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.