http://cwemancipation.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/a-proposal-for-black-confederate-soldiers-may-1861/ remembering freedom for the slaves ... Tue, 14 May 2013 02:27:43 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://cwemancipation.wordpress.com/2011/05/10/a-proposal-for-black-confederate-soldiers-may-1861/#comment-148 Tue, 10 May 2011 14:49:45 +0000 http://cwemancipation.wordpress.com/?p=867#comment-148 What’s interesting about the Howell Cobb quote — and you really have to read the whole passage to get a sense of Cobb’s revulsion at the idea of African American soldiers — is that he figures prominently in the Steiner account of the Confederate occupation of Frederick, Maryland in 1862, a dubious account that is widely quoted as “evidence” of large numbers of black Confederate soldiers. The advocates of BCS routinely omit Steiner’s vivid description of Cobb, presumably because the idea of him leading thousands of victorious African American soldiers in butternut uniforms is utterly incompatible with his position on arming slaves just two years later, when the Confederacy itself is in extremis. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

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