Frederick Douglass, Douglass' Monthly, IV (Sept. 1861), pp 516 - "…there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate Army…as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government...There were such soldiers at Manassas and they are probably there still."

 

From James G. Bates' letter to his father reprinted in the 1 May 1863 "Winchester [Indiana] Journal" (the 13th IVI ["Hoosier Regiment"] was involved in operations around the Suffolk, Virginia area in April-May 1863 ) - "I can assure you [Father], of a certainty, that the rebels have negro soldiers in their army.  One of their best sharp shooters, and the boldest of them all here is a negro.  He dug himself a rifle pit last night [16 April 1863] just across the river and has been annoying our pickets opposite him very much to-day.  You can see him plain enough with the naked eye, occasionally, to make sure that he is a "wooly-head," and with a spy-glass there is no mistaking him."

 

After the action at Missionary Ridge, Commissary Sergeant William F. Ruby forwarded a casualty list written in camp at Ringgold, Georgia about 29 November 1863, to William S. Lingle for publication. Ruby's letter was partially reprinted in the Lafayette Daily Courier for 8 December 1863:  "Ruby says among the rebel dead on the [Missionary] Ridge he saw a number of negroes in the Confederate uniform. "

 

"Negroes in the Confederate Army," Journal of Negro History, Charles Wesle, Vol. 4, #3, (1919), 244-245 - "Seventy free blacks enlisted in the Confederate Army in Lynchburg, Virginia. Sixteen companies of free men of color marched through Augusta, Georgia on their way to fight in Virginia." -

 

Federal Official Records, Series I, Vol XVI Part I, pg. 805, Report of the Union commander:  "There were also quite a number of negroes attached to the Texas and Georgia troops, who were armed and equipped, and took part in the several engagements with my forces during the day."

 

Federal Official Records Series 1, Volume 15, Part 1, Pages 137-138:  "Pickets were thrown out that night, and Captain Hennessy, Company E, of the Ninth Connecticut, having been sent out with his company, captured a colored rebel scout, well mounted, who had been sent out to watch our movements."

 

Federal Official Records, Series I, Vol. XLIX, Part II, pg. 253 - April 6, 1865:  "The rebels [Forrest] are recruiting negro troops at Enterprise, Miss., and the negroes are all enrolled in the State." -

 

The 85th Indiana Volunteer Infantry reported to the Indianapolis Daily Evening Gazette that on 5 March 1863:  "During the fight the [artillery] battery in charge of the 85th Indiana [Volunteer Infantry] was attacked by [*in italics*] two rebel negro regiments. [*end italics*]." 

 

"The part of Adams' Brigade that the 42nd Indiana was facing were the 'Louisiana Tigers.'  This name was given to Colonel Gibson's 13th Louisiana Infantry, which included five companies of 'Avegno Zouaves' who still were wearing their once dashing traditional blue jackets, red caps and red baggy trousers.  These five Zouaves companies were made up of Irish, Dutch [German], Negroes, Spaniards, Mexicans, and Italians." - Noe, Kenneth W., Perryville:  This Grand Havoc of Battle.  The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, KY, 2001. (page 270)

 

Now let us examine references to the Union treatment of the gallant USCT:

 

"...As usual with the enemy, they posted their negro regiments on their left and in front, where they were slain by hundreds, and upon retiring left their dead and wounded negroes uncared for, carrying off only the whites, which accounts for the fact that upon the first part of the battle-field nearly all the dead found were negroes." - Federal Official Records, Vol. XXV, Chapter XLVII, pg. 341 - report of the Confederate Commander, Savannah, April 27, 1864 - Battle of Ocean Pond (Olustee) - 54th Mass. present

 

[Reporting on the assault on Battery Wagner] "Sergeant George E. Stephens of Company B described the scene to Captain Emilio: 'Just at the very hottest moment of the struggle, a battalion or regiment charged up to the moat, halted, and did not attempt to join us, but from their position commenced to fire upon us. I was one of the men who shouted from where I stood, 'Don't fire on us. We are the Fifty-fourth.' I have heard it was a Maine Regiment .'" - "A Brave Black Regiment:  History of the Fifty-Fourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry," Luis F. Emilio, Boston:  Boston Book Company, 1894; Reprint, Salem:  Ayer Company Publishers, Inc., 1990., 93

 

[Regarding the Battle of the Crater] "George L. Kilmer, an officer of the Fourteenth New York Heavy Artillery, went into the crater with the first wave and reported afterward that when the USCT moved forward to charge the fort, some of white soldiers refused to follow them. Pandemonium broke out when the black soldiers could not continue the assault and started to retreat and come back into the crater. 'Some colored men came into the crater and there they found a fate worse than death in the charge . . . It has been positively asserted, that white men [Union] bayoneted blacks who fell back into the crater.'" - "The Sable Arm."  Dudley T. Cornish, New York:  Longman, Green & Co., 1956, p 274

 

Although many historians claim that the United States Colored Troops (USCT) were "188,000 Black soldiers" this is a gross misstatement of historical fact.  The Union Army was strictly segregated and ANY non-white was placed in the USCT.  The ranks of the USCT held not only Blacks but also Hispanics, Native Americans, and any non-white foreigners who chose to serve.  Propaganda masquerading as history has failed to mention them or subtract their numbers from that vaunted 188,000.

 

Union soldiers robbed, raped and murdered Free Black and slave Southerners they had come to "emancipate."  Union "recruiters" hunted, kidnapped and tortured Black Southerners to compel them to serve in the Union Army.  The Federal Official Records document all of these war crimes.

 

Since the Civil War the United States flag has flown over a country that has continued attempted genocide against its Native Peoples with the able help of Black "Buffalo Soldiers," condoned the slavery of Orientals in California well into the 1880s, fought wars to maintain dominance over countries whose people were not white, and imprisoned its own citizens because of the color of their skin as they did with the Japanese-Americans in California from 1941-1945.

 

During the War for Southern Independence the Confederacy signed formal alliances with the Five Civilized Tribes and more than two dozen other Indian groups which recognized their ethnic and geographic sovereignty and offered them equal pay and treatment while Lincoln was signing orders for the mass hanging of 39 Northeastern tribesmen.  The only non-white general officer of the War was Confederate Brigadier General Stand Watie, a Cherokee Chief who received a Congressional Commendation for his leadership and accomplishment while leading a mixed force of white, Hispanic, and Indian Confederates.

 

The Confederate military was not a "sea of lily-white Protestant faces" as many history texts would have one believe.  The Confederate Army's ranks included 13,000 Indians, 6500 Hispanics (including nine Colonels and the Surgeon General of the Confederate Army), 5000 Jews (including the Confederate Secretary of State), tens of thousands of foreign-born Southerners, a handful of Asians, Black combat soldiers in documented efforts of undetermined numbers, and even the Amerasian sons of Chang and Eng (the original "Siamese Twins) who served and fought with Virginia cavalry.

 

By contrast the Union military was strictly segregated and MANY Union officers and soldiers were also slave owners whose "servants" accompanied them into the field.

 

While Grant was, through his wife's "house servants," a slave owner who did not free his slaves until December, 1865, when the 13th Amendment finally actually abolished slavery, Robert E. Lee was an outspoken opponent of slavery dating from before the War who freed slaves he inherited from his father-in-law as soon as the terms of the Will would allow him to do so:

 

"There are few, I believe, in this enlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil.  It is idle to expatiate on its disadvantages. I think it is a greater evil to the white than to the colored race." - Col. Robert E. Lee, USA - December 27, 1856

 

What was the REAL cause of the War for Southern Independence?  It was certainly NOT slavery since Lincoln proposed the FIRST 13th Amendment in 1862 which read: "No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions there of, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."  Note that this amendment was designed to be unrepealable (i.e. "No amendment shall be made . . . .")

 

This exposes that claims that the Union went to war to free the slaves were and are patent lies.  What greater assurance did the South need that the Federal government would not interfere with slavery?  Yet even this promised guarantee failed to bring the Southern states back into the Union because slavery was NOT the issue.

 

The real cause of the War can be found in the following references, one Northern pre-War, one Southern pre-War, and one modern:

 

"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty persent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually." -  Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860

 

"They (the South) know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interest.... These are the reasons why these people do not wish the South to secede from the Union.  They (the North) are enraged at the prospect of being despoiled of the rich feast upon which they have so long fed and fattened, and which they were just getting ready to enjoy with still greater gout and gusto.  They are as mad as hornets because the prize slips them just as they are ready to grasp it."  ~ New Orleans Daily Crescent, January 21, 1861

 

"What were the causes of the Southern independence movement in 1860?" "Northern commercial and manufacturing interests had forced through Congress taxes that oppressed Southern planters and made Northern manufacturers rich."..."... the South paid about three-quarters of all federal taxes, most of which were spent in the North." - Charles Adams,  "For Good and Evil. The impact of taxes on the course of civilization," 1993, Madison Books, Lanham, USA, pp. 325-327

 

Perhaps the best statement regarding the War and the phony, revised history which too many have come to regard as "fact" was that made by Irish-born Confederate Major General Patrick Cleburne from his January, 1864, letter which proposed the emancipation and enlistment of Black Southerners into the Confederate Army which possesses great irony:

 

"Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late...It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision...

 

....It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties."

 

The 37th Texas Cavalry has spent more than six years looking for THE artist to portray the Forgotten Confederates and many other of the Confederate soldiers and officers who served the South.

 

You can see several more images of our artist's outstanding work at the following web page on our site:

 

 

"The Chandler Boys" and "Templar Knight Praying" will be followed by "Lone Star Cavalryman," "Col. Ambrosio Gonzales, CSA, at Honey Hill," and then "New Orleans Avegno Zouaves at Perryville" which will show the Chinese [possibly Filipino], Black, German, Irish, Italian, Mexican, Spanish, and French in the ranks of the Zouaves.

 

 

 

Dr. Bond, I would like to personally challenge you to see that Dr. Harrison gets the opportunity she deserves to have her current position documented in the press.  Certainly, I would be more than happy to discuss this with you by telephone and I would not hesitate to publicly debate you at a convenient time and place.

 

Sir, I appeal to your sense of integrity in this matter.

 

 

"I was raised by one of the greatest men in the world. There was never one born of a woman greater than Gen. Robert E. Lee, according to my judgment. All of his servants were set free ten years before the war, but all remained on the plantation until after the surrender." - "History of the Life of Rev. Wm. Mack Lee - Body Servant of General Robert E. Lee," Autobiography, published 1918