 and 100,000. Right off the bat, that should cause you to worry some, that we can't narrow it down between 500 Black Confederate soldiers and 100,000. But this photograph for many people is really all you need to see. It is for many sufficient evidence that Black men fought. I mean, look at the photograph. What do you see in front of you? You see two men, both wearing Confederate uniforms, one Black, one White. They are also, of course, heavily armed. Anywhere you can place a weapon, it seems, that's in fact what they did. And when I look at this photograph, having looked at it now over the last 10 plus years, what I see in fact is an image of the master-slave relationship. In fact, what you're looking at, at least in terms of the man on the right, the man by the name of Silas Chandler, you're looking at an enslaved man. Silas was born to the Chandler family in Virginia. He traveled with the family to West Point, Mississippi as a lot of other slave-owning families did in the 1830s and 40s to take advantage of King Cotton, as they called it. And he grew up in the Chandler family. In the spring of 1861, as Confederate armies were being organized, Andrew on the left in the spring early summer of 1861 enlisted in the 44th Mississippi infantry. And like a lot of other men from the slave-holding class, he took with him what he would have called a body-servant, what I call in the book a camp-slave so that there is no confusion about the legal status of these men. I'll come back to Silas in a second. But Silas represents in many respects the broad mobilization of African-Americans by the Confederacy. The population of the South in 1860 is roughly 9 million, roughly half is enslaved. The population of the United States or the North is roughly 18 million. So for the Confederacy to have any chance of winning its independence, it's going to have to mobilize as much of its enslaved population as possible. And in fact, that's what it did from the earliest days of the war. It mobilized tens of thousands of enslaved men, as impressed slaves. So you would have seen throughout the Confederacy, you would have seen thousands of enslaved men performing all kinds of roles. You would have seen them constructing earthworks throughout the Confederacy. Here you have an image from outside of Charleston, South Carolina, James Island. You can see, of course, numerous enslaved men constructing earthworks. They would have been doing this kind of work throughout the Confederacy, throughout the war. They would have been building and repairing rail lines. They would have been working at places like the Tredegar ironworks in Richmond, Virginia where they would have been responsible for manufacturing munitions and other kinds of weapons for the Confederate war effort. So again, right from the beginning, slavery is central to the Confederate cause. It's right there at the center of it all. Without it, the Confederacy has no chance of winning its independence. Now, in addition to those tens of thousands of enslaved men, you also have people like Silas functioning as body servants, or again what I call camp slaves. And there would have been thousands of body servants in the various Confederate armies operating between 1861 and 1865. These men are located completely outside the Confederate military hierarchy. They, of course, are legally bound to their masters. So imagine plucking the master-slave relationship from the plantation and placing it in a military setting. That's essentially what you have in the case of these body servants. And body servants like Silas would have done all kinds of things for their masters. They would have been responsible for cleaning, for serving as a messenger between camp and home in many cases. They would have been responsible for carrying things on long marches, making sure that the camp or the officer's personal possessions are organized. Anything that the master needs to have done, camp slaves like Silas were there to do it. And so, again, I want you to imagine these enslaved men performing a wide range of roles, again, places like James Island, but also, again, in the army itself. The men I'm going to focus on mainly today are the body servants. That's what the book focuses mainly on. And when you focus on these body servants, when you sort of begin to place these men with the Confederate army, you end up gaining a much richer understanding of the importance of slavery to the Confederate army. I want you to sort of imagine Robert E. Lee's army, for example, marching north in the summer of 1863, culminating in the Battle of Gettysburg in early July. Lee's army may have numbered somewhere around 75,000 men. There may have been as many as 10,000 enslaved men marching with that army. We usually think of these armies as armies of white men. But there would have been thousands of enslaved men with the Confederate armies as body servants as well as impressed slaves doing any number of roles for the army, whether it's in camp, on the march, and even on the battlefield itself. And one of the things that I was interested in looking at in some detail in the book is, again, what happens when you place the master-slave relationship in an unknown context, right? I mean, on the plantation, if you will, masters were able to set the terms of that relationship over time and reinforce that relationship usually through violent measures when necessary. But what happens when both parties are unfamiliar with the unknown of military life? And certainly Silas, and I'll go back again just for a second, Silas and Andrew, would both, neither party would have had any experience going to war. I just want to say a few more things about this photograph, since it is so iconic and so popular. It was likely taken in the spring, early summer of 1861, when Andrew went off to war. It was taken, obviously, in a studio. The uniform that Silas is wearing on the right is perhaps a studio prop, although some of these camp slaves did in fact wear uniforms. But what's, of course, interesting here is once you acknowledge that Silas was a slave, you begin to take on a different perception of this photograph. When I look at it now, I'm obviously looking at a slave and a Confederate soldier. And when you look at these weapons, of course, it also sort of forces you to take a slightly different perspective. Andrew was probably 17 years old. Silas is about seven, eight years older. So you've got a very young, bright-eyed Confederate youth going off to war. He's going to send this photograph home to his family back in West Point, Mississippi. So you have to imagine Andrew walking into this studio and seeing all these weapons arrayed in front of him. And you have to imagine, at least this is what I imagine Andrew doing, just trying to fit in as many of these weapons as possible. In fact, I usually chuckle when I see this photograph, because I don't see two heavily armed soldiers. I see Andrew trying to make an impression and going to the extremes in trying to make that impression. It is unusual in that there is no other photograph where you see both men sitting side-by-side with weapons. This is the only one that I've ever seen. Most of them, of course, look something like this, or more commonly, as in this case, of an Alabama officer with his camp slave, Burrell. And these men are present throughout the war between 1861 and 1865. Again, they perform any number of functions for their master. But you also see this relationship stretch and contract in many cases. You find camp slaves like Burrell pushing for increased privileges, the ability to make extra money during free time. And many of them earn a good deal of money. Some of them actually purchase their own uniforms with the money they earn and their owners, in fact, let them do this for any number of reasons. But you also find the masters having to push back in many cases. There are a number of accounts in the book where you've got masters having to, as in one case, lay on 400 lashes to a bear-backed camp slave who had stolen some food from the camp. In some cases, you find that the camp slave stretches the relationship to the breaking point. They run off at some point during the war, leaving their masters wondering what they did wrong, why their camp slave would want his freedom. There are a number of cases where they write letters over the course of weeks wondering what happened and if they'll ever come back. So these relationships sort of stretch and contract over the course of the war. What they don't serve as at any point during the war, up until the very end, is as soldiers. In fact, one of the things that's so striking once you delve into the primary source material is that no one in the confederacy, as far as I can tell, was under the impression that at any point any of these men was functioning as a soldier. In fact, there are numerous accounts in northern newspapers, especially during the 1862 Peninsula campaign outside of Richmond, where they are reporting that the confederacy is in fact using large numbers of black men as soldiers in the army. Likely what they are observing are camp slaves and other impressed slaves doing all kinds of jobs in camp on the front line, but they were not, at least as far as real confederates were concerned, functioning as soldiers. In fact, when confederates hear about this, they push back hard. They actually feel insulted that they are being told that there are these rumors out there that in fact the confederacy is utilizing black men as soldiers. This is bizarre. This goes against their own understanding of southern honor to be accused of such a heinous thing. This begins to change in 1864, very gradually. In early 1864, the man on the left, General Patrick Claiborne, a division commander in the Army of Tennessee, a recent arrival from Ireland, shares the idea with his staff. He sort of broaches the idea of enlisting slaves as soldiers in exchange for their freedom. He shares this with his staff. A few of them are Luke Warm. A number of them are against this right from the outset. In fact, one of them sends a notice to President Jefferson Davis in Richmond, notifying Davis that this is being discussed, and Jefferson Davis immediately orders Claiborne to stop talking about it. Seize discussion of enlisting slaves as soldiers. Within a few months, the cat is out of the bag. Confederates throughout the nation are debating whether or not to enlist slaves as soldiers. They're debating it in the Army itself, in the Confederate government, and throughout the home front. And people are very, they're very clear about their positions. They're very steadfast in their positions. This is a very emotional device of debate, in part because it raises the very question of what the Confederacy is fighting for. In fact, one of the best examples I'll share with you is from Hal Cobb, and he spoke for many during this debate throughout 64 and early 1865. Hal Cobb said, the moment you resort to Negro soldiers, your white soldiers will be lost to you. The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong. They won't make soldiers. As a class, they are wanting in every qualification of a soldier. So for many Confederates, and even those who come out in support of enlistment, they are very clear, they understand that this has the potential to undercut the very purpose of the Confederacy. The very cornerstone to use Vice President Alexander Stevens's reference, that white supremacy and slavery is the very foundation of the Confederacy, enlisting black men as soldiers, turning camp slaves like Silas, camp slaves like Burrell, whatever they had done in camp on the march, perhaps even on the battlefield at one point or another, whatever they had done had not risen to the level of a soldier. Right? If they had, if black men were already serving as soldiers, then why would they have the debate at all? That's one question that I'm constantly left with when talking to people who are convinced that black men fought as soldiers throughout the Civil War. In fact, in ten plus years of research, I have not once come across a letter, diary entry, editorial, there were hundreds of editorials published in Confederate newspapers during this period. Not once did I ever read, regardless of their position on the issue, not once did I read someone say, and by the way, they are already serving as soldiers in the army. This was to be a step in a brand new direction, and one that people like Hal Cobb again understood potentially could ruin the Confederacy. It's not until Robert E. Lee backs this plan, I think in January of 1865, that Davis comes around and a number of other people come around. The Confederate Congress debates it, and in mid-March of 1865, within just a few weeks of Confederate surrender in the spring of 65, they barely passed legislation authorizing the enlistment of black men. But of course, within a few weeks, Lee's army surrenders at Appomattox Courthouse on April 9th, and within weeks, the rest of the Confederate army surrender as well. So it never takes all. The policy gets as far as legislation. Roughly two companies are raised in Richmond. They are housed in a prison. There's little evidence to suggest they were given weapons, which gives you a sense of how much they were trusted, and there's no evidence that they actually saw the battlefield during those final weeks. The war ends for the Confederacy as it began. A war, a white man's war, intended to maintain the institution of slavery and white supremacy. That's how the war ends. No one is under any illusion that large numbers or even a couple hundred black men had already fought as soldiers at some point during this period. You can see, of course, Northern newspaper having some fun at this debate. Many Northerners believe once you suit up these black Confederate soldiers and they see the battlefield at least according to Harper's Weekly what's going to happen. They are immediately going to drop their weapons and run to the Union army. So that's how the war ends. I should mention that Silas stays with Andrew until Andrew is wounding at the Battle of Chickamauga in September of 1863. Silas escorts Andrew home back to West Point. Silas has a family back home. He has a newborn baby back home in West Point as well as a wife. So, of course, he is also very interested in getting back home. Less than a year later, Andrew's brother goes off to war by the name of Benjamin. He serves in a Mississippi Calvary unit. What's interesting about this unit is they are one of the units that escorts Davis, President Davis, out of Richmond once it falls in early April. The unit is with Davis up until his capture in Georgia by the Union army. So Silas is literally with the Confederate army from almost day one until almost the very last days of the life of the Confederacy. Now, what happens after the war is also quite interesting. These camp slaves, these body servants, they maintain an important place within this growing sort of lost cause narrative of the Civil War that defeated Confederates developed to rationalize what the war is about. They argue in post-65 period they argue that slavery wasn't the cause of the war. They argue that the only reason they lost was because of the war material and the numbers in the north. Their cause itself, the Confederate cause remained righteous. It remained a moral cause. And of course, generals like Stonewall Jackson depicted here and Robert E. Lee remained the great Christian warriors of the Confederacy. But at the center of this lost cause narrative is the loyal slave. And you see it here depicted here in this illustration, Stonewall Jackson in camp. And you can see the Jackson's right. You can see the body servant standing loyally by his side. So these kinds of illustrations, I'll show you another one a couple years later, that depict Confederates with camp slaves was quite common. And again, throughout the post war period, these men, these black men are understood as enslaved men. Again, no one is under any kind of illusion that we're looking at black soldiers. And you can see one sort of dozing off by the tent. And you can see, of course, a group of men, black men and women in the background there preparing food. So these were fairly accurate depictions of Confederate camps during the war. And you'll find references to these enslaved men in reminiscences, newspaper articles, all kinds of post war writing. These men are right there at the center because they are a reminder to defeated Confederates that their enslaved population always remained loyal. So we're going to forget about stories of camp slaves running off for their freedom during the war. They are going to sort of massage the evidence, if you will, and just focus on those things that will help them pick up the pieces after this decisive defeat in 1865. A little bit later, toward the end of the 19th century, Confederate veterans hold numerous reunions, national reunions, local reunions. And it was very common to find former camp slaves, former body servants attending these functions. They would have attended for any number of reasons. Although it's difficult to get at motivation for lack of the historical record. But, you know, we can sort of assume a number of things. It's probably safe to assume that some of these men believe that attending these reunions will reinforce perhaps their status back home. It might gain certain favors from Confederate veterans who, of course, during the post war period occupy any number of leadership positions, both locally, statewide, and even nationally. So attending, showing that you remain loyal to the cause at these veterans' reunions may have benefited these men. I also don't doubt that some of these former camp slaves hope to rekindle perhaps some of the relationships that they had developed during the war. That may be difficult to hear. But I am convinced that during the war that there were probably some moments of genuine other concern between camp slave and master. And I am sort of cautious about making that point because we always have to remember that we're talking about the master-slave relationship. But remember that both parties were away from home, away from families. They experienced some of the same hardships, whether it had to do with weather, lack of food, and some of the most, I would say some of the closest moments perhaps come about as the result of disease. I found a number of accounts of camp slaves taking care of their master and vice versa. Now, again, we've got to keep in mind that we're talking about the master-slave relationship. And so I don't want to assume too much because you're always looking at these experiences, these relationships through the lens of the master. There's very little documentation from these enslaved men. And so I want to be very cautious about what I assume was the case in these relationships. A number of them are very prominent during the post-war period. Jefferson Shields, he attends numerous reunions during this period. And you can see that if you look very closely, you'll see he's wearing any number of Confederate reunion ribbons on his chest. So these men, some of them earn money at these events. And so there's a lot going on. It's an interesting dynamic at work here at these reunions. The most interesting former camp slave is Steve Eberhardt Perry. He is absolutely fascinating for a number of reasons from Georgia. His master's surname was Eberhardt, and that is the surname that he uses or used when he attended the reunions. Outside of the reunions, he used Perry, as did his wife and children, which suggests to me that Eberhardt may have understood the role he was playing at these reunions, that he understood, like other body servants, that they were there to reinforce that lost cause narrative. They were there as part of a show, right? And perhaps adopting that surname may have been a way of distancing himself from what he was doing. I can't say that for sure. It's certainly one possibility. The reason they are so important to these events is because they are a reminder of the anti-bellum racial status quo. So during or post reconstruction, white southerners, their challenge is to maintain white supremacy as we make our way to the end of the 19th early 20th century. You've got, of course, a new generation, especially African-American that never experienced slavery. They are pushing for civil rights. Some of them, of course, are pushing for it still within the Republican Party. And so to have these men attend these reunions is a reminder of what white southerners would have expected from the black population. This is how you should behave. And there will be consequences for those African-Americans who don't behave this way, who are not deferential to the white authorities. And many of these men seem to have understood that. In fact, what's interesting is Eberhardt was very vocal when he attended these reunions. And I'm going to read you. So one reunion, Eberhardt, here's what he said. I shall ever remain in my place. He's talking to a white audience. I shall ever remain in my place and be obedient to all the white people. I pray that the angels may guard the homes of all Rome, meaning Rome, Georgia, and the light of God shine upon them. He went on to say, I have always been a white man, and then he uses the N word. And the Yankees can't change me, sir, exclamation point. So it's a very effective sort of example of sort of giving these white, these large white audiences what they expect to hear from these elderly former camp slaves. And these reunions continue into the early 20th century. This one from Tampa in the 1920s. You can see Steve Eberhardt, he is seated fourth from the left. He's wearing that wonderful hat. You can see he's sort of all these ribbons. He's holding a Confederate battle flag. If you go two more to the right, you'll see a man with a hat wearing a white, what appears to be a white ribbon. If you blow this up, getting close, the ribbon clearly says ex-slave. So again, the point here being that no one was confused about the status of these men during the war. No one is debating whether black men fought as soldiers in the Confederate Army. The memory of the war when it comes to African-Americans in the Army is as enslaved men. Impressed slaves or as body servants. Got to keep going here. To give you a sense of how sort of common this image of the body servant was, this is from a New York newspaper from 1920, selling a new modern washing machine. And of course, you've got Robert E. Lee selling it, right? I mean he's being, you can see him clearly depicted here. And then of course to the right you can see of course the body servant cleaning his socks. So throughout the 20th century, this is the dominant narrative. And even in the monuments that we see during this crucial period between 1880 and 1920, when it comes to depicting African-Americans in the Confederate Army, they are as enslaved men. A couple examples and just to sort of remind you that the image of the loyal slave was everywhere. I mean even here in D.C. in the 1920s, Congress was debating whether to dedicate a national monument on the mall to the loyal mammy. I mean we can be grateful that that never happened. But here you can see some of the models that were considered here. But the camp slave specifically also is the focus of attention when it comes to some of these monuments. Small and much more and much larger. And again remember when you depict African-Americans during this period as loyal slaves, think about how that reinforces the Jim Crow hierarchy. If African-Americans were never interested in their freedom, if they were always loyal to master in the Confederacy, well then of course they don't deserve full civil rights. We don't have to treat them as full citizens. Controlling the historical narrative becomes a way to control the present. To control the racial status quo in the Jim Crow south. Another one dedicated to the faithful slaves in Fort Mill, South Carolina. And then the most interesting one is right here across the river, the Potomac in Arlington National Cemetery dedicated in 1914 by the U.D.C. Marks the graves of roughly 365 Confederate dead that were reinterred from area cemeteries to Arlington. Woodrow Wilson helped with the dedication of this monument. Today you'll find it on hundreds of websites as evidence that blacks fought as soldiers in the army in large part because of two images. First you can see the loyal mammy on the right. So we do in this area, if you consider northern Virginia part of the D.C. area, we have a loyal mammy monument. And it's in the middle of Arlington National Cemetery. She's taking of course the child from the Confederate officer. But if you look over to the left you'll see what appears to be a black man with a kepi in a Confederate uniform. And for many people that is evidence of black Confederate soldiers. But it's not. In fact no one was confused during the dedication. That this was in fact a body servant. In fact this little passage is from the U.D.C.'s official history of the monument. And as far as they were concerned you can see how they describe it. On the right is a faithful Negro body servant following his young master. Right? I'm going to skip this slide. I just well real fast this is of course from my hometown right now. Boston does give you a sense of how important sort of a more honest depiction of black man is or would have been at the turn of the 20th century dedicated in 1897. It is the only monument to black Union soldiers in this country up until roughly the 1990s. So think about the importance of who is remembered, who is forgotten and if they're remembered how they're remembered. Quite often distorted mythologized. So when does this change? It changes relatively recently. Changes roughly in the 1970s. This is a little game I played back about ten years ago with Engram from Google. You can plug in key words and get a sense of when they begin to appear. And when it comes to black confederates as a reference it really doesn't begin. You don't begin to see it until the 1960s and 70s. It's really the 1970s specifically where this starts. And I was able to pinpoint it, pretty much pinpoint it to the success of the television miniseries roots. Which aired in 1977. It was the first time a large white audience across the country was exposed to a much darker depiction of slavery and emancipation during the Civil War. And it gained the attention of the sons of Confederate veterans. And they were concerned that this negative portrayal of slavery of the confederacy would make it more difficult for them to defend their Confederate ancestors. At this point in time black Union soldiers are beginning to get more attention. Historic sites are focusing on slavery emancipation a bit more. And of course the scholarship is beginning to filter down. Which is really focused on emancipation and even black Union soldiers. So what the SCV is interested in doing coming out of this is finding their own black Confederate soldiers. And they find them in many cases they go back to body servants like Silas Burrell and others who are wearing uniforms and they begin to present them not as slaves but as soldiers. And this sort of takes hold gradually. A lot of it is intentional manipulation. In the early 1970s this was published in a Civil War magazine. It looks like Confederate soldiers from the first Louisiana Native Guard. In fact what you are looking at is a photograph of black Union soldiers taken outside of Philadelphia Pennsylvania Camp William Penn in 1864. And at some point later it was photoshopped because you would have seen white officers on both sides. They did something with the grain of the photograph itself. Slapped on first Louisiana Native Guard. And a few other things on different versions and published it. You can now of course find this on hundreds of websites. So some of it all of it I would argue at least early on with the SCV and others is a kind of intentional manipulation. And this narrative really doesn't take hold until the introduction of the Internet. Up until that this is a conversation that is fairly narrow you know isolated to the SCV and a few others. But once the Internet comes around as a place where we're going to consume history and do history because anyone of course can publish on the Internet that's a game changer. Because what we're not doing in our schools is we're not teaching teachers and we are certainly not teaching students how to properly assess first search online information and assess what these search engines deliver. And you see that most clearly in a case of our Virginia past and present in 2011 where you have a Virginia textbook delivered to all Virginia fourth graders and it just so happened that a professor at William & Mary had a daughter in the fourth grade and she wanted to see what it said about the Civil War and when she opened it she learned that there were thousands of Southern blacks who fought in the Confederate ranks with Stonewall Jackson and the Shenandoah Valley. When asked where she found this information you can probably finish the thought here right the sentence she found it after doing a Google search and came upon a Sons of Confederate Veterans website. So the Internet has given this given this new life. It's made it part of sort of Civil War memory if you will right I found it in National Park Service Exhibits I have found it in other textbooks in numerous places and in large part you can trace it back to the Internet. It's become part of sort of the popular culture of the Civil War you can find these men depicted in any number of Civil War paintings if you want to call them paintings just you know these prints it's also interestingly enough attracted the attention of a small number of African Americans for any number of reasons perhaps the best known is a man by the name of HK Egerton former NAACP chapter president who is now the darling of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. He's best known for taking long marches in his Confederate uniform and flag. He does this for a number of reasons some of it I think certainly there's a monetary you know reason behind it he does get paid for what he does he has a line of t-shirts from a company called Dixie Outfitters but he is also at times expressed this desire to to remember a time when race relations were not so divisive and I'll take his word at that you know I think he's he's certainly an entertainer but then again you meet these people and you find that the way they come to understand the history and gain meaning from that history is very diverse falls on all places along a spectrum and so I think it is important to sort of listen as much as possible to the way that people including all of us in this room go about making meaning of our lives based in part on the history. I'm going to skip a couple things here just for time's sake but this is Maddie Rice Clyburn her father was a body servant and she was interested at some at some point in the past she was interested in learning more about him the SCV found out about this in North Carolina and they were more than willing to share their preferred narratives of her father who was an enslaved man was a camp slave according to the SCV he was in fact a soldier in fact the SCV held a military style event to rededicate a historical a military style gravestone excuse me for weary Clyburn she attended that event and when Maddie died in 2014 the SCV held a military style funeral for what they referred to as a real daughter of the Confederacy so African Americans a small group also have been have embraced this black Confederate narrative for a number of reasons the last few years it has certainly reared its head on any number of times in the wake of the roof murders in Charleston and the lowering of the Confederate flag in Columbia South Carolina the SCV came out with a statement in response to it and they were very clear about their position on all of this here was their statement the SCV in South Carolina historical facts show there were black Confederate soldiers these brave men fought in the trenches beside their white brothers all under the Confederate battle flag the point being that you know once those images of roof waving a Confederate battle flag that caused the lowering of the flags the SCV in essence was saying this has nothing to do with race with slavery because the Confederacy in fact employed black men as equals on the battlefield they fought as soldiers beside their white brothers so you can see the politics of it all continuing to play out in response to what happened in Charleston and then again in Charlottesville in 2017 within a few months two Republican state senators in South Carolina once again South Carolina proposed dedicating a monument to South Carolina's black Confederate soldiers on the grounds of the state capital in Columbia that never gained traction but that they were willing to vocalize it to just announce their support of this gives you a sense that at least some of their constituents are in favor or would have supported such a measure but it does again I'm going to end here it does sort of speak to the hold of the black Confederate narrative specifically in terms of our discussion our public debate about how to remember the American Civil War but I think it also speaks to just the continued difficulty that we have mainly as white Americans in coming to terms with the history of slavery and race in the United States and with that I'm going to take your questions if you have any but thanks so much for for listening I think there are a microphone that's going to go around so don't be shy thanks for all your work my secondary question is how do you stay so even-tempered through all of this but the primary one is we've just come to the subsequent centennial according to the National Park Service attendant at all the major Civil War battlefield seems to be going down but by the same token we're almost at the point of killing each other over the memory of the Civil War how do you how are we processing this as a country not well I think that's the easy way to to respond I think what you're getting at it's a complex question I mean as an educator one of the things that I'm encouraged by is I see much more willingness on the part of of a younger generation to sort of deal with these tough issues and I and I've worked with students you know all over the country on the monument issue specifically and they're really curious about it and they're very willing to sort of engage around the tough questions I think a lot of the difficulty comes with you know with with older Americans who have been taught a very different narrative of American history one that either downplays or ignores the issue of slavery and race or you know to some extent it's distorted right in in obvious ways I think one of the other things that makes it so difficult right now is that so often it's difficult to unwind the history from the politics the history is because history has always been politicized there's no doubt about that but certainly over the last couple years it's become much more difficult to have well I mean a discussion about anything first I mean right forget about history for a minute but especially history because it's all quite often and quite early on in the discussion you realize we're not really talking about history we're talking about politics and sort of the current racial divide and history can certainly inform that but we never quite often don't get there you know in our dialogue so I mean I'm optimistic as a as an educator because I see what's happening in the classroom but the media certainly enjoys sort of focusing on those hot button issues and I think that's part of the problem as well but you're asking the right question and I don't have any easy answers I mean I wish I did thank thank you very much my I have two questions one is what in your research did you find about the experience of free blacks in the Confederate south during the war and then my second question is specifically about Lee and particularly towards the end of the war with Appomattox what did you find about enslaved African-Americans you know towards the end with Lee's campaign yeah so in terms of free African-Americans I mean one thing to keep in mind in 1861 is that free blacks in the Confederacy are in a very precarious situation you know they're not quite sure especially those those African-Americans who have accumulated some wealth especially in places like New Orleans the Creole community but also in places like Petersburg Virginia and so you find some of these free blacks are offering their services to the Confederacy early in the war that has led some people to conclude that in fact this is another example of just black loyalty to the Confederacy when in fact perhaps something much more complex was going on these are African-Americans who are trying to preserve what little they have as free blacks and in places like Georgia remember there's talk before in the years toward the end of the 1850s you know there was talk about returning free blacks into slavery so you know again they are in a very difficult position the free blacks would also have been hired by the Confederacy to perform certain jobs you know both in terms of you know mechanical positions you know any anything that that would have you know involved utilizing a skill trade of some kind which many of them of course had they're also functioning or performing roles in the armies as well some of them are being paid as cooks in the Confederate army medical staff or medical support so there are a number of other jobs that they're performing as well and they're being paid sometimes they even appear on regimental muster roles and that has also I think confused people into thinking that in fact they were soldiers when in fact they were being listed perhaps for some other reasons but they're you know not a large population I mean I think if I remember correctly what roughly 250,000 or maybe 500,000 total no I'm sort of smaller than that I have to go back and refresh my memory so just small population that would have attempted to again shore up their position in any number of ways oh the other question about Appomattox okay so I don't know how many body servants would have been with Lee at Appomattox by the end there are a number of accounts from the Appomattox campaign where it does seem as though Union soldiers are coming into contact with body servants as they are pushing against Lee's retreat in various places coming out of Petersburg I also have a sense that after Gettysburg Confederate officers and others who are bringing these men these camp slaves with them aren't bringing them in the same numbers and I think in part because there's an increasing concern that these men in fact will run off to the enemy and so there's a concern about protecting their property but that was difficult to really nail down during the research so that's the best I can do. Thanks. Hi thanks for your talk and your book which I look forward to reading with enthusiasm you start by the really solid recognition of the mobilization of the slave population in service of war aims but I was recently reading Stephanie McCurry's Confederate Reckoning and could you comment on some problems with doing that and what their sources might be with doing so mobilizing the black population for Confederate war aims? Well I mean the one obvious problem is that they're being mobilized around the assumption that these men are going to be loyal to the Confederate war effort right so that's an extension of the loyal slave narrative itself that precedes the war and that becomes difficult to manage as many of them find out especially these officers who are bringing these men into camp because they are by the middle of the war running off in larger numbers the Union armies especially along the Mississippi by 1862 are moving into the deepest parts of the Confederacy so they are also disrupting the Confederate war effort in any number of places and in the process they're liberating of course you know many enslaved men women families as well and so you know by the middle of the war I you know you begin to see Confederates come to terms with the fact that slavery is beginning to unravel as a result of the war the very thing that they thought would preserve slavery in other words secession itself and perhaps you know trying for independence fighting for independence is the very thing that in fact undercuts the institution of slavery and that's a painful that's a painful process of or realization for many of them especially during the debate in 1864 65 it's it's emotional because they were very I think clear about what it would mean to to the Confederacy moving forward okay maybe you gain some extra months maybe even imagine gaining independence for what if you don't have slavery what was it all for what was all of the sacrifice for so it's extremely difficult for them to sort of articulate the idea that that roughly four million enslaved people are a strength to the Confederacy when in fact from the beginning they have there's all kinds of evidence that it's not it's it's it's unraveling around them I hope that answered your question okay good thank you usually when people talk about creating a fiction afterward the response would be to look at contemporary records for military you typically would look at pension records or in the in some cases the people that went to the old soldiers homes were blacks Confederates blacks in the south word did they show up on pension rolls if they existed in the south and did they get equal access to the old soldiers you will definitely need to read the book there's thanks for the question there's an entire chapter on on pensions and again the reason I devoted an entire chapter is because there are many people today who will argue that these pension records are evidence that these black men fought as soldiers what in fact all you have to do is look at the documents themselves the documents actually tell you what they're for right and they are for former camp slaves Virginia of the five states that issued pensions Virginia was the broadest Virginia would give you a pension if you're a body servant or an impressed slave so there was a wider latitude there for those men four of the five in the 1920s and again a relatively small number were you know we're able to take advantage because of course by the 1920s many of them had died off and when you look at the records again it's very clear in terms of who they were given for a given to a former formerly enslaved men body servants they were expected in their responses to toe the lost cause line so they were asked to you know to indicate the regiment your master served in they would sometimes give you room to talk about your wartime experience which was also interesting some of them of course or many of them talk about being very close to Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson even if they were not in the army of Northern Virginia but again I mean they are they're they're making a claim to much needed money from at this point in time for many of these men so whatever it takes only a couple thousand were issued and again it's because these men were at the end of their lives and so they just were not able to take advantage of this legislation but the legislation itself also reinforced the lost cause and Jim Crow society at that point in time because it's another way for the state government to sort of to reinforce the kind of behavior that they expect from the from African Americans and remember the 1920s black men are coming back wearing their uniforms and carrying the rifles that they used in Europe to help make Europe safe for democracy and when they come back home many of them get off those trains in southern towns and cities wearing those uniforms many of them are met with violence and some of them are in fact lynched and so to have the contrast between the newly arrived veteran of Europe right US veteran contrasting that with the elderly black man who fought or fought sorry who was present as a body servant the loyal slave that's really all you need it's sent a very clear message good afternoon I was intrigued by this topic as it fits into the larger narrative of what the civil war was and was not about yes to me it defies logic that the civil war was not about slavery and that there's a story that people fought side by side any inequality you alluded earlier to saying you thought it related to politics I think it and I just want your opinion on this I think it's more about patriotism and how as Americans we just want to be patriotic and we buy into the narrative that we are the greatest country we built democracy in that because of that it's uncomfortable to think that we fought a war to enslave people which included physical violence and sexual violence what are your thoughts on that oh I think you make a really good point and and let me sort of try and answer that from a slightly different angle because I think you can make the same point in reference to looking at this from the perspective of the United States during the civil war I mean certainly you know slavery was not on its way out it was not dying in 1860 in fact the value of enslaved men and women was never higher in 1860-61 and as many of you know the war is not being fought early on to end slavery it's being fought to save the union the vast majority of the loyal citizenry of the United States did not go off to war in 1861 to free slaves it certainly did not go off to war to make black people equal to white people and I think that is what let me just add one other point the war could have ended with slavery intact if the war ends before January 1st of 1863 the union is saved and slavery is still intact damaged definitely but it's still intact in many places and the reason I think it's important to sort of go into it with that perspective is because I think you know we tend to think well look it's just the Confederate heritage people who are having difficulty wrapping their heads around racism and white supremacy and slavery during the civil war and moving forward but I would argue and I think you're alluding to this is I would argue that Americans generally have difficult coming to terms with the legacy of the civil war and reconstruction you know that at its root was the issue of white supremacy that even coming out of the war for the United States very few people are interested as I said in racial equality that slavery ended is what Americans have to somehow come to terms with white Americans for the next 150 years they try a little bit during reconstruction it's incredible what happens during reconstruction I don't think we should downplay the accomplishments of reconstruction but we know of course what happens as a result of it we know of course sort of the dark years of Jim Crow but it seems to me that that's what we are still trying to wrap our heads around in this country right you end slavery not because we came to some moral moment or clear moment of clarity but because the war dragged on and if you're going to save the union you have to recruit black men but once you put black men in uniform then you've got to deal with the consequences of that okay what rights do they deserve as a result once you free four million people what does freedom in fact mean and that becomes that that is our debate in 2019 still in large part given everything that's happened in between civil rights all of that I want to acknowledge all of that but that's still what we're dealing with and I will just I'll end with this it's certainly been clarified over the last couple years that that is our issue the racial divide that we probably we perhaps have not come as far as we think we have I hope that gets your question as an interesting side note about a month ago during the discussion about reparations Mitch McConnell said on tape we fought an entire war with slavery that caught me off guard but that was just an interesting point hi thank you for the talk I have a fairly specific question you've kind of touched on the edges of this a little bit but I'm really interested in how the Union Army when they countered these camp slaves especially since as you mentioned the Union was publishing that these were soldiers did the Union Army did they treat them as prisoners of war were they given the opportunity to become refugees and follow the Union Army is so many did how how does the Union interpret so certainly so certainly fugitive slaves generally who come into contact with the Union Army right you know some of them remain in the army and function as something equivalent to a body servant there's a wonderful account from Fredericksburg that David Blight edited about a slave named John Washington who ends up spending some time with the New York regiment after he crosses the Rappahannock in the spring of 62 many of these men of course families black families generally that escaped slavery and cross into Union lines end up in contraband camps right and there's a lot of really recent really good recent research on contraband camps and it certainly complicates our narrative that narrative that we tend to want to tell ourselves that narrative of slavery to freedom that there's a middle point between slavery and freedom that was incredibly complex disease-ridden violence it wasn't an easy transition from any former slaves who are now contraband to get at your other question about when the Union Army comes into contact with the Confederate Army I you know and what did they have to say about these black men who are with the Confederate Army I honestly didn't come across that much but then again a lot of the material I was looking at was Confederate I didn't spend that much time with on that side on the Union side and perhaps I should have but that I think is that actually would be an interesting research project yeah absolutely thank you yeah hi Kevin I'm Brian cheeseboro I think you know I've followed your blog for quite a few years and really appreciate it and just finished your book it's really good I wanted to say one that you mentioned about the Chandler photograph being I guess in a studio it's also possible that sometimes those photographers would take their studio out into the field you know as opposed to a brick and mortar or a wooden nails building so that's also maybe that's where the weapons could have come from or something just want to mention that yeah but the other thing well the other thing is know that just a question about about how the war had been remembered or the lost cause came about I always hear from historians that and I'm wondering what your take on this is that um well former Confederates knew that they didn't want to be on the wrong side of history by saying the war was about slavery and so on and so on like Jim Crow lynchings segregation or whatever would make them look good this is the one thing that I always hear historians say that you know well they didn't want to be remembered for fighting for slavery but very few people say much about how what actually happened in terms of that memory I hope that makes sense and what your take on that might be yeah I mean it's an interesting point I'm always struck by similar comments um you know from people who are convinced that these men in fact serve loyally as soldiers and then you sort of ask them so then explain Jim Crow to me like it was this somehow or explain the clan right explain racial terrorism the violence in the 1860s and 70s um and they're never quite you know able to do that so I think consistent consistency is is almost always lacking in some of these responses I'm not quite sure I sort of fully getting the memory question that you're that you're getting after I guess I think with they wanted slavery to continue and I think yeah when would it end I mean they wanted their children their grandchildren to be to benefit from slavery absolutely having somebody do something for them but they didn't happen and it's like I guess a sour grapes thing why I didn't really want that I wanted something else yeah but but just in terms of historians how we talk about this that I very I hear very few people say anything about what am I trying to say just that that um I don't know maybe you should go ahead yeah no no um I think the sour grapes argument is is interesting but I don't know if it gets us that far I think what historians are are looking at is you know how do these narratives function in the post war period why are white Southerners so committed to to first of all telling themselves these stories about what the war was about but also and I get this gets us to the monuments more specifically and the reunions because those events are all about imparting those narratives to the next generation so I so the lost cause to me you know it a lot of that you can trace to the pre-war period the loyal slave narrative is already there right it's just that after the war they're going to talk about the slaves that you know hid the jewelry in the path of Sherman's March and were loyal to their masters rescued them on the battlefield but where the lost cause really comes into play it seems to me is is by the 1880s when you're dealing with a generation that did not experience the war right both white and black and first for the white generation they need to be taught right and the UDC as much as we we focused on the issue of monuments and certainly their work on Confederate monuments is absolutely crucial but the most important work the UDC did was controlling history textbooks right you're not using a history textbook in a southern school unless and even beyond the south in some cases because there are UDC chapters all over the place you're not using a history textbook unless it was approved by the UDC and for it to be approved it has to say specific things about Lincoln not so nice things and it has to say certain things about of course Lee the Confederacy and slavery so you know I guess I'm not sure I'm answering your question I'm just trying to sort of offer some some perspective here that that the lost cause that narrative you know the role it plays evolves over time you know from the very first years of the post-war period when they're just trying to come to terms with the dead right and finding the dead right as both sides were and then of course not too long later you know using it to maintain white southern unity right over the generations so I don't know if that's really helping anyway but thanks I appreciate it all I got thanks a lot thanks everyone appreciate it