Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2005 Marching masters: slavery, race, and the Confederate Army, 1861-1865 Colin Edward Woodward Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Woodward, Colin Edward, "Marching masters: slavery, race, and the Confederate Army, 1861-1865" (2005). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 1347. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/1347 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. MARCHING MASTERS: SLAVERY, RACE, AND THE CONFEDERATE ARMY, 1861-1865 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of History by Colin Edward Woodward B.A., Trinity College, Hartford, 1997 M.A., Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 1999 May 2005 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Since beginning this project, I have benefited from the advice, guidance, and support of the history department at Louisiana State University. I am in great debt to Charles Royster, who agreed to serve as my major professor back in 1998. Over the years, he has given me excellent advice about how to become a better writer and historian. He has set a high standard for research, writing, and thinking that I have tried to live up to. Dr. Royster’s hospitalization in February 2005 unfortunately did not allow him to attend my dissertation defense. I am grateful that William J. Cooper agreed to serve as my committee chairman in Dr. Royster’s place. I have also benefited from the help of my other committee members. Gaines Foster has always been willing to read my work and offer reassurance and valuable feedback. Mark Thompson has given me much encouragement, advice, and provided welcome humor. David Culbert was gracious enough to serve on my committee at the last minute and offered useful recommendations about how to improve my dissertation. Thanks also to other faculty and staff members at LSU for their patience, guidance, and the occasional free lunch. I am also indebted to the department of history for giving me financial support for the past seven years, especially the T. Harry Williams fellowship, which allowed me much needed time to finish my dissertation. Thanks also to the Virginia Historical Society and the Colonial Dames in New Orleans for additional funding. ii Various people have made life in Baton Rouge tolerable at worst and very enjoyable at best. Keith Finley and David Gauthier are two good friends and budding scholars who always provided much needed humor, good conversation, and advice. They were almost always willing to sit in front of Middleton Library or head to the Chimes for a beer and an extended bull session, even if we knew our time was better spent on our dissertations. Ana Cabezas, now living in Chicago, gave me much love and support over the last year and a half. She had faith in me (not to mention the World Champion Red Sox) when I did not. More than anyone, she made the last few semesters at LSU good ones. And last, but not least of all, I am thankful that my parents—who have suffered my absence and repeatedly alleviated my financial woes—have always been proud and supportive of me. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………….ii ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………….....v INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………...1 I THE FIGHT FOR SLAVERY: SOUTHERN SOLDIERS AND THE CONFEDERATE MISSION…………………………………………………….16 II PLANTERS AND YEOMEN, OFFICERS AND PRIVATES: RACE, CLASS, CONSCRIPTION, AND THE DEMANDS OF CONFEDERATE SERVICE…60 III PATERNALISM, PUNISHMENT, AND PROFIT: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SLAVES AND SOLDIERS……………………………………….100 IV “WE CRUSHED THEIR FREEDOM”: EMANCIPATION, BLACK LOYALTY, AND THE ARMY’S STRUGGLE FOR RACIAL CONTROL……………….153 V NO QUARTER: THE CONFEDERACY’S OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL POLICY TOWARD BLACK UNION TROOPS………………………………204 VI THE GREATEST OF MASTERS: THE CONFEDERATE ARMY AND THE IMPRESSMENT OF BLACK LABOR…..…………………………………....259 VII THE CONFEDERATE ARMY AND THE RELUCTANT ENLISTMENT OF BLACK TROOPS, 1864-1865…………………………………………………298 VIII RELICS OF THE ANTEBELLUM ERA: CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS AND THE END OF SLAVERY……………………………………………………...339 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………372 VITA…………………………………………………………………………………....440 iv ABSTRACT Many historians have examined the Civil War soldier, but few scholars have explored the racial attitudes and policies of the Confederate army. Although Southern men did not fight for slavery alone, the defense of the peculiar institution, and the racial control they believed it assured, united rebels in their support of the Confederacy and the war effort. Amid the destruction of the Civil War, slavery became more important than ever for men battling Yankee armies. The war, nevertheless, tested Confederate soldiers’ idealized view of human bondage. Federal armies wrecked havoc on masters’ farms and plantations, seized hundreds of thousands of slaves, and eventually armed African Americans. Rebel troops were not blind to the war’s negative effects on the peculiar institution. They noted black people’s many disloyal actions, and some came to believe that slavery was not worth holding onto if it would undermine the Southern war effort. But despite occasional worries about rebellious black people, Southern troops understood that slavery was vital to their cause. The Confederate military became the greatest of masters—an institution that rebels believed would assure the survival of human bondage and white supremacy. The army granted exemptions to slaveholders and overseers, invaded the Border States in order to acquire more slave territory, and impressed black workers to build fortifications and perform menial tasks. When rebels confronted black Federal troops—as at Fort Pillow and the Crater—they showed no quarter to men they believed were slaves in rebellion against their white masters. Only with the Federal government’s triumph did Southerners accept the end of slavery. After Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, former Confederate soldiers lived in a new v world. They could not reinstate slavery, but they were still committed to white supremacy and looked with fondness on the Old South. vi INTRODUCTION In the past thirty years, historians have written many works—whether focusing on white or black Southerners—about slavery in the Old South.1 Their studies usually conclude in 1860, the year before the Civil War broke out. Fewer scholars have devoted entire works to the subjects of slavery and race relations in the Confederate States of America,2 and fewer still to the specific topic of their importance in the mind of the rebel 1 Listing all the works from the past thirty years would prove a formidable task; some of the more important and influential include, William J. Cooper, Liberty and Slavery: Southern Politics to 1860 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2000 [1983]); Sharla Fett, Working Cures: Healing, Health and Power on Southern Slave Plantations (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Robert William Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 1989 [1974]); Lacy Ford, Origins of Southern Radicalism: The South Carolina Upcountry, 1800-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); John Hope Franklin, Runaway Slaves: Rebels on the Plantation, 1790-1860 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974); Elizabeth Fox- Genovese, Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988); Herbert Gutman, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976); Larry E. Hudson, To Have and to Hold: Slave Work and Family Life in Antebellum South Carolina (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); Charles Joyner, Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984); Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1993); Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-American Folk Thought from Slavery to Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977); Ann Patton Malone, Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth-Century Louisiana (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992); Stephanie McCurry, Masters of Small Worlds: Yeomen Households, Gender Relations, and the Political Culture of Antebellum South Carolina Low Country (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); John Hebron Moore, The Emergence of the Cotton Kingdom in the Old Southwest: Mississippi, 1770-1860 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); James Oakes, The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982); Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Steven M. Stowe, Intimacy and Power in the Old South: Ritual in the Lives of the Planters (Baltimore: Johns