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Been busy with work and school and regrettably hadn’t had time to get to my copy of @KevinLevin‘s Searching for Black Confederates. Finally started listening on Audible to and from work. Well worth the time and extra money and hope to read it, notes included, soon.
It’s an excellent dismantling of the black Confederate myth. I expected that; what I did not expect was how his discussion of the role of camp slaves/servants has changed how I view the war and its battles.
Reading accounts of exhausting marches and lightening quick Confederate movements, I never pictured camp slaves toting rifles and other heavy objects for their masters.
Looking at Confederate earthworks, I always pictured exhausted white Confederates desperately and hastily digging, not lounging around as the work was performed by enslaved persons.
Weary soldiers hastily setting up camp to get a few hours rest before battle, not sitting on fence posts and supervising. I’ve imagined soldiers cooking bacon on bayonets and eating “sloosh,” not camp slaves foraging and making deals for food and cooking it for their enslavers.
And I’ve never visited a battlefield and pictured thousands of camp slaves/servants in the background, sometimes close to the action and sometimes swallowed up in the confusion.
Never considered their exposure to danger or the psychological complexity of decisions to assist wounded soldiers, aid or resist, or flee. I’ll never look at a Civil War battlefield in the same way again.
