Black Confederates

One of the unspoken aspects of the American Civil War is the story of the African-Americans who fought for the Confederacy during those four years that tore the country apart. In their grey uniforms, they marched into history as the Black Confederates. From the waters off the Carolina Coast to the prairies of West Texas, there are speculations that 365,000 African-Americans in the South gave all they had and sometimes their own lives to support the Confederacy. Without the contribution of hard labor by free men and slave alike, the Southern struggle against the Union juggernaut would have been much harder thought. Enduring the hot sun over the fields, black laborers harvested food and worked on railroad tracks so supply trains could get through. Working in equally humid factories and sweat shops, they toiled long hours for the Confederate war effort. They helped care for the dying and the wounded in hospitals. And for some, they followed other southern men and entered into the services of the Confederate Army and Navy. There were also state militias of black confederates that fought side by side with the rest of the armies. While most Northern states like Illinois prohibited blacks to serve in any militia, Southern states including Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee had these militias of African-Americans even before the war began. Louisiana particularly had a strong black militia tradition, going all the way back to the early 1700's. The office of the North Carolina governor, John W. Ellis, was flooded with requests to raise troupes of Blacks for both local and state protection. One request reported that three full companies could be easily raised in a small town called Scuffletown that was settled with freed mulattoes. In the summer of 1861, Ellis read a letter that fifty to a hundred mulattoes or freed men of color were willing to assist the North Carolina Army. At the same time, Tennessee government passed the very first petition that legislated the use of free black soldiers. Tennessee Governor Isham Harris stated that any Southerner, black or white, between 15 and 50 joined military service was to be paid $18.00 a month and received the same clothes and rations. Four months later, two black regiments (mostly engineers) along white confederate soldiers, marched through the streets of Memphis. All through the south, these militias guarded all the major cities, putting the citizens in the hands of the black troops guarding them. In the 1800s, Sou