Bruce Levine’s Confederate Emancipation sheds light on the difficulties the Confederacy had of drafting a plan to arm the soldiers and emancipate them. The title, “Confederate Emancipation” is far from the actual truth because slaves were never truly emancipated under the Confederacy. However, Levine does a good job of narrating the situation of the Confederacy throughout the war and paints a good picture of why it was so difficult for the Confederacy to agree on any form of Emancipation. The idea of emancipating the slaves to add to their numbers quantitatively claimed to have been mentioned at the beginning of the war by few, but it was an idea that received much more attention as the South began to struggle. The Confederates began to embrace the idea of Confederate Emancipation seriously towards the end of the war through meager legislation because it was essentially a last ditch effort.
On November 7, 1864, Jefferson Davis finally decided to embrace the idea of “manumission as a war measure.”(32) Levine writes that the Davis acknowledged the overall manpower problem and he conceded it was quite serious. To address that problem successfully, Davis asserted, would require “a radical modification in the theory of the law.”(32) The idea of using the slaves for the war effort had been kicked around by many of the great Confederate minds, but this was the first time it was admitted publicly by their President. This address to Congress did not yet ask for the power to arm the slaves, rather use them as laborers. Yet, as Levine writes, “He did open the door to employing black troops in the future, should the need arise.”(33) Patrick Cleburne was the first to officially bring this idea up to any form of Confederate officials. In early 1864, he read his memo to the generals assembled in Dalton, Georgia, and he could not receive any support. However, a year later, the situation would be different.
The main reason for the manumission of soldiers was to gain soldiers for the war effort, but there were hopes that such efforts would appeal to British and French forces. Both countries were anti-slavery and some Confederate officials hoped that this extreme effort would gain foreign sympathy and assistance. Patrick Cleburne had promised his fellow officers that such a measure “will at one blow strip the enemy of foreign sympathy and assistance, and transfer them to the South.”(37) By this time in the war, many Confederates were desperate for any form of help. The ploy for foreign sympathy and assistance never proved to be anything more than a dream.
The Confederacy was forced by a worsening war situation to rethink their tactics. Looking across enemy lines after the Confiscation Acts and the Emancipation Proclamation, they saw the enemy using their “property” against them. Confederates were seeing their way of life and the very institution of slavery crumble right in front of their eyes. The manumission of slaves was merely a last ditch effort to win the war and save whatever was left of slavery. Levine writes, “By freeing and arming slaves, Cleburne, Lee, Davis, and Benjamin sought simultaneously to win the war and to salvage as much as they could of the Old South, including the plantation system and the white-supremacist social order more generally.”(110) Some Confederates saw the emancipation of the slaves by the Union as inevitable, so they might as well do it themselves and use them against the Union. This form of emancipation caused an incredible amount of dissent among the Confederate ranks and was merely a last ditch effort to win the war.
Gaining support for emancipation of slaves was next to impossible, but the Confederacy was able to gain a little ground. On February 10, 1865, Jefferson Davis’ old friend Ethelbert Barksdale introduced a bill into the House of Representatives that would become the administration proposal.(117) The bill would allow for Jefferson Davis “to ask for and accept from the owners of slaves, the services of such number of able-bodied negro men as hey may deem expedient.”(117) The House amended that bill because they didn’t think the call for voluntary slaves assistance would result in any numbers. Levine posits, “It added language that would allow Richmond in such a case to call upon each state government to raise it won share of a total of 300,000 black troops.”(118) The bill went through the House and the Senate with a little difficulty and was signed by Davis on March 13. The new Confederate law did not free any slave, and it did not attempt to do so.
Ultimately, the undivided front of the Confederacy hindered its successes both diplomatically and militarily. The debate over how to arm the slaves and/or emancipate them resulted in a Confederate law that hardly did anything-let alone free any slave. I do find Levine’s explanation persuasive because he did a good job of showing the whole picture. I do not think he was trying to make an argument that the South took major attempts to emancipate the slaves. He acknowledges the difference between the Union’s emancipation and the Confederate’s attempts. Rather, I think he was telling the story as the way it was. The attempt at Confederate Emancipation was at the very end of the war and it was a last ditch effort to win the war and preserve the South’s way of life. Simply put, it was too little too late.