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No subject more clearly illustrates the difference between history and heritage than the topic of black Confederates during the Civil War.
No responsible historian denies that the Confederacy drew upon impressed slave labor to support its military operations. The First Confiscation Act targeted that resource.
Nor does anyone deny that enslaved blacks accompanied Confederate military forces in support roles or as personal servants.
And scholars are well aware of the efforts of creole free blacks in places like Mobile and New Orleans to offer their services to the Confederacy in 1861, in part to allay suspicion about what free blacks might do in urban areas.
They freely acknowledge the debate over black enlistment in Confederate ranks that reached fruition in 1865 with the raising of small and ill-documented black units that soon vanished with Confederate defeat.
But they find precious little evidence to support the notions of large numbers of blacks willingly bearing arms for Confederate forces or being organized into combat units as soldiers throughout the conflict. A handful of stories does nothing to shake that conclusion.
Confederate leadership knew better. Confederate regulations barred such a practice. There would have been no debate over black enlistment in Confederate ranks if it were already an ongoing practice.
Nor do the exceptions in any way offer a meaningful challenge to the centrality of slavery in explaining why the war came. That would be like pointing to the abolitionist minority to argue that white northerners as a whole were committed to racial equality. We know better.
Confederate heritage advocates and others who argue in favor of the existence of significant numbers of black Confederate soldiers freely distort the definition of the term "soldier" and abuse the analysis of evidence to serve present-day agendas.
This is what I call "heritage correctness"--an effort to bend and twist the historical record in an effort to erase slavery and racism from the core of Confederate identity and ideology. It's what those same people would deride in other contexts as "political correctness."
Complicating this discussion is the effort of certain scholars to make a name for themselves by asserting in the absence of evidence that there were far more blacks in Confederate military service as soldiers than was the case.
Such people give Confederate heritage advocates and the agendas they promote scholarly cover for the continued distortion of the historical record. Producers of such slipshod assertions often fail to submit their claims to critical examination by others.
Those people can best explain why they refuse to follow the conventions of scholarship in examining historical issues. We should call it out whenever we see it.
Other historians who in other instances are well aware of the importance of memory and heritage in shaping historical consciousness nevertheless discouraged discussion of this issue for reasons they can best explain.
I found it ironic that scholars who emphasized the importance of memory in other instances did not want to engage in what was, after all, a debate over historical memory in their own time. That stance will not age well.
Those historians who are not willing to engage in such discussions are implicitly complicit in the distortion of the historical record and abandon the responsibilities a historian owes to engage with society. Those who discourage it are worse.
It's the kind of work more people ought to be doing if they want to be part of using history to inform public understanding of the past and the present.
