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By Root 1032 0

military service, whether by law or by implication, came too late to impress or deceive most slaves. “I’ll work for Massa Randolph good ’nough,” said a slave belonging to the former Confederate Secretary of War, “but no want to fight for Massa Davis.” Bewildered by the remark, someone asked him how he could stand by idly while the Yankees robbed his master. “I knows nuthing ’bout politics,” the slave replied. But when told that he might win his freedom by enlisting, this same slave suddenly revealed a sound grasp of politics: “We niggers dat fight will be free, course; but you see, massa, if some ob us don’t fight, we all be free, Massa Lincum says.” That same perception of reality had made Colonel James Chesnut’s slaves far less enthusiastic about military service. When the question had first been broached, back in March 1862, they had talked enthusiastically about enlisting and securing their freedom and a bounty. More than two years later, however, with the military and political situation quite different, their tone had changed. “Now they say coolly that they don’t want freedom if they have to fight for it. That means they are pretty sure of having it anyway.”98

Even before the Confederate Congress authorized enlistments, some slaves found ways to communicate their aversion to fighting for their masters. In early 1865, a Richmond newspaper published a letter allegedly written by a black man to the president of the Confederate Senate:

I hope you all will pass the law to arm the negro and the Day you do that We do intend to fight you all and We have made up our minds to do it when ever you all Will give us arms the Yankee is our friends, and you all is our enemy, and give us arms and we will rase war right here, and do you think we would fight again our friends for you all; no, never would I do so.99

When slaves were later questioned by Union soldiers about their willingness to bear arms for the Confederacy, they no doubt told them what they wanted to hear but there is little reason in this instance to suspect the blacks of duplicity. “My master offers me my freedom if I will take up arms,” one slave told an escaped Union prisoner, “but I have a wife and five children, and he does not offer them their freedom, and we have come to the conclusion that there is no use fighting for our masters and our freedom when any children we may have are to be made slaves, and we have thought when we get arms and are allowed to be together in regiments, we can demand freedom for our wives and children, and take it.” The day the Confederacy arms its slaves, a Georgia black assured General Sherman, “dat day de war ends!” Equally explicit, another slave vowed that his people would never have fought the Yankees. “I habe heard de colored folks talk of it. They knowd all about it; dey’ll turn the guns on the Rebs.”100

The Confederacy had anticipated little difficulty in mobilizing slaves for military duty. Nor did the proponents of black enlistments doubt the efficiency with which such soldiers would serve. After all, an Alabama newspaper suggested, “masters and overseers can marshal them for battle by the same authority and habit of obedience with which they are marshalled to labor.” The end of the war, however, rendered such questions academic. Few slaves were ever enlisted, and none of them apparently had the opportunity to fight. Had the Confederacy managed to raise a black army, it would seem unlikely, particularly after 1863, that it could have fought with the same sense of commitment and self-pride that propelled the black troops in the Union Army. When he first heard of the act to recruit blacks for the Confederate Army, a Virginia freedman recalled, he had suddenly found himself unable to restrain his emotions. “They asked me if I would fight for my country. I said, ‘I have no country.’ ”101

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WHILE BLACKS WERE RELUCTANT to take up arms to perpetuate the bondage of their people, many were to regret that they had not struck harder for their liberation. If only there had been a massive upheaval, undermining the Confederacy