I attended a premier of a short documentary on "Black Soldiers in Blue" held at the African American museum in Philadelphia. The movie was made by a local filmmaker Warren Bass along with local reenactors and our local USCT expert Jim Paradis, who has written a book on the subject. The movie gives a general overview of African American soldiers during the Civil War, but mainly concentrates on Camp William Penn and those troops that trained there. Camp William Penn was the largest training facility in the country for Black troops. It was located in the LaMott section (named for Lucretia Mott, a Quaker abolitionist and women's rights advocate) of Cheltenham Township, right outside the Philadelphia boundaries.
Citizens for the Restoration of Historical La Mott (CROHL) is a sponsor and owns a small portion of land where the gates to the camp once stood. They also own a building that will hopefully be a museum to the camp. CROHL received an architecture grant that has provided a group of experts to cite what is needed to open up the building as a museum. A task team has been in place since January (I am a member) to provide input to the architecture team. We are hoping soon to obtain a price tag for this project.
Paula
>>...Keegan comes across the fact that the Black soldiers at Milliken's Bend had just months ago been slaves and were being trained for labor battalions and had no combat training what so ever.<<
Jack,
PMJIH, Did the CS forces have combat training before the CW conflict began? It has been my impression that most of the CS forces were farmers, and members of the aristocratic South with no military training, if that's the case, would the fact black Union soldiers had no combat training have any significance?
Wanda
Hi Jack,
>>...of the two societies, the Southern society was probably "as a population" had more military training for various reasoning. Of the various population groups in the US, the exslaves were probably the least prepared for military service.<<
I don't know about in the North, but Southerns all seemed to have guns to go hunting [and still do] for food, maybe that could account for some of their ability to use guns for military combat.
Question...who did the exslaves originally belong to? Were they escaped slaves from the South, or were they slaves of the Northern slave owners, or a combination?
Another question...were the slaves in the North automatically freed at the start of the Civil War or did they have to wait until Pres Lincoln freed the Southern slaves?
>Another question...were the slaves in the North automatically freed at the start of the Civil War or did they have to wait until Pres Lincoln freed the Southern slaves?<
Lincoln deliberately did not free any slaves in the North because he did not want to alienate slave-holding border states (Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky) and drive them into the Southern Confederacy. His Emancipation Proclamation was carefully worded to free the slaves only in areas in active rebellion against the US government. Slavery wasn't even outlawed in the District of Columbia until Congress did so in 1863.
Slavery was not abolished nationwide until December 1865 with the passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
Steve Meserve
Steve,
>>Lincoln deliberately did not free any slaves in the North because he did not want to alienate slave-holding border states (Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky) and drive them into the Southern Confederacy. <<
That leaves me to wonder if the CW was actually about slavery since Northern slave holding states didn't abolish slavery, but fought against the Southern Plantation holders. Was the war actually about money or trade?
>That leaves me to wonder if the CW was actually about slavery since Northern slave holding states didn't abolish slavery, but fought against the Southern Plantation holders.<
For all the reasons given for the war, slavery was the root cause. Whether you want to talk states' rights or whatever, scratch the surface of the issue, and you will find slavery underneath. The cotton states first engineered a split in the Democratic party and then left the Union before Abraham Lincoln even took office because the Fire Eaters were convinced abolitionists were taking over in the North and would eventually eliminate slavery in the country.
Regardless of the issue the neo-confederates want to cite, slavery was a cancer eating away at the country from the adoption of the Declaration of Independence until the CW decided once and for all that it would no longer be allowed in American Society. Unfortunately, it would take another century before blacks and whites could truly begin to see each other as human beings.
Lest someone accuse me of being a mindless tool of Yankee propaganda, you should know this is coming from a man with roots in the Deep South who spent his formative years in Alabama and considers himself to be Southern to the core. I may be Southern, but I am not blind.
>>... slavery was the root cause. Whether you want to talk states' rights or whatever, scratch the surface of the issue, and you will find slavery underneath. The cotton states ... convinced abolitionists were taking over in the North and would eventually eliminate slavery in the country.<<
That is beginning to bring a glimmer of school book history back to me, but I was under the impression there was a more underlying reason for the tension between the farmers and statesmen in the north and south. From your message, however, I'm assuming the underlying tension was due to the fact the South thought the North would abolish slavery, and take away their slaves.
>>Regardless of the issue the neo-confederates want to cite, slavery was a cancer eating away at the country from the adoption of the Declaration of Independence until the CW decided once and for all that it would no longer be allowed in American Society.<<
Did the Declaration of Independence recognize slaves, or women for that matter, as being included in that declaration of freedom? I thought only white men were recognized as being free and equal. Since slaves and women and children were considered property, they were excluded, weren't they?
>>Lest someone accuse me of being a mindless tool of Yankee propaganda, you should know this is coming from a man with roots in the Deep South who spent his formative years in Alabama and considers himself to be Southern to the core. I may be Southern, but I am not blind.<<
I don't think anyone would be so ignorant to accuse you of being a Yankee tool. And I appreciate your insight, and taking the time to inform me of what was in our dark history.
Lincoln deliberately did not free any slaves in the North because he did not want to alienate slave-holding border states (Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky) and drive them into the Southern Confederacy.
Am I right in thinking there was at least one Northern state (possibly two) where slavery was legal? In any event, there were so few slaves in that state (those states) that Lincoln freeing the slaves would not have been a show stopper. The states I am thinking of are Delaware and possibly New Jersey.DRM
>The states I am thinking of are Delaware and possibly New Jersey.<
New Jersey began gradual emancipation in 1804. After January 1 of that year, all blacks born in the state were born free, but were required to serve as indentured servants to their mothers' owners until early adulthood in order to learn a trade. By 1860, there were no slaves in New Jersey. Delaware was the only state we consider "Northern" that allowed slavery until 1865.
>Since slaves and women and children were considered property, they were excluded, weren't they?<
White women and children were always counted as part of a state's population. The new American government compromised on the blacks by recognizing three-fifths of their number.
>>White women and children were always counted as part of a state's population.<<
Maybe I went back too far in history, I meant the founding fathers who didn't recognize anyone except white men as free men, before the founding of statehood.
...aside: read in today's newspaper that while the founding fathers were drafting the Declaration, literally, down the street, a woman was being tortured for being a witch! Ironic, isn't it?
>>The new American government compromised on the blacks by recognizing three-fifths of their number.<<
How did that make any sense? How did they logically come up with 3/5ths of the blacks?
Thanks for the info Jack, I'll have to check it out before I comment.
>How did they logically come up with 3/5ths of the blacks?<
Since when does logic enter into politics? The Northerners did not want any of the slaves counted toward representation because they could not vote. The Southerners were unwilling not to have them counted because, in some places, they out-numbered the whites. Neither side would agree to count half the slave population; so they eventually stttled on three-fifths.
>>Neither side would agree to count half the slave population; so they eventually stttled on three-fifths.<<
Akhil Reed Amar's book, America's Constitution: A Biography, devotes 11 pages to the "three-fifths" clause and the deliberations that led to it. Towards the end of the section, Amar writes about a gradually declining ratio.
"Imagine, for example, that Gouverneur Morris had proposed that slaves should count for four-fifths in the first decennial census in 1790, three-fifths in 1800, two-fifths in 1810, one-fifth in 1820, and zero-fifths thereafter. Such a sliding-scale approach would have addressed the South's concerns about its immediate prospects as a legislative minority while ensuring a gradual transition away from a rotten ratio, with plenty of time for slaveholders to make adjustments."
More discussion, then a paragraph begins "Alas, a declining-scale alternative to the three-fifths clause never came clearly into focus at Philadelphia."
Once I read this discussion, I've never forgotten that such an option "might have been" and what it could have meant. Amar ends up observing "...a superior Article I system might also have counted only American-born slaves."
Terry
>>Since when does logic enter into politics?<<
Well, that's true. Since the population determines how many representives a state has in Congress, that's why counting slave population was important? Did the North give the South that extra 1/5 th as a face saving point for the South?
>>PMJIH, Did the CS forces have combat training before the CW conflict began? It has been my impression that most of the CS forces were farmers, and members of the aristocratic South with no military training...<<
Wanda,
Pardon me if I'm repeating something elsewhere in this thread, which I haven't gotten all the way through yet, but very generally speaking, the South was the more "martial" of the two sections, with more in the way of (per capita) military schools and institutions. In that respect, a southern boy was more likely to have had military training of some kind than his northern counterpart.
David
>>Lincoln deliberately did not free any slaves in the North because he did not want to alienate slave-holding border states (Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky) and drive them into the Southern Confederacy. His Emancipation Proclamation was carefully worded to free the slaves only in areas in active rebellion against the US government<<
It bears mentioning that Lincoln had no authority whatsoever to seize (free) the legal property of citizens who were not in rebellion against the government. So it wasn't even a possibility with the border states (and is why Fremont's edict was quickly reversed in Missouri).
The E.P. freed ONLY the slaves Lincoln could legally declare to be the property of rebels. It couldn't even apply to areas of the South were Union armies were maintaining order.
That said, it was the first step toward complete abolition. Lincoln did implore border state governors to accept some form of compensated emancipation, warning that they risked everything by holding on too long.
Dave,
>>...generally speaking, the South was the more "martial" of the two sections, with more in the way of (per capita) military schools and institutions...<<
Did not know that, interesting. Was there any particular reason the South had more military schools than the North? Since I'm totally ignorant of facts in that era, was the Northern states more industrialized, and saw no need for the more genteel military type schools?
Another question, were the members of the military schools from the aristocracy rather than the farming community in the South?
