Sometimes before writing a book review I will check Goodreads for ones already written -- I don't want to repeat what somebody's already said. In the case of Kevin Levin's Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth, I found a good example of the kind of reality that Levin (and we) must contend with when it comes to discussing the Civil War in a factual manner.
It was a "one-star" review that ran,"I’d give it Zero [sic] stars. Kevin Levin is not worthy of publishing anything. His bias against the South and Black Confederates is we’ll [sic] known. He is a huge hypocrite. Black union soldiers doing the same jobs as Black Confederates are considered soldiers. Not so the Black Confederates, he dismisses them with the same old rhetoric. Don’t waste your money supporting this book of fiction!"
Were Yankees every bit as racist as Confederates? Yes! Did they abuse the good faith and loyalty of the blacks helping them by limiting them for the most part to servile roles? Yes! However, Levin's book addresses a critical difference that comes through even in the wording of this scathing review: "Black union soldiers doing the same jobs as Black Confederates are considered soldiers." Notice that the reviewer doesn't call the "Black Confederates" soldiers. Why is that? At the heart of Levin's narrative (and research) is a clear definition: a soldier serves the state in an official capacity; records attest to his service in an organized unit that is supplied, officered, drilled, and paid as part of the armed forces.
What is abundantly clear from Levin's book is that the Union had such organized, official units filled with African-Americans. The Confederacy did not -- with a clarifying exception. Read on!
Moreover, despite the neo-Confederate reviewer's pained insinuation that black union soldiers only did the same jobs as blacks working for the Confederates, Levin demonstrates another thing beyond doubt: the black Union solders also fought in battle as official members of organized units. My emphasis, because -- c'mon guys, is it really that hard? This is a conception of soldiery so fundamental that one wonders why the neo-Confederates of the Sons of Confederate Veterans can't acknowledge it. Yes, blacks attached to Confederate units as manservants, teamsters, cooks, or musicians sometimes picked up rifles and shot Yankees; they manhandled cannon; some wore gray; but they never advanced into battle as full-fledged, registered, acknowledged, official members of any unit operating on behalf of the state. Whereas that did happen in the Union army. There is a clear distinction to be made, and that is the point of Levin's book.
Ironically, another review grades down Levin's book for bothering to take on the "risible" notion of black Confederate soldiers, saying Levin scores easy, "gotcha" points when what's needed is a serious study of what blacks actually did in the Confederate army, because it's obvious as hell they weren't soldiers. This reviewer probably doesn't live in the South, where mythical "heritage" trumps all and where wounded pride clouds judgment to the extent that risible notions are repeated as gospel truths. It is to Levin's credit that much of his book is taken up with the sources of that risible notion, especially his discussion of the stark differences between the Lost Cause myth of the noble slave following his master through the war and the current, neo-Confederate notion of the loyal slave willingly joining his white brothers in a defense of the homeland.
To me the most fascinating story in the book -- the one alluded to above about black Confederate regiments, and the one that should put paid to the notion of black Confederate soldiery -- is the account of the effort towards the end of the war actually to raise black Confederate formations. Patrick Cleburne, an Irish-born, non-slaveholding Confederate general, proposed the idea in early 1864, but his superior Joe Johnston shut down any further discussion of the idea. Finally, in January, 1865, with the Confederacy facing the void, Robert E. Lee came out in favor of the idea of enlisting black soldiers -- to be granted freedom in exchange for service -- "without delay." The proposal was tweaked to allow for enlistment of free blacks only. Finally, in March, 1865 -- one month before Appomattox -- Richmond newspapers reported recruitment for a brigade. Some seventy men appear to have enlisted. They were in the process of learning the trained soldier's drill when Richmond fell and the effort -- along with the Confederacy -- subsequently collapsed.
Why should this not be the final word on the subject of black Confederate soldiers? What is it about the neo-Confederate psyche that cannot accept that a regime whose very cornerstone was African-American slavery refused until the bitter end even to contemplate African-American soldiery? That very refusal is eminently consistent with historical Confederate ideology. It flies in the face of reason not to accept it as reality.
If it makes neo-Confederates fell any better about things, Levin commits a howler of an error about the battle of Chickamauga. There, plain as day on page 37, he writes, "Union major general William Rosecrans and the Army of the Cumberland proved victorious over General Braxton Bragg's Army of the Tennessee." Say what? The Confederates routed the Union army at Chickamauga and then besieged it inside Chattanooga. Neo-Confederates get to keep their victories. Those realities can't be gainsaid. Why bother with gaudy and untrue embellishments?
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