Bruce Levine constructs an argument in his book Confederate Emancipation that focuses on the reasons why Confederate officials did or did not consider emancipation through military participation for blacks in the South.  He clearly describes when, how and why these decisions were made and how they changed over the course of the war.  However, at the same time he creates different causal arguments about the outcome of the war not directly related to his main argument.  These additional arguments and discussions somewhat hamper the clarity of the realization of his thesis.

His main argument revolves around the thought that there was a limited time frame during which the idea of “emancipation” was considered.  His landmarks of time are primarily a countdown the passing of “a black troops law between the end of 1864 down through March and April of 1865” (14).  To Levine, this was in part created because of the desperation of the Confederates after the fall of Atlanta (39).  Even so, he cites a realization “that the Confederacy was outnumbered and outgunned from the start” in early 1861 as a reason for the beginning of a dialogue about arming slaves (38).  This somewhat startling and important causal answer  to the outcome of the Civil War colors the rest of his argument, and since he places no footnotes on the paragraph, perhaps feeling it is an accepted fact, it brings to question the way in which he portrays the motivations of Confederate officers.  

The rest of his argument of allowing blacks to fight for the Confederacy is certainly well-reasoned and researched.  Prior to the fall of Atlanta, however, it is somewhat dubious to state that the Confederacy was constantly in fear of losing and felt themselves to be the underdog.  The eleventh hour of the war certainly brought about changes to what Confederate officers were willing to do in order to win the war, yet the reasons for what occurred before that “desperate” phase would have been better served if they were somehow removed from different, fundamental questions of causality in the Civil War.

In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine argues that the South’s last-minute push to enlist slaves as soldiers was not quite a move for emancipation in the Confederacy. He points out that Confederate leaders planned to use the South’s slave population to win independence from the North, then use their newfound control to oppress the African-Americans they had “freed” in new ways, ensuring that the old South’s social order would remain. Although this seems like common sense, Levine presents the argument in a most interesting way, by constantly providing information from primary sources of the time. Through the use of quotations from Confederate leaders, he reveals the political and social structures of the South during and immediately after the war, especially in relation to the period near the end of the war where the South considered freeing and arming its slaves. And even as the idea of Confederate emancipation seems to be legitimate, given what some Confederate leaders were saying at the time, Levine presents more than enough reasoning to explain how this “emancipation” was more of a way to ensure the return of the Southern hierarchy after the war than anything else.

Levine is certainly not afraid to bring up the argument for Confederate emancipation, as he features many quotes from Confederate leaders and citizens that suggest it was a possibility. In fact, the structure of Levine’s argument is based around countering each of these quotes, providing factual evidence to show what was really going on in the South and therefore proving that Confederate emancipation was not all it was cracked up to be. For example, Levine quotes Walter W. Fleming as claiming that slaves “were as devoted Confederates as the whites, all in all, perhaps more so,” as evidence of Southern historians’ tendency to favor the “Lost Cause” version of the Confederacy’s brief history. (p. 149) Levine later goes on to describe how slaves “ultimately became indispensable instruments of [the Confederacy’s] destruction,” pointing out that “nearly 200,000 were already wearing Union blue” by the time some slaves began fighting for the South in 1865. (p. 151) It is through these comparisons that Levine reveals the propaganda that Confederates and some historians based the idea of Confederate emancipation on; by portraying the slaves as loyal to their masters and the South, Confederate emancipation becomes much more reasonable.

Perhaps Levine’s strongest argument for why Confederate emancipation was even considered is that, given the true nature of this “emancipation”, Southern slaves would never be made truly free at all. Of course, Levine’s first argument is that the Confederacy’s need for soldiers prompted the consideration of Confederate emancipation, citing Confederate leaders like General Patrick R. Cleburne at the beginning of the book. But these leaders knew full well that the South needed to win the war in order to “preserve as much of the Old South as they could,” in Levine’s words, and they knew that “slavery was swiftly becoming a dead letter” (p. 153). Without independent control of the South, Confederate leaders could not hope to maintain the same social hierarchy they had had before the war, so they had to do the unthinkable and offer freedom to slaves in order to gain a boost in their war effort. But Confederates who proposed emancipation never intended to give slaves true freedom in the first place; rather, “the freedom they expected actually to grant would be severely circumscribed” (p. 154), preventing freed slaves from owning land so that they would have to look to their old masters for work and giving Confederate states the power to enact labor regulations to further impede their freedom. Thus, Levine argues that Confederate leaders only began to consider emancipation when it became evident that it was the only way they could maintain a society anywhere near that of the South before the war, and so it was a concept that was much easier for Confederates to swallow.

I found Levine’s explanation to be persuasive enough. His evidence is sound and from varied sources, from primary documents to the arguments of historians long after the war. He certainly does not avoid considering the opposing argument, and frequently brings it up only to expose its flaws, a basic strategy we have had to employ in our own causal arguments. Levine approaches his argument from multiple angles, first suggesting the South’s military needs as a primary reason for considering the enlistment of slaves as soldiers, but later pointing out that Southern leaders never intended to provide slaves with true freedom in the first place. In the end, Levine provides us with a better idea of what was going on in the South at the time of “Confederate emancipation”, by showing the true political and social motives behind the idea and how, by giving the South a chance to win the war, the enlistment of slaves was actually providing Confederates with an opportunity to maintain their way of life beyond the abolishment of slavery.

Hello Timeline Group! We’ve reached that part of the course where it’s time to start working on your small group projects for the Dick Dowling archive. In this post I’m going to talk a little bit about the project you’ve been assigned–making a timeline related to Dowling’s statue and memory. Please take time to read this post carefully so that you can begin to talk amongst yourselves about what you plan to do.

As you’ve already discovered from your research on Dowling, there are numerous significant dates in the story of Dowling and his memory. There are the dates associated with the Battle of Sabine Pass itself. There are also the dates when various statues honoring Dowling were unveiled, moved, rededicated, and so on. By browsing through the items that you and other students have compiled for the Dick Dowling Archive, you can quickly come up with a variety of dates related to Dowling. But you should not think of your task for this project as a simple listing of all the dates that have come up related to Dowling–that would be a straightforward “copy” and “paste” task that would hardly be worth a group effort! Instead, think of your assignment as a more complex project involving both a technical dimension and an interpretive dimension.

The Technical Dimension

To build your timeline for this project, you must use the SIMILE Timeline software created at MIT. As you can see from the Timeline homepage, this software has powerful functions that will enable viewers to interact with your timeline, and also gives you an array of choices about how to make your timeline (e.g., what time scale to use, how much description to include, how to distinguish between types of events, and so on).

Fortunately for you, Brian Croxall has written a very useful tutorial about how to build a timeline using Google Docs and the SIMILE software. You should start by watching his video tutorial to get a sense of how, technically, you will build the timeline and what sorts of things you can do on your timeline. For example, you can include information, media, and hyperlinks in pop-ups for each event that you place on the timeline.

As you begin to work together as a group, you may find there are other technical dimensions to this project, like learning some simple HTML tags to “style” text on your timeline. You may also want to consider using web-based tools like Google Docs or Writeboard to make a working list of events you want to include on your timeline so that each of you can update the list and keep track of your project.

You may also discover other tasks depending on the kind of information you decide to associate with the timeline. For example, if you want to associate images with events, and we don’t have the images you want already in our Dowling database, you may decide it’s worth it to obtain those images. If you decided that photographs of particular sites would help you improve the timeline, you might talk to staff in the Digital Media Center about renting camera.

The Interpretive Dimension

While it may seem like the technical side of this project requires the biggest learning curve initially, the harder choices that you will have to make concern the selection and contextualization of events. One could simply make a long list of every conceivable date associated with Dowling, but such a list would be minimal value–and probably of minimal interest–to a viewer of our digital archive. What do you think is most important to include on the timeline? What will make your timeline meaningful and give it value? Those are the questions you need to keep in the forefront of your discussions for this project.

These questions become more challenging when you consider that any timeline is only a small selection of all the possible events that could be included. You’ll have to make decisions about what most needs to be included–for example, should the date of Dowling’s birth be included on a timeline that includes the unveiling of his statue? Why or why not? Moreover, you have the option of including any number of events not specifically related to Dowling that nonetheless add context to those vents. For example, would it make a difference for viewers of your timeline to see that the Battle of Sabine Pass took place after the Emancipation Proclamation? Why or why not? Should viewers know about other events taking place in the 1950s and 1960s in the South around the time that Dowling’s statue was being moved or new markers were being unveiled? Should your timeline be limited to events in Houston, or deal more broadly with events in the state or nation? Should this be a timeline confined to events in the actual life of Dowling or his statue, or should you indicate when articles and books written about Dowling and his statue were published?

In addition to deciding what to put on the timeline, you’ll also have to decide how “data rich” to make each particular event. How much information about the event should you include? Links to items in our Dowling archive about the events? Images or other media associated with the events? YouTube videos, say, of events related to the Civil Rights movement alongside dates associated with the Dowling statue in the same era? What would including such media say to the viewer? Is it relevant, or should it be on another timeline?

As you can see, the decisions before you quickly multiply, and more such questions could be posed. Ultimately, you’ll only be able to make those decisions as a group by deciding what point or points you want the viewer to take away from the timeline. Only be having a clear point in mind will you be able to make your timeline meaningful and keep it from just being a jumble of dates. As blogger Jeremy Boggs has explained, ultimately making a point and providing context is what makes the hard work of building and reading a timeline defensible.

What Next?

It could be that not everything you would like to do with your timeline will be feasible within the time frame you have to work on this project. That introduces another level of choices you will have to make about what to prioritize, what your main objectives are, and how you will pool your collective skills and divide the labor among you. For now, think broadly about what–in an ideal world–your timeline would do. And investigate what’s technically possible by reading about SIMILE Timeline.

By the time that Blog Post #9 is due next Thursday, you should have done at least enough groundwork and discussion on this project to be able to give a progress report and share ideas you have for the timeline. The following week, you will meet with me to draft a contract for your project. That meeting won’t be useful to you, however, if you’ve done no thinking or learning about the project before then.

So you should think of these as your next two steps and strive to complete them sometime in the next two weeks: (a) watch the tutorials about SIMILE Timeline; (b) talk with each other about the project, paying special attention to sharing information about particular skills and interests you have; (c) begin to discuss with each other what the objective of your timeline will be, since so many of your decisions will hinge on that.

And as always, if you have questions, let me know!

Confederate emancipation, as portrayed by Levine, was not at all the same notion as Union emancipation.The Confederate’s version of emancipation was not nearly as comprehensive or far-reaching as the Union’s notion of emancipation. Despite the differences in their concepts of emancipation, though, the Confederate and Union’s reasons for emancipation were surprisingly similar.

Most Confederates did not even entertain the idea of emancipation for quite some time during the Civil War, and, even the emancipation Levine describes is not exactly emancipation in the sense that it was used by the Union. When they began advocating emancipation, the Confederates essentially were considering allowing some slaves to earn their freedom by fighting on the battlefield in uniform. The idea was that slaves would be just as motivated to fight on the Confederate side as they were on the Union side because these slaves would know that a Confederate victory would assure them freedom.

This notion of emancipation was very different from that portrayed in the First and Second Confiscation Acts, where Lincoln was freeing slaves only if they were the property of southerners who were actively fighting against the Union. It was even more opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation, that freed any slaves in Confederate territories no loner occupied by the Union (at least that’s what it claimed to do on paper). Both of the Union notions of emancipation were at their core distinct from the Confederate’s because, the way the Union saw it, slaves would not have to do anything to earn their freedom. Furthermore, emancipation on Union terms was much more far-reaching. While the Confederates argued freeing just a few slaves–the bare minimum required to give them a military advantage on the front lines–the Emancipation Proclamation freed all of the slaves in any area under Union control, not just a select few. By those terms, if anything, the Confederate concept of emancipation was most similar to the First and Second Confiscation Acts, which did not emancipate all of the slaves in an area, but rather emancipated on an individual basis (the actions of the slaves’ owners). The Confederate and Union’s visions of a the future of an emancipated slave were also different. Confederates were still very concerned with preserving the social hierarchy associated with slavery, and so they sought to simply assure “a minimum amount of black liberty” (109). While the life of a free black in the Union was not nearly as democratic as it could be, there were many more opportunities in the Union for free blacks and former slaves to build communities, be employed and, in a few rare cases, even make a fair amount of money. Furthermore, documents such as the Emancipation Proclamation did not just free the slaves, it also allowed them to enlist in the military forces, which was putting blacks more on equal footing with whites. Lastly,  the Confederates’ version of emancipation included compensation to slave-owners for the slaves they sent in to battle. While Lincoln did entertain the idea of compensating slave-owners for the slaves the Union emancipated, ultimately, neither the confiscation acts nor the Emancipation Proclamation contained such provisions.

However different the Confederate and Union concepts of emancipation were, though, the two sides did have somewhat similar reasons for entertaining the idea of emancipation: military strategy. Just as the Union realized how useful slaves were to the Southern war effort in terms of providing labor and other services to Confederates, the Confederates were realizing that they had this whole untapped resource of potential soldiers. As the war raged on, the number of Confederate troops dwindled while the number of Union forces swelled–partly because the Emancipation Proclamation allowed the enlistment of black soldiers–and, in order to preserve their chances of winning, some Confederates entertained the idea. Confederates also realized that slavery was a source of weakness to their army because slaves were running away and helping the Union effort by sharing Confederate military strategy. They hoped that emancipating slaves they enlisted would keep them loyal to the Confederate side (83).

I found it interesting that the first calls to use black troops came from within the cotton kingdom (58). At first glance, this seemed to me to be very strange: why would the areas that had the most slaves seek this version of Confederate emancipation? On another level, though, this makes sense. In areas where slavery was the most entrenched–the cotton kingdom of the South–there were so many slaves that if a few were allowed to fight on the Confederate side and then emancipated, they would still make up a very small portion of the total population of slaves. Slavery was so entrenched in these areas, that something like this would be much less likely to threaten it. In areas of the South where slavery was not quite as common, though, slave owners were already struggling to preserve the social hierarchy and hold on to their slaves. Allowing some slaves to fight in the war and then be emancipated could catastrophically upset the social hierarchy, which was, after all, the very thing that the war and the Confederate emancipation was trying to preserve.

Bruce Levine’s “Confederate Emancipation” relies heavily on the causal argument that the South’s lack of manpower forced Confederate generals and government officials to ponder the enlistment, and thus emancipation, of slaves. This cause and effect relationship is essentially the core of Levine’s argument. Levine begins the book by discussing General Patrick Cleburne’s proposal in December 1863 to “immediately commence training a large reserve of the most courageous of our slaves to become soldiers” (2). Furthermore, Cleburne added, “If we arm and train him and make him fight for the country…we should set him and his whole race who side with us free” (2). However, Levine notes that Cleburne’s proposal was not the first instance of Southerners advocating for the enlistment of slaves into Confederate ranks. Levine affirms that in 1861, following the Confederate victory at First Manassas, Richard Ewell informed Davis that “emancipating the slaves and arming them” was the only means to secure the defense of southern independence.  The Confederate government was not averse to the principle of utilizing slave labor; however, arguments for enlisting slaves were dismissed by the Davis administration until November 1864 (3). Levine argues that “battlefield reverses and erosion of popular morale of mid-1863 aggravated the Confederacy’s manpower problem” (24). Yet, Cleburne’s proposal of December 1863 fell on deaf ears, largely because Confederate fortunes improved early in the 1864 military campaign season. Levine notes “the sense of urgency that earlier had driven Hindman, Cleburne, and others to press the Confederacy to revise its policy against slave soldiers correspondingly eased” (29). However, “by the end of 1864, the situation had become desperate” as “southern armies had declined qualitatively as well as quantitatively” (30). Furthermore, Levine acknowledges that a year later, however, “the debate now burst out again, this time with far greater force and before a larger audience. Simultaneously, it reached much more deeply into the nation’s central governing circles” (31). Levine confirms “the swift deterioration of the Confederacy’s military situation after Atlanta’s fall in September 1864 helped jolt some politicians out of their complacency and break the legislative impasse” (110). Furthermore, “fewer and fewer Confederate partisans could ignore the seriousness of their country’s military predicament by the end of 1864” (111). In addition, attempts by Davis to persuade Britain and France to come to his aid and of rescuing southern independence through negotiations with the Union failed. Thus, “the final phase of the debate about arming and freeing slaves occurred against a backdrop of fading Confederate hopes and disappearing policy alternatives” (112). Public meetings in various sates, state governors, and newspapers began endorsing the measure of arming slaves. Levine notes, “undoubtedly encouraged by this tern, congressional supporters of arming slaves finally began to appear” (113). On February 10, 1865, Ethelbert Barksdale introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that would become the administration’s proposal (117). Signed into a law on March 13, this proposal did not empower the Confederate government to conscript or emancipate a single slave; rather, only “those slaves whose masters had already freed them would enter the prospective black companies” (118, 120).

Levine essentially argues that the South’s dire military and morale regressions in 1864 led many to consider the enlistment of blacks into Confederate armies. Thus, the Confederacy’s lack of manpower caused the Confederate government to pass a law enabling blacks to enter Confederate ranks. I find Levine’s causal argument persuasive to a certain extent. Levine does a very good job in conveying the linear relationship between the South’s lack of manpower and its decision to enlist slaves as the South’s commitment to this plan changed throughout time. However, the very nature of cause and effect arguments makes me cautious to perfectly accept his argument.

In his 1862 speech to Congress, Abraham Lincoln states that “we cannot escape history” (13). Indeed, the scruples of history and of historians have certainly gone over the words of Abraham Lincoln again and again. What the general American public remember of Lincoln is his height, his hat and his hatred of slavery, so when looking at these documents of his speeches and letters, it can be a bit startling to see his opinions on race in a modern context. His thoughts on race and one what to do once slavery is abolished can be hard to swallow if one places the perceptions of today on them. However, his thoughts, however shocking today, are a product of his time and were, in fact, quote progressive.

The concepts and problems attached to race did not appear until after the 16th century when they were quickly codified in the form of slave laws. Because the concept of race was created to define the institution of slavery and to make it palatable, the ideas of slavery and of race are inextricably linked together. When discussing slavery, Lincoln felt a need to justify his beliefs through his opinions on race difference, repeatedly stating that he did not wish to have a black woman for a wife (2, 4). There is a general tone of inevitable distinction between black and white, as though the two are more than a single species, and he staunchly believed that whites and blacks could not exist together as equals in the same country. His general support of the American Colonization Society and his desire to settle freedmen near Liberia is surprising given the previous failure of the Sierra Leone colony. While the moderate political statements he makes indicate that “social and political equality” would be impossible, he also feels that on some level blacks are equal to whites in some respects, certainly when it comes to unalienable rights (2, 4). To have freed enslaved people colonize a separate nation, in Lincoln’s mind at least, allowed a space where the former enslaved would be able to have their own rights on their own terms. There is no indication that Lincoln saw the freedmen he was talking to about colonization as American. Rather, they were a people from another nation who needed to be returned there, even if they had never lived anywhere other than America for generations.

Regardless of how it is read now, Lincoln’s beliefs on race and slavery were progressive for his time. Even indicating that an enslaved person might be equal in some respects was probably very startling for them. What modern readers may see ignorance or even racism in Lincoln’s words about what to do with the enslaved indicate his idealism for a better future for those that had been wronged by the nation he led.

Abraham Lincoln is so often touted as a bastion of equality and African-American rights that we often forget he was still a man of the 19th century. The Lincoln Documents on Slavery, even as they show that Lincoln was a forward-thinker and an integral player in emancipation, do an excellent job of reminding us that he was very much a product of his era. Lincoln does not mince words, as he states outright that “if slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” (13) And yet he is also evidently racist, with “no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races” and favoring his race “having the superior position.” (1) These two sentiments, at first, seem incompatible; in fact, after reading the earlier documents I was almost surprised that the same Lincoln would later issue the Emancipation Proclamation. But Lincoln makes it very clear that, while he is convinced that white and black men cannot be equal, the institution of slavery is fundamentally wrong.

It seems that Lincoln primarily reconciles the differences between his opinions by suggesting that, while their different race makes them inferior, blacks are entitled to the same rights under the Declaration of Independence. Lincoln describes these rights early on as “the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns.” (1) In fact, Lincoln makes a point of choosing to leave blacks alone, rather than actively oppress or defend them, stating that rather than wanting “a negro woman for a slave” or “for a wife” he can “just let her alone.” (2) These ideas do seem to go hand-in-hand with his opinion of slavery – he calls it a “monstrous injustice” (5) – but Lincoln is also quick to point out that these are his personal opinions. He is a politician first, and acknowledges that there are many men among him who would disagree with his ideas. When he considers, hypothetically, freeing all the slaves and making them “politically and socially” equal to whites, he dismisses the concept not just because his “own feelings will not admit of” it, but also in consideration of “the great mass of white people” who would oppose it. (5) Lincoln also freely admits that the Southern people “are no more responsible for the origin of slavery, than we” (5), implying that the institution goes far beyond the borders of the South, even as it seems to be limited to that region. Despite hating slavery, Lincoln promises that “there is no cause for such fears” as the interference of a Republican administration with the South’s slaves, (6) and he defends the “constitutional rights” of Southerners “fully, and fairly.” (5)

Perhaps the clearest evidence of Lincoln’s inherent racism lies in his solution for the issue of race in America. Lincoln advocated colonization, at first suggesting freed slave should be sent to Liberia, “their own native land” (5) but then suggesting Central America in an official capacity when meeting with “a Committee of colored men at the White House.” (6) Lincoln claims that both races “suffer very greatly” from each other’s presence (7), and suggests that even free blacks could never truly be free in the United States given that “not a single man” of that race “is mad equal of a single” white man. (7) Lincoln does not even begin to pretend that it is possible for whites and blacks to be equal, and he so strongly believes that the two races are incompatible that his best solution is to separate them completely. And yet, Lincoln suggests this all in the hopes of achieving freedom for all blacks. His opinions are an odd combination, but Lincoln’s hatred of slavery and love of freedom were enough to allow him to seek a solution that, even with his tinge of racism, was radical for his time.