Free Blacks taken in Pennsylvania

jgoodguy

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leftyhunter said:
Ate you arguing that the Confederate Army did not seize black people from Pennsylvania or are you arguing they were legally justified in doing so?
A bit confused on your criticism of those who posted evidence that yes the Confederate Army kidnapped black people to return to slavery.
Leftyhunter
The term 'kidnapping' is not historically accurate. So far the only thing offered in support of the term 'kidnapping' is passionate rhetoric.
 

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Tom Elmore said:
The evidence tells me no person of color was safe during the Confederate invasion, although a handful were amazingly lucky if their capture became known to a prominent white citizen who went to the trouble of interceding on their behalf. Any Confederate linked to the army could evidently claim that they recognized the individual as a former slave, which was sufficient to seal their fate. Even a southern civilian could follow in the wake of the army to seize captives (see June 22 entry in https://civilwartalk.com/threads/ro...-the-gettysburg-campaign.154788/#post-1988401)

Many black families fled their homes to avoid this fate, and the Confederate army could only engage in this activity during a brief lull before the Federal army arrived in force to demand their full attention. Both actions ensured that only a few dozen (so far as we can establish) blacks were taken south.
Good Summary!. IMHO the total is in the low hundreds, It looks to me, we have in this, clueless politicians, civilian slave owners wanting their property back, an army of soldiers and officers from a society where black was overwhelming slave, in a strange land, expected to follow civilian dictates and fight another army coming at them.
 

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leftyhunter said:
Certainly the term taken by force would be accurate.
Leftyhunter
Taken into custody seems to be more accurate. Cattle, sheep and a wedding dress or 2 were taken by force during the Pensylvania campaign.

Lee's orders were to take them to a central location and their status determined. Sounds like taking into custody to me. George Meade interrupted that status determining process. Did Lincoln order the kidnapping of Merryman, or taking into custody?
 

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NH Civil War Gal said:
Well, I listed a diary by an appalled citizen with numerous entries about this - this is my thread after all - and even though it was published by a university press, a certain member here threw it back in my face saying it was "propaganda written after the war." So even when proof is given, apparently it is all propaganda conceived after the war.
My personal bugaboo is been accused of using post-1960 revisionism. When someone accuses me of some x without evidence, I figure I am doing my job. Thanks for the article.

There is a lot of evidence that blacks were taken south during the CSA retreat. There were other similar cases in other places. The evidence is largely letters, newspaper accounts, diaries, personal anecdotes and so on. There are enough official bits to connect the common private in the ANV to the highest levels of the CSA government. I like the term SNAFU to describe it. I hold that 'kidnapping' is modernity. Others don't

At some point we present our cases and go on. Visitors which outnumber members, google searches and lunkers will judge our efforts.
 

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Andersonh1 said:
Sounds like the blanket dismissal of anything Southerners wrote after the war as "lost cause". It's too easy to just discount things we don't want to believe, and I think with any evidence, as I noted in my comment about the newspapers earlier, it all deserves to be considered and examined carefully and not dismissed out of hand, even if it tells us something we'd rather not hear.
I like evidence gathering, even when I don't cherish it at first. Many many times I gain new knowledge or perspective and do my happy dance.
 

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WJC said:
What would you have done with them? At least they were allowed the dignity of being free, of earning their meals in this temporary setting with the knowledge that their spouse and children would not be sold away to some distant, unknown place. And perhaps, more importantly, it gave them hope for a better tomorrow, something the slaveholders could never provide.
'Freeing the slaves' was a bigger project than anyone foresaw or planned for; it wasn't perfect, but it succeeded.
Sure as heck better than the alternative.
 

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leftyhunter said:
It is not unreasonable to call seizing people who are legally free and forced into slavery kidnapping. Yes per the definition of nine white males on the US Supreme Court they were not but from the perspective of the black victims they indeed were kidnapped. Should not the viewpoints of the victims be taken into consideration and therefore it is indeed correct to call hunting down human beings and forcing them into slavery kidnapping?
Leftyhunter
What do you call conscription?
 

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WJC said:
How would the ordinary black man or woman, incapable of reading or writing, with no 'connections' caught up in the rebel dragnet know or be able to apply or petition for release?
In the CSA applicable law as I understand it, the black that does not admit to being a slave, is not a slave. Under the pressures of war and battle, all sort of niceties gets missed and free blacks were taken back in the general retreat.
 

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leftyhunter said:
Conscript's are eventually released from military service . Slaves are slaves for life if the owners wish that. Conscript's don't have their spouses and children sold down the river never to see them again. Conscript's wives,mothers and daughters are not automatic play things for master.
Leftyhunter
A whole lot of conscripts were conscripts for life.
 

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NH Civil War Gal said:
I have been searching in every conceivable way to find out what happened to the children and women that were carried off and I'm having trouble finding anything other than "they were taken to Richmond and sold." However, I came across a Jacob Hoke who I believe was in Chambersburg and witnessed a lot of this and wrote one of the first books on this and it was considered a standard reference on Gettysburg in general for quite sometime in the late 1800s. collection but I finally tracked down a 7.00 used copy and ordered it to see what he has to say about this as he witnessed this for himself personally.
May I have the title?
 

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Lieber Code

Art. 45.
All captures and booty belong, according to the modern law of war, primarily to the government of the captor.
Prize money, whether on sea or land, can now only be claimed under local law.
 

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From the above reference.
The short version is that armed forces of a nation act under a belligerent's military law, not local law. If it is not kidnapping under military law of the belligerent then it is not kidnapping. Note that Pennsylvania is explicitly addressed.
 

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leftyhunter said:
Only in the sense that they were killed. On the other hand unlike slaves once the war was over conscript's went home. Also almost every Democratic national in the last one hundred years had some form of conscription. Does that make all conscript's slave's?
Leftyhunter
Beats me, I am not the one torturing the definition of kidnapping.
 

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NH Civil War Gal said:
Yes, I don't like it, but I am trying to understand both points of view.
It is what it is. I find the idea of tens of thousands of men dying in combat mostly because of incompetent leadership, insufficient training, and primitive medicine repugnant. Many of those southern boys chasing slaves was never seen again by a loved one. Who do I cry for.
 

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leftyhunter said:
Yet the US Supreme Court decision Dow vs Johnston seemed to state that while a rebellion against the United States is illegal the actions of those violently rebelling us fine and dandy. Perhaps @jgoodguy could comment on that and just how many Rebels does it take for the US government per Dow v.Johnson to have to give amnesty for any violence committed during a rebellion?
Leftyhunter
I don't do morals, I do historical facts to the best of my ability.
 

jgoodguy

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NH Civil War Gal said:
You cry for all of them. Go to the web site for the ads of black people searching for their families. Only a person with a heart of stone could keep from weeping after reading about 20 of the ads.
History is depressing enough without beating my breast about it. The piles of skull left by the Huns, The blinding of companies of men save one to lead them back to their homeland to deter further invasion, the real Count Dracula, impaling men, women and children to deter rebellion and invasion, the piles of heads at the base of the guillotine or the families drowned in Nantes, France during the French Revolution. That before we get to the modern era.

Thanks for the offer, but I will have to pass.
 

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Pat Young said:
You can cry for the slavecatchers. I won’t.
In your opinion are the dead men rotting in graves unknowing of the sin ascribed to them by creatures of another time and civilization unworth of pity? I am thankful I am historically agnostic.
 

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GwilymT said:
I agree. Ascribing current moral or social norms to people of the nineteenth century is presentism and is unhelpful. However, we can agree that certain ideas and social norms of the past were morally wrong without condemning those people of the past. Where we run into problems, like we have on this thread, is when people deny evidence and attempt to hold up those actors as heroes to be emulated in order to push a modern agenda.
My purpose is to present historical accuracy to the best of my ability. The preoccupation with the morality of historical actors seems to be limited to the Civil War and the opposing sides. No one gets upset about Henry the VIII unique divorce procedures.
 
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