Approximately 200,000 African-Americans served in the Union Army and Navy during the Civil War, and some 40,000 of them died in the line of duty:
http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/blacks-civil-war/
Many of these people had been free before the war, but a very large number of them escaped from slavery, often with the direct intention to fight against the people (their "masters"), government (the Confederacy) and the institution (slavery) that had oppressed them and their ancestors. These soldiers and sailors contributed directly to the Union victory in the war, and won freedom for themselves and their families. Slavery was never returned to America, not even during the darkest days of segregation in the late 19th century and early 20th century, following the failure of Reconstruction. Given these facts, can we interpret the American Civil War as one of the few successful slave rebellions in human history?
D. Babson.
________________________________________
From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert L. Schuyler [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, April 15, 2011 4:56 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Slavery and the War (1861-1865)
Rob Man has an interesting point. I was thinking of voices of people who
held power or who were connected with the general system in some way,
not the victims. It must also be recognized that almost none of this
resistance, especially armed revolt, worked. With the exception of Haiti
(and that probably because of international power plays and internal
events in Europe) all such attempts from Spartacus to Nat Turner ended
in defeat.
Of course one of the goals of Historical Archaeology is to give "voice"
to everyone in the past including those with little or no power. We also
need to try to understand them in their own terms - slaves and masters
alike.
Finally, I was also thinking of a different but key question in
understanding the past: our attempts not to project our beliefs or
emotional understandings onto the past. It is so easy for us today to
reject the very idea of slavery but many of our ancestors held different
beliefs (including some Schuylers who held slaves in the Hudson Valley
and in one case long after it was illegal ran a slaving ship to Africa
and back). Once in a class we discussed this issue in regard to slavery
and a student came up with one of the best analogies I have heard. Most
of us today eat animal products, a minority are vegetarians, a tiny
number are vigans. Most people in our contemporary society consider
vigans to be a bit odd - somewhat like people in the colonial period
considered Quakers who early opposed slavery. BUT what if science
develops the ability to mass produce food under laboratory conditions
(healthy and enjoyable food). It is possible to see future generations
saying, "God, what barbarians we had for ancestors in the 20th and 21st
centuries. They forced raised fellow creatures (animals) for food, kept
them under horrible conditions, brutalized them, and then killed them in
cold blood with no feelings toward them as fellow creatures. What
barbarians."
RLS
On 4/15/2011 12:38 PM, Rob Mann wrote:
> As to Dr. Schuyler's Point #1, I would suggest that throughout history there
> have been millions of voices raised against slavery, those of the enslaved
> themselves. Though actions spectacular (revolts, rebellions, and
> revolutions) and mundane (everyday acts of resistance) they raised their
> voices individually and collectively against their enslavement. We as
> historical archaeologists should always strive to "listen" for those
> silenced voices absent or muted in historical archives.
>
> Rob
>
> *****************************************************
> Rob Mann, Ph.D.
> Southeast Regional Archaeologist and
> Assistant Professor-Research
> Department of Geography and Anthropology
> Louisiana State University
> 227 Howe-Russell Geoscience Complex
> Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
> Office: 225-578-6739
> FAX: 225-578-4420
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Robert
> L. Schuyler
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 10:15 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: War (1861-1865)
>
> I find the entire discussion a bit odd. Why is fighting the Civil War over
> slavery (which was clearly the immediate and emotional issue that set the
> stage) and over states rights mutually exclusive. One of the basic rights of
> the Southern states was the right to practice the basis of their economy -
> plantation agriculture based on slave labor.
> As far as the South not recognizing the slavery issue it was clearly
> incorporated into their new constitution (based on the US Constitution but
> with changes (e.g. one term presidency)) although the Slave Trade was still
> outlawed.
>
> Some points for the South and for the North:
>
> (1) All known civilizations since ancient times practiced slavery and only
> rare voices were ever raised against it. When someone did speak against
> slavery it was usually only to say "do not enslave your own kind" (e.g.
> Greeks enslaving Greeks or Moslems enslaving other Moslems). As far as I
> know Jesus Christ, for example, never said anything about slavery or spoke
> out against it. In the Ten Commandments I do not think another's 'man
> servant' or 'maid servant' meant salaried employees.
>
> (2) All the American British colonies and most of the new American states
> had slaves and continued to practice slavery although by 1783 a movement was
> underway against it. The South found the northern states hypocritical in
> their newly found abolitionist stand (which was a minority view even in the
> North).
>
> (3) The states had entered the new American union (Constitution) voluntarily
> and nothing in that document says they could not withdraw the same way they
> came into it. Groups in New England, for example, had earlier discussed
> succession at the time of the War of 1812.
>
> (4) States Rights was critical because the South was afraid they would be
> eventually outvoted in Congress as new states came into the Union and the
> government might outlaw slavery as it was clearly already trying to block it
> geographical expansion.
>
> (5) The South (lower Southern states) did withdraw peacefully and amazed
> everyone by successfully forming a new and viable government with a
> President, Congress, Constitution and election (CSA).
>
> (6) Technically the South started the war by firing on a federal fort but it
> is clear the North set the stage and forced the issue.
>
> (7) The War was not fought to destroy slavery. The federal government and
> the President (Lincoln) clearly said it was initiated to save the Union, not
> to destroy slavery in the southern states.
> *************************************************************
> (1) No federal President (Buchanan - Democrat or Lincoln -
> Republican) could allow the South to leave the Union and expect the USA to
> survive. Lincoln was not the President who refused to remove federal forces
> from Charleston harbor. That had already happened before he took office.
>
> (2) In the past other Presidents made it clear what would happen (e.g.
> Andrew Jackson - a slave owning southerner) - WAR.
>
> (3) If the South had been allowed to withdraw peacefully (and if so the
> Upper South might have stayed in the Union) war might well have already
> started over who would control the western part of North America or other
> issues.
> **************************************************************
> The War was a major disaster for America brought on by a bunch of fanatics
> in the North (immediate abolitionists) and fanatics in the South ("fire
> eaters") while a slower and compromising approach would have gotten rid of
> slavery. All national legal slavery was gone on Earth by 1890. Slavery, of
> course, still survives in illegal pockets all around the world.
>
> The equal disaster was the assassination of Lincoln which allowed the
> Radical Republicans to make revenge-war on the South and eventually fail at
> Reconstruction and set the country back for a century. If Lincoln had lived
> with the victory in the war, with firmness but fairness toward the South,
> things might (??) have been quite different.
>
> Back to Historical Archaeology: How do all these changes show up in, say, a
> county in the "Black Belt" in settlement patterns and in the landscape. What
> was county "X" like in 1860 vs. 1870 and later how did Reconstruction impact
> the county, and then how did things change again when the "Redeemers"
> created the segregated South between 1880 and 1960? Are there major changes
> generated by these changes or just ripples in the pond?
>
> Bob Schuyler
>
>
>
>
>
>
> At 07:52 PM 4/14/2011, you wrote:
>
>> Charles Dew's *Apostles of Disunion *does an excellent job of covering
>> the secession movement and the various secession commissions that were
>> sent from the deep South to the states of the upper South. It's a great
>> place to start and provides a pretty thorough examination of the
>> various secession statements.
>>
>> Travis Shaw, M.A.
>> Archaeologist/Historian
>> R. Christopher Goodwin& Associates
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 14, 2011 at 7:38 PM, Sean Doyle<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Bloody smart phone. Sorry about the odd sentence at the end.
>>>
>>> Robert Leavitt<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> The secession statements of Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina,
>>> and Texas are available at
>>> htttp://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html
>>> and are most interesting. Georgia's is almost solely a rant in favor
>>> of slavery and against the anti-slavery attitudes of the north.
>>> Slavery is a significant issue in the statements of Mississippi and
>>> South Carolina, and, along with the attitude that "y'all are against
>>> us just because we hold slaves"," is well represented in the Texas
>>> statement. I've not found on-line sources for statements of the
>>> other nine seceding states, but I'd be willing to bet that slavery
>>> was, at the very least, one of the major concerns they all addresse.
>>>
>>> Robert
>>>
>>>
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>>>> From: "Linda Derry"<[log in to unmask]>
>>>> To: "'HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY'"<[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Subject: RE: FW: Today in history
>>>> Date: Thu, 14 Apr 2011 17:05:00 -0500
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>>>>
>>>> Hi Ya'll,
>>>>
>>>> As historical archaeologists, we should all agree that it is always
>>>> good
>>>>
>> to
>>
>>>> work with PRIMARY documents, right?
>>>>
>>>> With that in mind, I have to say that from where I'm sitting, the
>>>> old
>>>>
>> Black
>>
>>>> Belt or cotton belt of Alabama, it sure does appear that slaveholding
>>>>
> took
>
>>>> center stage in the primary documents that speak to this issue. ( as
>>>> opposed to the rationalization that appeared along with the "Lost Cause"
>>>> narrative in the late 19th/ early 20th century.)
>>>>
>>>> Nothing could be more primary that Alabama's secession ordinance,
>>>> so I looked it up, and it does state a need for a union of "Slave
>>>> holding States of the South" and then at the convention they refer
>>>> to the new
>>>>
>> nation
>>
>>>> as "a Southern slaveholding Confederacy."
>>>>
>>>> I'm betting that secession documents in most Southern states have
>>>> similar statements - So, if you hold to the state's rights point of
>>>> view, why not test your theory by locating this ordinance for your
>>>> state. (& find the complete ordinance, not something excerpted by folks
>>>>
> with agendas).
>
>>>>
>>>> Just thought it was worth throwing out to the list - I REALLY don't
>>>> want
>>>>
>> to
>>
>>>> argue about the cause of the war (since I live with this rhetoric
>>>> on a daily basis) but was just thinking that in our professional
>>>> community, these secession documents ought to be our reference point
>>>> rather than
>>>>
>> stuff
>>
>>>> silly old arm chair historians or journalists write!<SMILE>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Linda Derry
>>>> Site Director
>>>> Old Cahawba
>>>> 719 Tremont St.
>>>> Selma, AL 36701
>>>> ph. 334/875-2529
>>>> fax. 334/877-4253
>>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>>>> geoff carver
>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2011 12:40 PM
>>>> To: [log in to unmask]
>>>> Subject: Re: FW: Today in history
>>>>
>>>> I keep wondering what rights other than the "right to own slaves"
>>>> was covered under "states rights" anyway.
>>>>
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>
>>>> He contends that the war was always about slavery from the very
>>>> beginning but why after the war concluded, historians, politicians,
>>>> and the media ignored or downplayed that reality, be they
>>>> northerners or southerners
>>>>
>>>
>
--
Robert L. Schuyler
University of Pennsylvania Museum
3260 South Street
Philadelphia, PA l9l04-6324
Tel: (215) 898-6965
Fax: (215) 898-0657
[log in to unmask]
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