Searching for Black Confederates by Kevin Levin

[O' Be Joyful]

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better?

 

[5fish]

There's nothing pretend about the Confederate Army being integrated because it was. There were Black men slaves or free like Holt Collier, Horace King, Native Americans like General Stand Watie, Hispanics, Irish. If you want photos I'd be happy to post them.

Here found Mississippi... http://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/articles/289/black-confederate-pensioners-after-the-civil-war

Black southerners contributed to the Confederate war effort in four ways. First, as slaves, they provided the labor that fueled the Southern cotton economy and maintained the production of foodstuffs and other commodities. Second, slaves were rented to or drafted by the Confederate government to work on specific projects related to the South’s military infrastructure, such as bridges and railroads. Third, black southerners were part of the work force in the Confederacy’s war-related foundries, munitions factories, and mines. In addition, they transported food and war material to the front by wagon, and provided services to wounded and sick soldiers in Confederate hospitals. Last, a large number of black southerners went to war with the Confederate army as noncombatants, serving as personal servants, company cooks, and grooms.


snip... Pensioner's

African Americans who had served with the Confederate army were not included – except in Mississippi, which had included African Americans in the state’s pension program from its beginning in 1888. It was not until 1921 that another state extended the eligibility for pensions to African Americans who had served as servants with the Confederate army.

Snip... What unit did their Master's serve in...

Pension applications for African Americans were different from those used for soldiers or widows. Questions on the applications for servants asked for the applicant’s name, age, the name of the person he had served during the Civil War, and the dates of his service. Questions also asked the unit to which the applicant’s master had been assigned. This information, coupled with his master’s name, allowed pension boards to verify the applicant’s service by checking Confederate muster rolls. This step in the approval process was crucial as contemporary records documenting the service of African Americans were nonexistent. There were no muster rolls for these men, most of whom had no last names at the time of their service

snip...

The proportion of black pensioners among different work categories varied from state to state. The pension statutes in Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee, for example, were intended primarily to reward the service of servants or cooks whose masters were assigned to units in the Confederate army. Despite state variations, an overall pattern of service among the black pensioners is clear. On average, 85 percent of the black pensioners served as servants or cooks with the Confederate army.

The number of black pensioners in Mississippi was large enough to indicate the distribution of black noncombatants within the Confederate army. Unit assignments can be identified for 1,312 black applicants in Mississippi, of which nearly 1,100 were with units raised in the state. Unit assignments of masters (thus that of black noncombatants) by percentage were: infantry, 57 percent; cavalry, 33 percent, artillery, 8 percent; and general staff, 2 percent). Of the seventy-nine infantry and cavalry regiments or battalions with Mississippi designations during the war, only three (4 percent) were not represented by at least one black pensioner after the war.

The age at which black noncombatants began serving with the Confederate army can be calculated from information contained on applications in Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia. The modal age (the age that occurs with the greatest frequency in the distribution) for all three states was seventeen. All of the states were remarkably similar when it came to the average length of time these black noncombatants served with the Confederate army (2.6 years).