Fact:   1865 The Confederate Army was the most culturally diversified army  to that point in World in History.

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By: Kay Smith February 2018

A Black historian, Roland Young, said he is not surprised that blacks fought in the (Also known as the Civil War).  He explains; “…some, if not most, Black southerners would support their country” and that by doing so they were “demonstrating it is possible to hate the system of slavery and love one’s country.” This is the very same reaction that most African Americans showed during the American Revolution, where they fought for the colonies, even though the British offered them freedom if they fought for them.

It has been estimated that over 65,000 Southern blacks were in the Confederate ranks.  Over 13,000 of these, “saw the elephant” also known as meeting the enemy in combat. These Black Confederates included both slave and free.  The Confederate Congress did not approve blacks to be officially enlisted as soldiers (except as musicians), until late in the war.  However, in the ranks it was a different story.  Many Confederate officers did not obey the mandates of politicians, they frequently enlisted blacks with the simple criteria; “Will you fight?”   Historian Ervin Jordan, explains that “bi-racial units” were frequently organized “by local Confederate and State militia Commanders in response to immediate threats in the form of Union raids…”.  An African-American professor at Southern University, Dr. Leonard Haynes, stated, “When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you’ve eliminated the history of the South.”

Free black musicians, cooks, soldiers and teamsters earned the same pay as white confederate privates. This was NOT the case in the Union army where blacks did not receive equal pay. At the Confederate Buffalo Forge in Rockbridge County, Virginia, skilled black workers “earned on average three times the wages of white Confederate soldiers and more than most Confederate army officers ($350-$600 a year).

While observing Gen. “Stonewall” Jackson’s occupation of Frederick, Maryland, in 1862; Dr. Lewis Steiner, Chief Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission, (Who’s purpose, was to promote clean and healthy conditions in the Union Army camps.)  Stated “Over 3,000 Colored Confederate troops.  Must be included in this number

These colored troops were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only in cast-off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. These were shabby, but not shabbier or seedier than those worn by white men in the rebel ranks. Most of the Colored Confederate troops had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc., and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army.”

 Frederick Douglas reported, “There are at the present moment many Colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but real soldiers, having musket on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down any loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the rebels.”

Black and white militiamen returned heavy fire on Union troops at the Battle of Griswoldsville (near Macon, GA). Approximately 600 boys and elderly men were killed in this skirmish.

Confederate General John B. Gordon (Confederate Army of Northern Virginia) reported that all of his troops were in favor of Colored troops and that its adoption would have “greatly encouraged the army”. Gen. Lee was anxious to receive regiments of black soldiers. The Richmond Sentinel reported on 24 Mar 1864, “None…will deny that our servants are more worthy of respect than the motley hordes, which come against us.” “Bad faith to black Confederates must be avoided as an indelible dishonor.”

In March 1865, Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary Of State, promised freedom for blacks that served from the State of Virginia. Authority for this was finally received from the State of Virginia and on April 1st 1865, $100 awards were offered to black soldiers. Benjamin exclaimed, “Let us say to every Man of Color who wants to go into the ranks, go and fight, and you are free…Fight for the Southern Cause and you shall have your freedom.” Confederate Officers were ordered to treat them humanely and protect them from “injustice and oppression”.

A Black Confederate, George last name unknown, when captured by Federals was bribed to desert to the other side. He defiantly spoke, “Sir, you want me to desert, and I ain’t no deserter. Down South, deserters disgrace their families and I am never going to do that.”

Former slave, Horace King, accumulated great wealth as a contractor to the Confederate Navy. He was also an expert engineer and became known as the “Bridge builder of the Confederacy.” One of his bridges was burned in a Yankee raid. His home was plundered by Union troops, as his wife pleaded for mercy.

Nearly 180,000 Black Southerners, from Virginia alone, provided logistical support for the Confederate military. Many were highly skilled workers. These included a wide range of jobs: nurses, military engineers, teamsters, ordnance department workers, brakemen, firemen, harness makers, blacksmiths, wagon makers, boatmen, mechanics, wheelwrights, etc. In the 1920’S Confederate pensions were finally allowed to those workers that were still living.  Many thousands more served in other Confederate States.

During the 50th Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913, arrangements were made for a joint reunion of Union and Confederate veterans. The commission in charge of the event made sure they had enough accommodations for the black Union veterans, but were completely surprised when unexpected black Confederates arrived. The white Confederates immediately welcomed their old comrades, gave them one of their tents, and “saw to their every need”. Nearly every Confederate reunion included those blacks that served with them, wearing the gray.

The first military monument in the US Capitol that honors an African-American soldier is the Confederate monument at Arlington National cemetery. The monument was designed 1914 by Moses Ezekiel, a Jewish Confederate, who wanted to correctly portray the “racial makeup” in the Confederate Army. A black Confederate soldier is depicted marching in step with white Confederate soldiers.  Also shown is one “white soldier giving his child to a black woman for protection

Recently the National Park Service, with a recent discovery, recognized that blacks were asked to help defend the city of Petersburg, Virginia and were offered their freedom if they did so. Regardless of their official classification, black Americans performed support functions that in today’s army would be classified as official military service. The successes of white Confederate troops in battle, could only have been achieved with the support these loyal black Southerners.

Black Confederate heritage is beginning to receive the attention it deserves. For instance, Terri Williams, a black journalist for the Suffolk “Virginia Pilot” newspaper, writes: “I’ve had to re-examine my feelings toward the Confederate flag…It started when I read a newspaper article about an elderly black man whose ancestor worked with the Confederate forces. The man spoke with pride about his family member’s contribution to the cause, was photographed with the Confederate flag draped over his lap…that’s why I now have no definite stand on just what the flag symbolizes, because it no longer is their history, or my history, but OUR history.”

At least one Black Confederate was a non-commissioned officer in the Texas Army during the Southern War for Independence. The Sergeant James Washington Memorial Leadership Award is named in honor of Sergeant James Washington, the highest ranking, documented Black soldier serving within the regular component of the Confederate Armed Forces.  Sergeant Washington was designated as the Third Sergeant, Company D, 34th Regiment, 11th Texas Cavalry – also known as Terrell’s Texas Cavalry.   

Unit rosters show the 34th to be of multi-racial makeup – White, Black, Hispanic and Seminole Indian.  Company A had 25 Hispanic and 2 Black troopers; Company C had 28 Hispanics and 5 Blacks; Company D was commanded by Capt. Jose Rodriguez and had a Black trooper, 3rd Sergeant, James Washington.

IN CONCLUSION…

Your HISTORY is a mixture of many things with ancestors who made achievements both great and small, as well as ancestors who made mistakes just as we do today. It is up to you, each as individuals, how you choose to feel about your heritage.  However, I am reminded of the Scripture where Christ said “he who is without sin among you; let him cast the first stone.” 

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MEXICAN TEXANS IN THE CIVIL WAR.

Secession and the Civil War deeply divided the Mexican Americans of Texas (Tejanos). Accusations of subversion and disloyalty before the war resulted in a reluctance by many of them to become involved in the conflict. Those who joined militia units in South Texas and on the frontier frequently did so out of a fear of being sent out of the state and away from their families. Some were able to avoid conscription by claiming to be residents of Mexico. Tejano frustrations during the Civil War are exemplified by the case of Capt. Adrián J. Vidal, who joined the Confederacy but deserted and enlisted in the Union Army, only to desert again and join the liberals in Mexico, where he was captured by the French and executed.

 

Photograph, Refugio Benavides (far left), with fellow confederate officers from Laredo Atanacio Vidaurri, Cristobal Benavides, and John Z. Leyendecker, ca. 1863. Image courtesy of the University of Texas at San Antonio Library. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.

At least 2,500 Mexican Texans joined the Confederate Army. The most famous was Santos Benavides, who rose to command the Thirty-third Texas Cavalry as a colonel, and thus became the highest ranking Tejano to serve the Confederacy. Though it was ill equipped, frequently without food, and forced to march across vast expanses of South Texas and northern Mexico, the Thirty-third was never defeated in battle. Colonel Benavides, along with his two brothers, Refugio and Cristóbal, who both became captains in the regiment, compiled a brilliant record of border defense and were widely heralded as heroes throughout the Lone Star State. The Benavides brothers defeated a band of anti-Confederate revolutionaries commanded by Juan N. Cortina at Carrizo (Zapata) in May 1861 and on three separate occasions invaded northern Mexico in retaliation for Unionist-inspired guerilla raids into Texas. The Benavides brothers were also successful in driving off a small Union force that attacked Laredo in March 1864.

Many Tejanos who enlisted in the Confederate Army saw combat far from home. A few who joined Hood's Texas Brigade marched off to Virginia and fought in the battles of Gaines' Mill, Second Bull Run, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Appomattox Court House. Thirty Tejanos who enlisted from San Antonio, Eagle Pass, and the Fort Clark area joined Trevanion T. Teel's artillery company, and thirty-one more joined Charles L. Pyron's company, both in John R. Baylor's Second Texas Mounted Rifles, which marched across the deserts of West Texas to secure the Mesilla valley. These units were later incorporated into Gen. Henry Hopkins Sibley's Confederate Army of New Mexico and fought bravely at the battle of Valverde.

Other Mexican Texans from San Antonio served in the Sixth Texas Infantry and fought in several of the eastern campaigns, including the battles of Chattanooga, Chickamauga, Atlanta, and at Franklin and Nashville in John Bell Hood's calamitous invasion of Tennessee. Two of the better known Tejanos in the regiment were Antonio Bustillos and Eugenio Navarro. Others who served the Confederacy included the younger Manuel Yturri, a Kentucky teacher and scholar, who rose to the rank of captain in the Third Texas Infantry; and Lt. Joseph de la Garza, also from San Antonio, who died at Mansfield, Louisiana, in 1864 during the Red River Campaign. More than 300 Texas Mexicans from Refugio and Bexar counties joined the Eighth Texas Infantry. Two companies commanded by Joseph M. Peñaloza and José Ángel Navarro were almost entirely Tejano.

Other Texas Mexicans, resentful of growing non-Hispanic political dominance of their communities, enlisted in federal blue. Many joined the Union Army for the bounty money offered upon enlistment, but some enlisted because they opposed slavery or to satisfy grudges against landowners, attorneys, and politicians who had used the American legal system to take valuable land from Tejanos during the preceding decade. The federal Second Texas Cavalry, commanded by Col. John L. Haynes, a resident of Rio Grande City, was composed almost entirely of Tejanos and Mexican nationals recruited from the small villages along the banks of the Rio Grande. The regiment, which suffered an exceptionally high desertion rate, fought in the Rio Grande valley and later in Louisiana. Company commanders included George Treviño, Clemente Zapata, Cesario Falcón, and Mónico de Abrego. A number of Tejanos, acting as Union consorts, were actively engaged in the Nueces Strip. The most famous of the Union guerillas were Cecilio Balerio and his son Juan, who fought a bloody skirmish with Confederates at Los Patricios, fifty miles southwest of Banquete, on March 13, 1864.

Trjano Confederates Video

The Confederate Exiles of Brazil

HISPANIC HERITAGE MONTH.   

Sons of Confederate Veterans

HISPANICS IN GRAY AND BLUE

This fact sheet is prepared by the Education Committee of the Sons of Confederate Veterans for distribution by its members to professors, teachers,

librarians, principals, superintendents, ethnic leaders, city officials, members of the press, and other groups interested in promoting an understanding of

Hispanic contributions to United States history. The SCV hopes this information will enrich the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. This sheet may be

freely copied and distributed without permission or notice; if republished in part or whole, please credit the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

Confederate:

• The Cuban patriot Narciso López approached Mexican War heroes Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee in 1848 with the request to head a liberation army to

free Cuba from Spain -- Lee seriously considered the offer, but turned it down.

• José Agustín Quintero, a Cuban poet and revolutionary, ably served Confederate President Jefferson Davis as the C.S. Commissioner to Northern Mexico,

ensuring critical supplies from Europe flowed through Mexican ports to the CSA.

• Santiago Vidaurri, governor of the border states of Coahuila and Nuevo León, offered to secede northern Mexico and join the Confederacy; Jefferson Davis

declined, afraid the valuable "neutral" Mexican ports would be then blockaded.

• The Spanish inventor Narciso Monturiol offered the Confederacy his advanced submarine Ictineo to smash the Federal blockade. Never purchased, Jules

Verne apparently based the Nautilus on this, the world's most advanced vessel of the day.

• Ambrosio José González, a famous Cuban revolutionary, served Confederate general P.G.T. Beauregard as his artillery officer in Charleston; earlier, in

New York, he helped design the modern Cuban and (inversed) Puerto Rican flags.

• The Mexican Santos Benavides, a former Texas ranger, commanded the Confederate 33rd Texas Cavalry, a Mexican- American unit which defeated the

Union in the 1864 Battle of Laredo, Texas. He became the only Mexican C.S. colonel.

• Thomas Jordan, a Confederate general responsible for early codes used in spying on Washington, after the war led the Cuban revolutionary army as

Commander-in-Chief, training its generals and in 1870 routing the Spaniards at two-to-one odds.

• Lola Sanchez, of a Cuban family living near St. Augustine, had her sisters serve dinner to visiting Federals, while she raced out at night and warned the

nearest Confederate camp. The Yankees thus lost a general, his unit and a gunboat the next day.

• Loretta Janeta Velazquez, a Cuban woman, claimed to have fought in the war disguised as a Confederate soldier, Lt. Harry Buford. She chronicled her

amazing and harrowing adventures in an account called The Woman in Battle.

• James Hamilton Tomb, a Confederate engineer on the innovative semi-submarine ship David, accepted a post-war offer from the Brazilian emperor as

technical expert on torpedoes (submarine mines) in the Paraguayan War of 1865-1870.

• Hunter Davidson, a Confederate torpedo (submarine mine) scientist, assumed the head of the Argentine Torpedo and Hydrographic Bureau for some

years, training its leadership, and retired to Asunción, Paraguay, where he is buried.

• John Randolph Tucker, head of the Charleston Confederate Naval Squadron, accepted a post-war position as Vice-Admiral heading the combined

Peruvian-Chilean fleets in a Pacific conflict against Spanish coastal incursions.

• John Newland Maffitt, who before the war captured illegal slave-trading ships, served the Confederacy as the CSS Florida's commander. Afterwards, he

served in the Paraguayan war and commanded the Cuban gun-runner Hornet.

• Thomas Jefferson Page, a Confederate naval commander who learned of the war's end in Cuba after sailing the ironclad CSS Stonewall from Spain,

settled in Argentina, his son becoming an Argentine naval commander, his grandson an admiral.

• Mexican service influenced Confederate general Stonewall Jackson; he often spoke Spanish endearments to his wife, Anna. • After the war, many

prominent governors and other Confederates established a colony, Carlotta, in Mexico.

Union:

• Admiral David G. Farragut, a Southerner, was also Hispanic, his father Jorge Ferragut being from Spain. Fluent in Spanish, the admiral served the Union

navy and is remembered for saying "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

• Federico Fernández Cavada, a Cuban, served the Union army with distinction at Gettysburg, and later wrote his famous Libby Life, describing Confederate

prison. After the war, he led the Cuban revolution, but was captured and executed.

• Julio P. Garesché du Rocher, a promising Cuban of French extraction, designed Washington's defenses and served General William Rosecrans as chief of

staff. At Stone's River (Tenn.), a cannon ball decapitated Garesché, ending a brilliant career.

Revolution:

• Bernardo de Gálvez, Governor of Spanish Louisiana, defeated the British during the American Revolution at Baton Rouge, Mobile, Pensacola, St. Louis

and in Michigan, diverting away thousands of British troops as America's forgotten ally.

More Info? Check Out the 'Net and these Fine Books

Websites:

• Hispanic Pages in the USA -

Books:

• Richard H. Bradford, The Virginius Affair, 1980

• Light Townsend Cummins, Spanish Observers and the American Revolution, 1775-1783, 1991

• James W. Daddysman, The Matamoros Trade: Confederate Commerce, Diplomacy and Intrigue, 1984

• Ella Lonn, Foreigners in the Confederacy, 1965 (reprint, 1940 edition)

• Andrew Rolle, The Lost Cause: The Confederate Exodus to Mexico, 1965

• Ronnie C. Tyler, Santiago Vidaurri and the Southern Confederacy, 1973

• Frank de Varona (ed.), Hispanic Presence in the United States: Historical Beginnings, 1993

• David Werlich, Admiral of the Amazon: John Randolph Tucker - His Confederate Colleagues and Peru, 1990

• John O'Donnell-Rosales , Hispanic Confederates, list of several thousand who served the Confederacy, 8 1/2 x 11, 90 pp., paper, (1997), reprint 1998.

cost is $18.00. order: item #9362, Clearfield Publishing Co., 200 E. Eager St., BAltimore, MD 21202

Sons of Confederate Veterans

The Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) is a patriotic, historical, and educational organization, founded in 1896, dedicated to honoring the sacrifices of the

Confederate soldier and sailor, and to preserving Southern Culture. Its projects include educational talks, grave-site dedications, medical research

scholarships, and publication of Confederate Veteran magazine. The SCV is not affiliated with any other organization, except for its officers corps, the

MOSB. For more information, call 1-800-380-1896 or visit the SCV website at http://www.scv.org