Page News & Courier
Heritage and Heraldry
Did Page County African-Americans Serve for the Confederacy?
Article of November 2, 2000
At a quick glance, it is difficult to answer the above question with
any certainty. However, historians are currently involved in a great
deal of work to answer the larger question. There are currently three
significant published studies that help to confirm that African-Americans
did serve for the Confederacy - and not necessarily under duress.
It is however Irvin L. Jordan Jr.'s examination of Black Virginians
that is the most intriguing. The Associate Curator of Technical Services,
Special Collections Department, University of Virginia, Jordan, an
African-American, is also a cum laude graduate of Norfolk State University
and was a three-time recipient of the Floyd W. Crawford Award for
Distinguished Historical Scholarship. He also holds a Master of Arts from
Old Dominion University. For a number of years he has thoroughly
examined the role of Virginia's African-Americans in the Civil War leading to
the publication of Black Confederates, Afro-Yankees: The History of the
African American Experience in Civil War Virginia.
Jordan's essay, "Different Drummers: Black Virginians As Confederate
Loyalists," opens with an examination of an incident in Scottsville. On
December 2, 1859, the same day that John Brown hung from the gallows,
"blacks led by a slave named Ben hanged him (John Brown) in effigy as an
'old murderer, horse thief and traitor' and proclaimed their
willingness to use pikes to defend their owners against abolitionists." Another
remarkable incident took place in Culpeper County where a black resident
proclaimed "If old Lincoln does put his foot on old Farginny I can
raise a regiment of [negroes]." It does not begin or end with the
proclamations that Jordan has unearthed, as he also points out that "One
hundred thirty-years later, an African-American scholar observed: When you
eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of
the South . . . [We] share a common heritage with white Southerners who
recall that era. We shared in the plantation scheme of things as well
as the forces that fought to keep them."
For years Black historians have often rejected the authenticity of
Confederate blacks. However, the facts are being made clear that Black
Confederate patriotism took many forms from slaves devoted to their
owners, to free blacks who donated money and labor, to blacks who diligently
supervised the plantation in the absence of their owners. While several
"faithful" body servants did make up a large number of Black
Confederates, there was a significant number that were either took up arms or
otherwise volunteered for the South and staunchly worked on its behalf.
Jordan cites numerous references that indicate that approximately 15
percent of Virginia's slaves and 25 percent of its free blacks supported
the Confederacy.
While it may take some time to clarify whether any African-Americans
from Page served in Confederate gray, in the meantime these noteworthy
efforts are worth an examination. In one paragraph Jordan quotes Stephen
Vincent Benet in saying that "It is worthy to assemble facts to put
truth in the face of legend . . . to investigate impartially, to throw new
light on an old problem." Jordan adds that "While the names of
thousands of prominent and little known white Confederate civilians, soldiers
and politicians are writ large on the pages of history, ignored are the
black men and women without whom the nascent Confederacy could not have
mobilized."
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