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Contents 1 Stars of David 2 diversity 3 Defend the Confederate States of America 3.1 Context 3.2 Black conf soldiers 3.3 About the Douglass quote... 3.4 Troop numbers... 3.5 Army of West Tennessee 3.6 Edit moved here

[edit] Stars of David

I see this article states that Confederate Field Grade insignia consisted of Stars of David worn on the collar instead of five point stars. To the best of my knowledge, the five points stars were used and not six. Thoughts? -Husnock 01:45, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Interesting discrepancy. Photos of Lee (who actually wore a colonel's insignia) show him with 5. This website shows 5, too. This one, too, although it's poorly labeled. I don't feel like editing in the graphical changes, but it seems warranted. (Wait, they didn't have warrant officers, did they? :-)) However, I will bet that due to the wide variations in Confederate 'uniforms', someone will come up with a photo showing 6 points just to confuse matters. Here's John Mosby, for instance. Hal Jespersen 02:04, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] diversity

I have reverted the recent anonymous edit. Please consult WP:CITE on the ways to cite reference material and re-enter your material if you choose to do so. (I often volunteer to clean up poorly formatted material or to at least communicate with the author, but since I have none of these reference works and the user is anonymous, neither is feasible.) You may wish to contrast the numbers you cite with the total numbers of whites who fought. These represent, what, 2%? Hal Jespersen 17:11, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Defend the Confederate States of America

THe CSA never existed, therefore it cannot be defended. The Rebel army was simply an insurgent organization making war on the legitamate government of the United States. To say that the Confederate Army existed to defend the CSA is like saying the Shi'ite militias exist to defend an Iraqi theocracy24.94.232.13 23:53, 19 February 2007 (UTC)Martin

In that case the Continental Army had nothing to defend either, since the legitimate government was the British Crown

This is an encyclopedia which documents historical facts, regardless of who wins or loses wars. If the CSA bothers you, go start a blog and vent there. Grayghost01 18:26, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The historical fact is that the confederacy was simply a large group of trators who, because there cause was slavery instead of say, Communism or Facism, seem to go down in history as deserving of some respect 75.86.147.216 22:37, 20 April 2007 (UTC)Martin

The real and documented historical fact is that the Confederate Army was composed of thousands of Christians who never owned a slave, commanded by a Christian General Lee who freed the ones he inherited, and they fought against an army commanded by a slave-owner, non-Christian General Grant. The Confederate cause was economic and political freedom from the Clay-Mercantilism "no foreign trade" policies of President Lincoln, who was elected by a mere 39% of the popular vote. The Confederates wished to preserve the constitution, and President Lincoln's party later changed the constitution to fit what they had done. The issue of slavery entered the picture in late 1862 to persuade England and France to disavow the Confederacy after the Battle of Sharpsburg. Home states, like my own Virginia, had banned the slave trade as far back as 1802. Perhaps you should go start a blog?Grayghost01 03:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I'll just add my 2 cents. The War for Southern Independance was about seccesion. Only 10% of the CSA had slaves. My family fought for states rights and others garunteed in the constitution that were being provoked. In the end they fought for what was right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.19.14.25 (talk) 19:20, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

While I can't think off the to of the number off the top of my head, its doubtful that only 10% of individuals owned slaves in the South. After all, in some states, the population was literally HALF SLAVE. In fact, the overall rate of slaves was in the 40's percentage wise, and if you didn't have slaves, you were probably in the employ or had business dealings with slave-owners, making your economic interests very, very similar. SiberioS (talk) 18:50, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Here's a link to a site that gives some southern slave owning stats, such as 30% of the population owned slaves, 88% of slave owners owned fewer than 20 slaves & approximately 50% owned fewer than 5. Sf46 (talk) 01:35, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Context

This article does not give nearly enough context for readers unacquainted with US history. Awien 01:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

You're right, it didn't even have a link to the American Civil War, which I just added. What sort of questions did you have that should be addressed in the article (vs. linked articles)? Hal Jespersen 14:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Black conf soldiers

I really like the section added (Black Confederate Soldiers) but I think it should be summarized in this article and a new article made for it's full detailing. Then the summary section here would have a Main Article link to that created page. Just my two cents. Kresock (talk) 05:34, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well there was and sort of still is as section about Black Confederate Soldiers on the article Military history of African Americans‎. The only problem is that a user over there keeps continually deleting nearly any and all sourced and referenced information I put that mentions Black Confederate troops being any thing other than ditch diggers. Sf46 (talk) 05:45, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well then how about we make a seperate article just about Black Confederate Soldiers and have links on both pages to it. And maybe remind that user of the fact that when the lead was flying in that war EVERYBODY started digging ditches. Kresock (talk) 06:56, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps you can look the situation over on that article & its talk page and give your input. He reverts and deletes nearly everything I add. Sf46 (talk) 07:03, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Except of course, that such platitudes, Kresock, are irrelevant. I notice, and I have modified the article that Sf46 is in such a knot about, consistently with verifiable sources, none of which anyone has argued with me about. And why is that? Because they're verifiable. Most of them come straight from the Official Record, and/or from scholarly sources.SiberioS (talk) 17:33, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the changes that you have made on this article and the related article. The attempt by another editor that was made to take material deleted from one article and putting it in another article seems like it was an inadvertant, good faith violation of the spirit of Wikipedia:Content forking. What should or should not be included regarding so-called Black Confederates should be determined by consensus and that consensus discussion should focus on the proper use of scholarly sources. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 18:25, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

A content fork may be appropriate in the Military History article, using the same summary provided here. But as seen in the talk page of talk:Military_history_of_African_Americans, the issue of scholarly sources has become paramount, with my edits removing unsourced/poorly sourced information as an attempt of censorship.WP:REDFLAG I believe applies to this;the claim that there black soldiers in the Confederate army is an exceptional claim, and it must be backed up by exceptional sources. I have in fact added scholarly and first hand sources that actually verify this, in a way that is satisfactory without attempting to inject a POV. SiberioS (talk) 18:46, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Nearly any and every sourced piece of information that I've put in the article, you've removed with claims of poor or unreliable source. Who are you to arbitrarily decide what is a valid source? You poked fun at the book I cited from Pelican Press. Perhaps you know something about them that I don't and would care to enlighten? I also had a sourced website article from Navy & Marine Living Hisory Association. That article had a stack of references to it including sources form the U.S. National Archives, U.S. Navy, North Carolina Department of Archives and History, Tulane University & others. There was also the info cited from the St. Petersburg Times that you again called poorly sourced. I've pretty much realized that with your now self appointed position as Captain of the Thought Police, you WILL characterize any source as unreliable or a poor source if it is not taken from the one or two sources on your pre-approved list. Sf46 (talk) 19:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

You can say whatever you want. But even WP:V backs me up on this, and I quote "Academic and peer-reviewed publications are highly valued and usually the most reliable sources in areas where they are available, such as history,". That's what Confederate Emancipation (published by Oxford University Press) and The Grey and the Black(published by LSU Press) are,as are the articles I cite from the Journal of Negro History. The other source I also use frequently is the actual primary sources, contained within the Official Record, something you will see cited all over just about any wiki article on the Civil War. I welcome contributions from any scholarly source. Instead, you've gone trawling for any mishmash you can find on the web to support your point of view, even when those sources, like the supposedly well sourced website you mention above, cites things, that at best, tangentially support their arguments (in fact that article you keep harping on mentions anywhere from 60 to 90K and then goes on to portray a handful of sporadic anecdotes as evidence for larger, supposedly un-researched, black contributions to the Confederacy). Pick up a book, go to a library, search journal databases. SiberioS (talk) 20:07, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Actually I can point you to more scholarly books on the issue of slave and free black labor during the war. Bell Irvin WIley's Southern Negroes, 1861-1865 (published by oxford University Press) and James H. Brewers The Confederate Negro: Virginia's Craftsment and Military Laborers, 1861-1865 (published by Duke's press) that talk about the contributions of slave and freedmen labor to the Confederate war cause. SiberioS (talk) 20:13, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] About the Douglass quote...

The problem with the Douglass quote is that, as indicated by reading the fuller speech, is he based this information on reports from Southern newspapers, which weren't exactly neutral. In fact, the evolution of the perspective of Southern newspapers (and the larger Southern culture) towards slaves and slavery from the beginning of the war to about its middle, is stark and contradictory. In fact, the hoary old saw of the faithful slave and been wholly dismissed, replaced with the stark reality that slaves were simply getting up and leaving or doing as much as they could to avoid work. And also, there is nothing "controversial" about black Confederate soldiers, since the whole issue is well documented and established. And that, despite the debate that raged one amongst the command and political elites of the South, that blacks (either free or slave) were not engaged into the army in any systematic way until waning days of the war, and even then, the attempt to raise them was racked with problems, most notably the slave owners unwillingness to part with them. SiberioS (talk) 00:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

A further problem with the Douglass quote is that it is an improper use of primary sources. It is being presented as a factual claim that there were numerous armed, black Confederate soldiers. No reliable sources have been provided that indicate that this primary source is, in fact, an accurate account. It is a bit silly to look to a black, abolitionist, fugitive slave as an accurate intelligence source on the make up of the Confederate Army. in fact, Douglass wrote this as part of a rhetorical effort to persuade the Union to start accepting African American volunteers (see McPherson's "The Negro's Civil War"). This attempt to use the Douglass quote is simply another effort to present anecdotal material as a substitute for the solid and consistent historical research that clearly established that it was AGAINST CONFEDERATE POLICY prior to March 1865 to accept blacks as soldiers. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:26, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not presenting it as a claim of anything other than the man's statement. Sf46 (talk) 00:43, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Absurd. You are putting that quote in there to support your assertion (what you call "controversial") the existence of black troops in the Confederacy. SiberioS (talk) 00:48, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

In other words, you admit that the statement has no relevance to whether their were black Confederate soldiers. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:51, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Of course. It's clear from edits and discussion that Sf46 believes we are trying to cover up or censor the contribution of blacks to the Confederate war effort, despite me mentioning the significant use of slave labor in the war effort, the convoluted debate about whether to enlist slaves, and the subsequent limited success they had with that policy. The fact that the Confederacy obviously did not use black soldiers, until the waning days of the war as documented, is viewed with some sort of suspicion, and as an attempt to cover up something thats simply not there. SiberioS (talk) 02:45, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Siberio, your quote of "...Sf46 believes we are trying to cover up or censor the contribution of blacks to the Confederate war effort.." is exactly what I believe. Sf46 (talk) 03:35, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, belief doesn't will facts into existence. There is no grand conspiracy to somehow cover up the contribution of any of the numerous things that I have pointed out, including the use of freedmen and slave labor, the debate over enlisting soldiers, and the subsequent execution of the policy. Hell, I've done more work proving your own points than you have. I've actually hunted down (and will continue to do so) scholarly sources about the black contribution to the Confederacy, and the policies and actions of the Confederate command towards blacks, both free and slave, I believe you simply don't like what is factually true, and what it may or may not say about the Confederacy. SiberioS (talk) 04:05, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

-Siberio, I've pretty much (but not entirely) given up trying to make any kind of meanigful contribution to that section of the article, because every bit of information I put gets deleted out by you guys, because it doesn't fit your ideas. Why is it such a blasphemy and such an "exceptional" idea to you that at least ONE African American soldier put on a grey Confederate Uniform and carried a firearm in his hand sometime between 1861-1865 and did so for whatever motivation was his? Sf46 (talk) 04:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you even read my contributions to article? How can you say I have a problem with blacks serving in the Confederate army when I have documented, with citations, that they DID. Why, indeed, would I make prominent quotes from a Confederate general about the issue, and then also re-format a previous citation to highlight that yes, what little troops they raised did see some action? Why would the War Department refuse the offers of assistance from units composed of free blacks? Why was Seddon concerned about letting the mulatto of Mobile joining the any Confederate war effort? Again, you simply do not want to accept the facts that are documented. You have not once responded with substance as to why either a) any of the things I've cited are wrong or b) why it is that anecdotal stories somehow take the place of war-time policy at every level of the Confederate government and military structure.. SiberioS (talk) 05:09, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hell, like I've pointed out before, the first book-length study of the emancipation debate inside the Confederacy, and the possibility of enlisting slaves and freedmen, was published by your own alma-mater (Durden's The Gray and the Black). SiberioS (talk) 05:13, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Sf46 -- You state, "Why is it such a blasphemy and such an "exceptional" idea to you that at least ONE African American soldier put on a grey Confederate Uniform and carried a firearm in his hand sometime between 1861-1865 and did so for whatever motivation was his?" Perhaps if you would acknowledge that there are only anecdotal reports of exceptions to the overall rule against CSA enlistments of black combat soldiers prior to March 1865, then a compromise could be worked out. Instead you persist in trying to assert, through the Douglass quote, that "there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty ... as real soldiers."

The issue of African Americans in the various home guards may also be appropriate for inclusion in the other article (not this one) with proper documentation and without unsubtantiable claims such as "The Confederate Army, unlike the Union army, was only minimally composed of a national army, and was almost wholly made of various state-raised armies. While the Confederate National Army did not explicitly raise black regiments until near the end of the war, the states still controlled their military policies in regards to recruitment." These types of claims are nothing but a back door effort to inflate the actual significance of black participation. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 13:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

And not just inflate their significance, but strip it of its context. Its not merely enough to say "Confederate's used blacks as labor, and near the end, as soldiers" without mentioning the fact that the overwhelming majority of them were slaves and that Confederacy couldn't even enlist troops (let alone emancipate) until the the end of an almost 2 year long debate when the Confederacy was on its last leg. SiberioS (talk) 19:27, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Troop numbers...

I reverted the edit by an IP address that erased the list of Conscription orders and the numbers provided. While they were uncited, they did seem to me atleast, a fairly accurate number, and were probably taken from the Record somewhere (where is what needs to be found), and either way, the replacement lines about "4,000,000 men fought", seems, well, ridiculous, considering that the Union Army had some 2.5 million or so men serve in it over the course of the war, and the Union Army was significantly bigger than the CSA. SiberioS (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 22:14, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, looks like vandalism to me. Sf46 (talk) 23:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Army of West Tennessee

Under the section titled "Armies and prominent leaders" the Army of West Tennessee links to the article on the Union Army of the Tennessee. Granted, that article states that the Army of the Tennessee was, at one time, called the Army of West Tennessee. However, I'm assuming that this is just a coincidence wherein both sides used the same name for one of their respective armies. If that is the case, shouldn't the link in this article for the Army of West Tennessee be corrected? I'm afraid this is not my area of expertise, so please forgive me if I've made a mistake. Nutgraph (talk) 18:48, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

I looked into the link you mentioned. It does redirect to the Union army with a similar name. I updated the link to point to the mention of Van Dorn's army on the Army of West Tennessee page. The note states his forces were quickly merged into the conf. Army of Mississippi. Both sides had similar names for their armies, like Army of the Potomac, but the north preferred river names and the south liked state or regional names. Thanks for catching this. Kresock (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Edit moved here

I moved an edit by this user IP 72.185.0.194 to this talk to be dissected before ditching it completely:

"* The Remnant Army of the Confederate States (RACS) was the remainder of all Confederate forces at the end of the American Civil War and was commanded by Major General Mitchell Alles. The number of soldiers in the Remnant Army was said to have contained 4,692 men."

I've never heard of this before, and we don't have an article about a Mitchell Alles, but I'm no expert and it may very well be true. I'd love to know where it came from myself. Kresock (talk) 04:25, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I've looked at the IP's other edits and Mr. Alles was apparently the name of a conf. ironclad too, but that he currently lives in Tampa, Florida. Good for him but looks like vandalism. Kresock (talk) 04:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a stunt. There was no such ironclad either. Red Harvest (talk) 16:36, 21 March 2008 (UTC)