Prior to reading Bruce Levine’s book, Confederate Emancipation, (Oxford U Press, 2006), I was unaware of any efforts of Confederate attempts to enlist slaves into their armies in the exchange for freedom. Our previous discussion on the rebuttal of claims for Black Confederates, had primed my perspective to believe that voluntary Confederate emancipation was ludicrous. However, the arguments put forth in Levine’s novel were sufficiently strong and (most importantly to my skepticism) ranged across multiple factions of approach to the influencers of history to provide a rather complete answer to what caused the Confederate government to begin arming and emancipating male slaves in 1864/1865.
As we had previously discussed in class, a maximal answer to a causal question has to tackle why and when Confederate Emancipation occurred and how it was enacted. Levine’s answer to the question “why did Confederates who began the war to defend slavery voluntarily act to abolish it?” is both simple and nuanced. His immediate answer is that military necessity as the war dragged on forced southern politicians and generals to accept the proposal to arm slaves – their last untapped source for desperately needed manpower. Levine was particularly forceful in cementing the link between the war’s outcome with the increase in cries for slave armament in citing the famous ‘Culloden Letter’. The letter written by Gen. Hindman of the Army of Tennessee asked “Cannot [the slaves] afford their quota of soldiers?” (pg. 26) in direct response to the disastrous defeat of his army at Chattanooga one month earlier by a Union force that almost doubled his manpower. He also points to the outburst in pro- slave-soldier sentiment in Georgia after Sherman’s invasion in 1864.
However, up until 1864, proponents of arming the slaves do not mention emancipation. Levine explains the introduction of the idea of emancipation alongside arming slaves as a result of slave desertions in the early years of the war. In the footsteps of Ira Berlin and Steven Hahn, Levine argues that the slave flight to Union lines not only prompted the Emancipation Proclamation but Confederate Emancipation as well. He reasons that the Union use of black soldiers in battles like Port Hudson and Milliken’s bend dispelled the belief that African-Americans would be hindrances and poor soldiers. Most importantly, he says that massive slave defections had convinced many southerners that slavery was dead and that the call to “salvage southern independence at slavery’s expense” was most important. Because slaves after 1863 could expect freedom at Union lines, he quotes Robert E Lee as writing that the idea of gradual and general emancipation “the best means for securing the efficiency and fidelity of this [slave] auxiliary force”. (pg 36) Thus, it could be boiled down into the fact that southerners were merely reacting to Northern military victories and slave defection when they decided to begin arming and emancipating slaves.
The “when” of Confederate Emancipation is less-directly addressed in the book. However, it is indirectly addressed in its converse form of “why did it fail”? In answering this question, Levine argues that emancipation failed because it was enacted too late to be implemented in the war effort. The ideas of emancipation ran against very strong opposition politically. JT Leach, Congressman from North Carolina, wrote that emancipation was “an insult to our brave soldiers” (40). Socially, blacks in the Army “abdicated whites’ proper, divinely ordained control over black life.” (51) Thus, until it was absolute military necessity (which it wasn’t until after the fall of Vicksburg and Gettysburg in June 1863), emancipation would have zero chance of implementation. While Levine states no direct cause, it was eventually military necessity in 1864 and the needs for a means of assuring fidelity in the face of massive slave defection post-1863 that determined when Emancipation could get political support.
Finally, the “how”. Throughout the book, Levine returns continuously to his thesis that Confederate Emancipation was precipitated by the need to arm slaves to fight in the CSA armies. The “how” is the least clear of the causal questions. He begins by refuting arguments that important figures in the Confederate cause had stopped seeing the war as a defense of the “peculiar institution”. He shows that even in 1865, figures like Robert Lee, Jefferson Davis, and Gen. Cleburne still belonged in the pro-slavery ideological camp. In contrast, he reiterates constantly that they believed that military necessity mandated slaves’ involvement in the war and the freedom would be the only carrot with which to entice them. Levine compares how Confederates planned to emancipate slaves with Prussian and Russian serf emancipation (30 and 3 years before, respectively) – by manumitting voluntarily so “they could specify the conditions on which freedom is granted and make statues for the regulation of labor” (pg 122). Ultimately by giving freedom but not rights to property, slaves could be held in pseudo-bondage as sharecroppers. This resonated with politicians who did not wish to upset the traditional hierarchy.
In conclusion, I really enjoyed reasoning through Levine’s argument for the reasons for Confederate emancipation. In particular, his explanation of why emancipation was seen as a necessity was his strongest argument. The south was in dire need of soldiers, which slaves could become provided they were given freedom to assure their fidelity. By Levine’s logic, had the Union not gone through with the Emancipation Proclamation, this carrot would not have been needed and Confederate emancipation would not have occurred. His argument for when emancipation was finally approved (because it had been proposed as early as 1861) rested firmly on his case that military necessity after 1863 forced the issue of black soldiers. Overall, the arguments were firm and really tied into our past discussions – particularly the parallels between Northern and Southern Emancipation.