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early 1864, as the Confederate Army of Tennessee licked its
wounds after being routed at the Battle of Chattanooga, Major-General
Patrick Cleburne (the "Stonewall of the West") proposed
that "the most courageous of our slaves" be trained
as soldiers and that "every slave in the South who shall
remain true to the Confederacy in this war" be freed.
In Confederate
Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at such Confederate
plans to arm and free slaves. He shows that within a year
of Cleburne's proposal, which was initially rejected out of
hand, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Robert E. Lee
had all reached the same conclusions. At that point, the idea
was debated widely in newspapers and drawing rooms across
the South, as more and more slaves fled to Union lines and
fought in the ranks of the Union army. Eventually, the soldiers
of Lee's army voted on the proposal, and the Confederate government
actually enacted a version of it in March. The Army issued
the necessary orders just two weeks before Appomattox, too
late to affect the course of the war. Throughout the book,
Levine captures the voices of blacks and whites, wealthy planters
and poor farmers, soldiers and officers, and newspaper editors
and politicians from all across the South. In the process,
he sheds light on such hot-button topics as what the Confederacy
was fighting for, whether black southerners were willing to
fight in large numbers in defense of the South, and what this
episode foretold about life and politics in the post-war South.
Confederate
Emancipation offers an engaging and illuminating account
of a fascinating and politically charged idea, setting it
firmly and vividly in the context of the Civil War and the
part played in it by the issue of slavery and the actions
of the slaves themselves.
"Having fought for nearly four years to keep their bondsmen
in slavery, many Southern whites experienced what amounted
to a deathbed conversion to the idea of freeing and arming
them to fight for the Confederacy. As Bruce Levine shows in
this important book, the idea was unlikely to become reality
even if Appomattox had not intervened to end the experiment
before it fairly started. Disentangling myth from history,
Confederate Emancipation deepens our understanding
of the Civil War."
— James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom
"This is the
little known, but vastly significant story of race at the
crisis-point of the Confederacy. In clear and compelling tones,
Levine sets out a history of the Civil War era through the
words and actions of southerners pushed to the point of desperation,
and hoping that slave soldiers might save the slavery-based
southern way of life. This is historical detective work and
analysis at its very best. The image of the Civil War South
is transformed forever."
— James O. Horton, co-author of Slavery and the
Making of America
"The Civil
War produced few more ironic episodes than the Confederacy's
debate about whether to arm and liberate enslaved African
Americans. Bruce Levine's welcome study illuminates the conditions
that gave rise to the debate, the forces arrayed in favor
and against the idea, and the ultimate failure of those who
saw black men as the key to establishing a white slaveholding
republic. This book, which reminds us again of the war's immense
complexity, deserves to attract the widest possible audience."
— Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Confederate War
"Throughout
history, slaves have been armed in defense of their masters,
often exchanging freedom for military service. The inability
of the Southern Confederacy to do so until its doom was sealed
reveals, perhaps as nothing else, the essence of Southern
nationalism. In telling the full story of the Confederacy's
failure to mobilize slaves in its defense, Bruce Levine brilliantly
reveals the essence of Confederate nationality."
— Ira Berlin, author of Generations of Captivity:
A History of African-American Slaves
Bruce Levine is Professor of History at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the author of
Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War
and The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict,
and the Coming of Civil War, and is co-author of Who
Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics,
Culture, and Society.
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