Let me recommend a couple of books I have read which discuss the Civil War. The first book covers more than the Civil War. Its takes a longer look at the United States of America. The book is by Derrick Bell and the title is Race, Racism and American Law. It was written for a civil rights course that Bell taught at either Harvard or New York University, I think. Page, 36; Historians have cited humanitarian concerns, political realities, and a desire to punish the South as factors explaining the enactment of the civil rights amendments. But Dr. Mary Frances Berry suggests that necessity and self-interest in utilizing large numbers of black troops during the conflict largely determined the measures aimed at securing emancipation and granting citizenship and suffrage during the postwar years. See footnote 5, page 37; 5. Berry, supra note 2, at 7-8. She [Dr. Berry] reports that the campaign to enact the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery began in 1864 while large numbers of black soldiers were engaged in combat. All black regiments were involved daily in the Wars final battles when the Thirteenth Amendment was reconsidered by Congress early in 1865. In those debates, Republican congressman Henry Wilson supported the measure with the statement: [W]e owe it to the course of the country, to liberty, to justice, and to patriotism to offer every inducement to every black man who can fight the battle of the country to join our armies. Arguments like Wilsons prevailed, and the Thirteenth Amendment was passed and signed by President Lincoln on February 1, 1865. At that point there were 200,000 blacks in the army, including the all-black XXI Army Corps of 32 black regiments. Black troops made up large contingents in almost every successful battle during the last year of the war, Id. at 11. One other point that became clearer to me as I read this book. It does not deal with the civil war but the constitution. Some Black folk criticize the fact that Africans were counted as only three fifths (3/5) of a person in the constitution. The three fifths is a compromise between the White North and White South. The White South wanted the Africans counted as whole persons because this would give the White South more representatives in the U. S. Congress (house). Since the house is apportioned based on the population of each state to the total population of the country. Not that it probably would have mattered, we should have not been counted at all under those circumstances. The other book is by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer titled The State of Jones. There was a county in Mississippi named Jones county. The name was changed and I cannot recall the new name given to it. Jones county did not succeed from the Union with the rest of Mississippi. The book deals with people of Jones county fighting the confederate army. A few things caught my attention in this book. When the civil war started, a couple of confederate laws were passed. One was that if you owned at least 20 slaves (enslaved Africans), you were exempted from joining the confederate army in the civil war. The other law was that all confederate citizens had to pay a fifteen (15) or twenty (20) percent tax to support the war. Confederate soldiers could take 20% of your chickens, cows, hogs, corn, etc. The book covers how the confederate affluent used this law to exploit the working class and poor southern whites. Another point was the large number of confederate soldiers that deserted the army. It was a very large number. The primary reason was the families of the soldiers were having hard times trying to grow enough food to feed the family. The men were at war and families were really suffering. The confederate soldiers would desert and hide in the woods as they traveled back to their farms. The enslaved Africans who ran away from the plantations and had been living in the woods and knew them well would help these deserters avoid confederate soldiers looking for them. Some of the deserters were executed. Life and events are very often more complicated then we make them out to be. I know it is difficult to cover all aspects of any event. So many authors write about narrow aspects of events and sometimes readers assume it is the total package. It is not.
Posted on: Mon, 12 Jan 2015 19:50:36 +0000