In his book Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine debates whether Southerners actually supported the emancipation of slaves to fight for the Confederacy. The Richmond Enquirer wrote, “the people of these States believe slavery right, permitted and sanctioned in the word of God, proper for the white man, good for the black, economical as a system of labor, and necessary to the proper cultivation of the great staples of this country” (Levine 2). No matter how much Confederacy leadership denied it after the war, it is clear that one of the principles the Confederate States of America was founded on was slavery. The fact that that leadership would even consider freeing slaves to fight for the Confederacy demonstrated how desperate the South was during the latter part of the Civil War.
At the beginning of the Civil War, the South had a mandatory enlistment of all fighting age white males in the Confederate military. While this initially provided the Confederacy with a large amount of manpower, it could not afford devastating defeats like those suffered at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. It was those staggering losses that made the Confederate government reconsider its military policies towards slaves. Slaves made up forty percent of the Southern population, and many were of fighting age and capable of following orders. Colored regiments had been proposed by the Confederate officers, but the challenge of distinguishing between creoles and blacks prevented this from occurring. But as the need for manpower became dire, Major-General Patrick Cleburne said, “as between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot will freely give up the latter– give up the negro slave rather than become a slave himself” (27). By November 1864, Confederate President Jefferson Davis agreed on the idea of “manumission as a war measure” (32).
When describing the late war policies regarding slavery, I am not sure the word “emancipation” is the proper word. While the policy eventually agreed to free the slaves who fought for the Confederacy, that was not its intention. “Confederate desperation” is probably a better term. The fact that the Confederate government would even consider emancipating and arming slaves demonstrates just how close they were to defeat. Many Southerners disagreed with the mere suggestion of using slaves as soldiers in the Confederate military. Catherine Edmondston said of this policy, “[we would] destroy at one blow the highest jewel in the Crown…Our country is ruined if [we] adopt [Lee’s] suggestions” (53). An Arkansas soldier wrote, “It is virtually giving up the principle on which we went to war” (56). Neither the people nor the common soldiers were behind this idea. What that shows is that the slaves who fought for the Confederacy were not truly considered free by their white counterparts.
Emancipation in this sense was not universal like it was in the Union’s “Emancipation Proclamation.” It was more like the Confiscation Acts, which were enacted as a result of the war. The Confiscation Acts called for the seizure of property used by the Confederate in the war effort against the Union. Similarly, the Confederate policy of emancipation took the property of slave owners to fight in their military However, I cannot liken the usage of slaves by the Confederacy as soldier to the freeing of slaves by the North. The fact that the Confederacy would even consider freeing and arming slaves demonstrates a major sense of desperation within the Confederate government. It was too contradictory of their principles to be anything but desperation.