Confederacy Archives - Larry Auerbach

Today In Western History: The Confederacy Approves The Use of Black Troops

Posted on March 13, 2016March 7, 2016 by larry

March 13

On this day in 1865, with the main Rebel armies facing long odds against much larger Union armies, in an act of desperation, the Confederacy reluctantly approves the use of black troops. The situation was quite bleak for the Confederates in the spring of 1865. Although they had no way of knowing it, their beloved Confederacy had just less than a month to live. The hated Yankees had captured large swaths of Southern territory and General William T. Sherman’s Union army was tearing unimpeded throughthe Carolinas. At the same time,

Confederate General Robert E. Lee was struggling futilely to defend and protect the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia, and he was

trying to do this with a steadily shrinking army, the victim of both severe malnutrition and desertions. His Union opponent, General Ulysses S. Grant, was applying a relentless pressure with an army that was better fed, better supplied, and with unlimited resources. Lee and

Confederate President Jefferson Davis had only two options left to them. One option was for Lee to unite with General Joseph Johnston’s

army in the Carolinas and use the combined force to take on Sherman and Grant one at a time, but this would leave Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, both unprotected and vulnerable to capture. The other option was to arm the slaves, the last source of fresh manpower in the Confederacy. This choice rendered the whole reason for the war as pointless. It was a no-win situation for the leaders of the Confederacy.

The idea of enlisting blacks had been debated for some time. Arming slaves was essentially a way of setting them free, since they could not realistically be sent back to plantations after they had fought. General Patrick Cleburne had suggested enlisting slaves a year before, but very few in the Confederate

leadership considered the proposal, since slavery was the foundation of Southern society. One politic-ian asked, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” Another suggested, “If slaves will make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” Lee weighed in on this thorny issue and he asked the Confederate government for help. “We must decide whether slavery shall be extinguished by our enemies and the slaves be used against us, or use them ourselves.” Lee asked that the slaves be freed as a condition of fighting, but the bill that passed the Confederate Congress on March 13, 1865, did not stipulate freedom for those who served.

The measure did nothing to stop the destruction of the Confederacy. Several thousand blacks were enlisted in the Rebel cause, but they could not begin to balance out the nearly 200,000 blacks who fought for the Union. It was a case of “too little, too late”.

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WESTERN HISTORY TODAY: Jefferson Davis Becomes President

Posted on February 10, 2016February 9, 2016 by larry

On this day in 1861, sJefferson DavisJefferson Davi, a former U.S. senator from Mississippi who served as U.S. secretary of war in the 1850s, receives word he has been selected president of the new Confederate States of America. Delegates at the Confederacy’s constitutional convention in Montgomery, Alabama, chose him for the job.

Davis was at his plantation, Brierfield, pruning rose bushes with his wife Varina when a messenger arrived from nearby Vicksburg, Mississippi. The presidency was not a position Davis wanted, but he accepted it out of a sense of duty to his new country. Varina later wrote of her husband’s reaction to the news: “Reading that telegram he looked so grieved that I feared some evil had befallen our family. After a few minutes he told me like a man might speak of a sentence of death.”

Davis said of the job: “I have no confidence in my ability to meet its requirement. I think I could perform the function of a general.” He could see the difficulties involved in launching the new nation. “Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, plaudits, and flowers, but beyond them I saw troubles innumerable. We are without machinery, without means, and threatened by powerful opposition but I do not despond and will not shrink from the task before me.”

Davis was prescient in his concerns, and often drew sharp criticism during the Civil War, caused by his difficult personality. Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president, said Davis was “weak and vacillating, timid, petulant, peevish, obstinate.”

Davis remained president of the Confederacy until its government was dissolved on May 5, 1865. Less than a week later, he was captured by the Union and jailed for two years. He died at age 81 in New Orleans in 1889.

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Western History Today: Confederate General John Pegram is killed at Dabney’s Mill, Virginia.

Posted on February 6, 2016February 6, 2016 by larry

On this day in 1865, Confederate General John Pegram, age 33, is killed at the Battle of Dabney’s Mill (also called Hatcher’s Run), Virginia.

Pegram graduated from West Point in 1854, and served in various posts in the West before resigning his commission at the start of the Civil War. Pegram then received an appointment as a lieutenant colonel in the Confederate army. Sent to fight in western Virginia during the summer of 1861. He was captured by General George McClellan’s men at the Battle

of Rich Mountain. Pegram was exchanged in April 1862 and was sent to serve with General Pierre G. T. Beauregard in

Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard

Mississippi. He fought in Tennessee and Kentucky and earned a promotion to brigadier general. After the Battle of Chickamauga in September 1863, Pegram was transferred to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He was wounded at the Battle of the Wilderness in May 1864. He recovered in time to fight with General Jubal Early during the Shenandoah Valley campaign in the summer of 1864. That fall, he was sent to defend his native city of Petersburg, Virginia.

On January 19, 1865, Pegram married Hetty Cary, a prominent Richmond socialite. Even in the gloom of the ongoing siege, the ceremony was a grand affair attended by nearly all of the high-ranking Confederates, including President Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina. One onlooker said of the bride that the “happy gleam of her beautiful brown eyes seemed to defy all sorrow.” Just three weeks later, Pegram’s body was returned to the same church, St. Paul’s Episcopal, and his young widow knelt beside his coffin as the minister who married them presided over the general’s funeral.

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Western History Today: The Confederacy Is Open For Business

Posted on February 4, 2016February 5, 2016 by larry

February 4 —

On this day in 1861, the Confederacy is open for business when the Provisional Confederate Congress convenes in Montgomery, Alabama.

The official record read: “Be it remembered that on the fourth day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the Capitol of the State of Alabama, in the city of Montgomery, at the hour of noon, there assembled certain deputies and delegates from the several independent South States of North America…”

The first order of business was drafting a constitution. The congress used the U.S. Constitution as a model, taking most of it verbatim. In just four days, a tentative document to govern the new nation was hammered out. The president was limited to one six-year term. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, the word “slave” was used and the institution protected in all states and any territories to be added later. Importation of slaves was prohibited, as this would alienate European nations and would detract from the profitable “internal slave trade” in the South. Other components of the constitution were designed to enhance the power of the states–governmental money for internal improvements was banned and the president was given a line-item veto on appropriations bills.

The congress then turned its attention to selecting a president, with delegates settling on Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate and former U.S. senator from Mississippi who served as the U.S. secretary of war in the 1850s.

To purchase a signed copy of Larry Auerbach’s novel “A MATTER OF HONOR”, Click Here

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Tag: Confederacy

Today In Western History: The Confederacy Approves The Use of Black Troops

WESTERN HISTORY TODAY: Jefferson Davis Becomes President

Western History Today: Confederate General John Pegram is killed at Dabney’s Mill, Virginia.

Western History Today: The Confederacy Is Open For Business