I had heard good things about Kevin Levin’s Searching for Black Confederates from people whose knowledge of the American Civil War and its legacy I hold in high regard, so I was very excited this past December to finally read it. I grew up in central Virginia and the memory of the Civil War was never particularly far away. I remember being taught Lost Cause myths about the Civil War’s origins in school (and then later, thankfully, being un-taught them by a better teacher). I even remember coming across the Black Confederates myth a few times on the Internet in my 20s. That said, while I have strong cultural association with the American Civil War and have picked up a lot of details about it through my childhood and early adulthood, I am not very well read in terms of books on the subject. I read Ron Chernow’s biography of Grant a few years ago and probably read one or two entry level histories in school years ago, but I would not consider myself an expert. In particular, one area I’m hoping to learn more about is the Lost Cause myth and its structure. I know the broad outline, but I’d like to fill in the details and that’s where books like Searching for Black Confederates come in.
For those who may not know the myth that is central to this book’s argument, the Black Confederates story is essentially the idea that somewhere between hundreds to tens of thousands of black southerners fought in the army of the Confederate States of America to defend the South from invasion by Union forces. It should seem fairly obvious that this is patently absurd and utter nonsense, but it has held surprising sway in some corners of the internet over the years. For most of the American Civil War it was illegal under Confederate law to arm black southerners and they were barred from service in the army. The Confederacy did eventually admit black soldiers into its armies during the final phase of the war but there is no evidence that any of the tiny number of black southerners apparently enlisted ever actually mustered as part of the army. What the Confederacy did have was large amounts of slave labour, some brought along by their masters when they enlisted, others press ganged from the surrounding area. What Levin does is more than just point out the failures of the myth, instead he unpicks every detail about why it is false and then examines where the myth came from and traces its legacy through to the present day.
In picking apart the myth of the Black Confederate Levin offers a very detailed study of the role of slaves in the Confederate army, and in particular by examining the lives of specific slaves and their experiences of the war. These are often individuals that Neo-Confederates have attempted to identify as being black Confederate soldiers so these sections do the double job of refuting those specific arguments while also presenting a broader picture of how the Confederate military used slaves and what the experience of being a slave in the army was like. It’s a fascinating examination of an often under-discussed aspect of the Civil War.
From there Levin examines the perception of these camp slaves in the post-war period, in particular how the development of the Lost Cause mythology handled the stories of the now ex-slaves and their relationship with their former masters, both under Jim Crow and during the war. This serves partly as an exploration of the early formation of the Lost Cause and how it was used to justify and enforce Jim Crow but it also feeds into Levin’s broader argument for these early chapters, which is that the notion that black people ever served as soldiers in the Confederate army would have read as completely absurd to the people who participated in the war.
The argument for the existence of Black Confederates is based on faulty reading of quite complex evidence, and in many cases feels a bit like looking at a photocopy of a photocopy of history. Rather than going back to the source, advocates for the story of Black Confederates often rely on (misunderstanding) much later evidence, which they divorce from any context and interpret in a manner that suits them. The politicians of the Confederacy and the veterans who fought to support it would never have given any credence to the idea that black people would have been allowed to serve in the army alongside them as soldiers and Levin clearly shows how controversial any debate around doing just that was on the rare occasions when it happened.
What Levin points out is that the myth of the Black Confederate is a far more recent invention, one formed in the 1970s in a response to both the Civil Rights movement of the previous decade and to stark shifts in scholarly and popular history that saw the tearing down of Lost Cause history and the slow arrival of a more honest and truthful account of the Confederacy and its history. The story of the Black Confederate is nothing more than an attempt to push back against a better understanding of history and a dramatic refusal to come to terms with the horrors of slavery and the Confederacy.
Levin’s book is well written and engaging and a fascinating glimpse not just into a specific aspect of American Civil War history but also into how bad actors deliberately distort history and push narratives for their own political ends. The success of the Black Confederate myth on the internet and its continued survival are stark warnings about how myth can endure in the face of clear refuting evidence. It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as Levin makes it clear that while the Black Confederate myth has succeeded far beyond what its initial proponents probably could have expected, it is still very much a fringe opinion that is pushing back against a tide of changing public perception. While not strictly part of the Lost Cause myth itself, the story of the Black Confederate represents something of a desperate gasp from a dying historiography trying to push back against the march of new (and far superior) historical understanding.