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Included on the list of those intrigued by Cleburne’s suggestion included Confederate Secretary of the Treasury Judah Benjamin, five separate Confederate state governors who endorsed the black soldier proposal, General Robert E.
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Although it initially attracted little support, continued military setbacks prompted a number of Confederate leaders to reconsider the proposal. As Cleburne must have realized, the widespread emancipation of black soldiers and their families would make it impossible to keep other African-Americans as slaves once the war was over.Ĭleburne’s memo eventually came to the attention of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and his cabinet.
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Fearing the worst for his adopted country, the Irish-born Cleburne circulated a written document to his fellow officers that proposed that the Confederacy replenish its ranks with armed black soldiers who would be brought into the Rebel Army with a promise of freedom for themselves and their families.
#War of rights confederate series
This is another in a series of posts on slavery, the Constitution and the Civil War written for the Marquette University celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation.Īlthough the Civil War was, at its core, fought to preserve slavery, during the war concern for the preservation of the Confederate nation led some of the breakaway country’s leaders to contemplate the unthinkable-the emancipation of African-American slaves in exchange for their service in the Confederate military.Īlthough Confederate diplomats, in their search for support in England and France, somewhat disingenuously implied that the South planned to eventually abandon slavery during the early years of the Civil War, Southern efforts to abolish the “peculiar institution” really began in late 1863 with Confederate general Patrick Cleburne of the Army of the Tennessee.