The “Confederate Emancipation” was a sham. While Bruce Levine does well to address this long confused and misinterpreted movement to free slaves to serve in the Confederate army in his book Confederate Emancipation, the fact of the matter is that Confederate emancipation never freed a slave. As Levine states, “the newly enacted Confederate law did not free a single slave, nor did it attempt to do so,” (Levine, 118). Even at its most liberal inception, the Confederate emancipation might have freed slaves on two basic conditions: 1) they serve in the Confederate army, where they would never be considered equal to whites and most likely would have lost their lives from being placed in the most precarious of situations; and 2) should these slaves survive the war to their own freedom they would have been granted no property, little to start with and would have been bound by necessity to return to their positions on plantations where they would work for low wages in the same or worse conditions they might have had as slaves.
In this context, “Confederate emancipation” is not the proper word for this envisioned slave enlistment; instead this movement can be considered more of a draft or forced conscription. This draft of the slaves guaranteed them no improvement in condition, it allowed them little opportunity for advancement, and would simply place black able-bodied men on the line instead of the dwindling white forces. According to Levine this decrease in Confederate troops had only escalated as, “the battlefield reverses and erosion of popular morale of mid-1863 aggravated the Confederacy’s manpower problem,” (Levine, 24). So, by 1864 the Confederacy was not so interested in the “loyalty” of these slave and their love of the confederacy as it was with the real number of bodies it might add to their quickly diminishing ranks.
While it is true that federal policies like the Confiscation Acts proposed the drafting of contraband to contribute their labor to the Union army, this labor was not to be in arms, but instead in the building of fortifications and other manual labor tasks that would not require risk of life or limb. When the Emancipation Proclamation changed these policies to allow for the enlistment of blacks in the federal army, it did so on an entirely voluntary basis from free men.
While the Confederate emancipation had required such voluntary measures, it was not from free men acting upon their own interests but instead from the joint volunteering of their masters and the slaves themselves. This voluntary action was done with the understanding at the time that as no emancipation policy was in practice, the slave would be returned to his master following the war. These slaves would experience no elevation for their service nor experience any major improvement in their lifestyle. Under these conditions, the slave would not be volunteering for a “cause” per se but instead trading one master for another.
Also, even when the possibility of emancipation was introduced into the Confederate enlistment Levine says, “Cleburne, Benjamin, Lee, and Davis hoped to have their cake and eat it, too. They hoped to win black cooperation with an offer of freedom. But the freedom they expected to grant would severely circumscribed,” (Levine, 154). Under this proposed freedom blacks would be expected to serve, but when they returned they would receive no land, and be forced by law and necessity to return to their former masters to serve as “freed” laborers. While they might have the ability to rise above this position, the continued domination of white over black and rigid maintenance of the economic system would have prevented easy change in quality of life for these former slaves. As Patrick Cleburne, a proponent of emancipation proclaimed, “writing a man ‘free’ does not make him so, as the history of the Irish laborer shows, ” (Levine, 103). So, even when freedom was “offered” true emancipation was never on the table in the Confederacy, as Confederate leaders and the public were not quite ready for equality. Instead, through careful structuring Confederates attempted to gain the arming of slaves without the moral and societal changes it would require, a factor that would contribute to the failure of black Confederate enlistment.
While the Confederacy, with some adjustment, might have made such a policy work and change the tides of war, by 1865, such hopes were simply too late—especially considering how difficult it would be to secure the “volunteer” slaves for the army. These volunteers would not be experiencing difference in life, but instead a new more violent master and little chance for survival—explaining the lack of actual volunteers actually enlisted at the end of the war.
The “confederate emancipation” movement was no emancipator action, but instead the conscription of slaves to fight for a “cause” they had no interest in with absolutely no reward for their service, making the “emancipation” aspect of such a movement a complete sham.