One of the saddest Civil War photos I’ve ever seen, simply because it illustrates as no other the worst of the master-slave relationship. The cocky young seated aristo, one Lt. J. Wallace Comer of the 57th Alabama Regiment. The standing slave, Burrell, lately touted as a Confederate soldier because of the private’s tunic he wears, is curiously unarmed. Not so curious, really. Their expressions say it all. Burrell is a slave, not Comer’s comrade in arms.
Via Civil War Memory.
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Posted in Blogosphere, Civil War
Tagged Black Confederate Soldiers, Civil War Memory, Lt. J. Wallace Comer C.S.A., Slave Burrell
I have heretofore avoided joining in the liberal pile-on upon the Sons of Confederate Veterans (of which I am an inactive member) and the League of The South for their promotion of the ridiculous idea that thousands of slaves were carrying the rifled muskets of the Confederacy to fight for the freedom of their masters and mistresses.
I know where the idea comes from, i.e. the few servant/slaves who followed young Marster to the Rebel army and occasionally fired a musket at the enemy either to protect young Marster or just for the hell of it in the general excitement of battle. And I can imagine why it’s being pushed nowadays: because it has become fashionable among so-called historians to insist that the Rebels were “fighting for slavery,” primarily because Confederate politicians and some generals said (and wrote) that they were doing so.
But I’m finally joining the pile-on now that there is an elementary school textbook, no less, being issued to Virginia fourth graders that claims: “Thousands of Southern blacks fought in Confederate ranks, including two black battalions under the command of Stonewall Jackson.”
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Posted in Civil War, Genealogy, Scribbles
Tagged Black Confederate Soldiers, Joy Masoff, Virginia elementary textbooks
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 