We make all of this material available to the public for free and we have rotating exhibititions and, of course, many, many public programs. Based on the subject of tonights talk, i thought it was worth highlighting programs that explore africanamerican history. Fourprogram series of legacies of 1619, this year is 400th anniversary of first enslaved africans in british colonies in north america. Perspectives of 17, 18, and 19th centuries. We have 3 more to go. If you have a chance to join us, the next program october 19th, afronative connections. Coffin we will hear from kevin who will talk about African Americans who fought for the confederacy, he argues that the claims would have shocked anybody who served in the war. And 20th century backlash against africanamerican gains in civil rights, we pull some material from collection to small display in reception and if any of you know peter, you know that peter is not a person that does not like to be stumped. He went out and find images in our collection of African Americans fighting for the confederacy. If you look, are of course, not image that is contradict the subject, nice image that is have asterisks around them but interesting in the context of this. After the program if youre interested, im sure peter would be happy to talk more. He published two earlier books. He has also published numerous articles including things in the New York Times, the atlantic, washington post, very active in social media and has strong twitter presence as well as maintaining civil or memory blog. [applause] thank you, good evening, can you all hear me . Before i get started i want to thank everyone at the Massachusetts Historical Society for inviting me, this is this is a real honor, im thrilled to be able to speak here, i mean, this is a room where a couple of years ago i was doing research, its really cool to be back talking about about this book. I dont think i need to remind anyone in the room that right now we are in the midst of a very public, very divisive, emotional debate about race, i mean, certainly since the early summer of 2015, you know, in the wake of the horrific murders in charleston committed by dylann roof, we know what it led, lowering of confederate flags and removal of Confederate Monuments and certainly this is not, you know, a new debate. Certainly the monuments and others have been controversial, but its certainly the murder certainly attracted more to the debate and people committed to respective positions and became more infringed in august of 2017 in the wake of the White Nationalist rally in charlottesville around Confederate Monument to robert e. Lee, highlights the difficulties that americans seemed to always have in confronting the issues of the history of race and White Supremacy in the United States, even a couple of weeks ago, those of you who read the New York Times obviously it upped up on sunday found out incredible magazine, 1619 project, but, of course, that also came with the great deal emotional responses, who were uncomfortable with the New York Times or anyone perhaps sort of reminding us the very foundation or one of the foundations of what becomes the United States, the institution of slavery, so this back in many respects, sort of fits into that broader discussion and so what i want to do tonight is talk about sort of give you a sense of what the book is about and talk about both the inability to come to terms and face honestly the history of slavery and race, but also to talk about the ways in which mainly as white americans not entirely, the lengths we go to distort the past and searching for black confederates is a case study in that broader discussion. And so what i want to do is start with this image, of course, the image that is featured on cover. If you go to the internet, you can find this photograph which now is in the hands of the library of congress, you can find this on hundreds of websites and many of these websites, you can imagine that it is framed around this narrative of black confederate soldiers, its not difficult to sort of imagine why that. If you look at it, what pops out is that you have two men sitting, both of them are wearing uniforms, and, of course, what really jumps out they seemed to be heavily armed, right, so what you have on the right, you have sylus chandler and on the left Andrew Chandler and this has become one of the more popular images supporting the idea that black men, enslaved men and freed blacks fought as soldiers in Confederate Army, how many, similar between 500 roughly and 100,000. Okay. [laughter] i mean, i wish i could really narrow it down for you but that is sort of where people come down on this issue anywhere roughly 500 and 100,000, right off the bat you get a sense that theres something wrong here, problematic with this narrative, but, again, for those people who are committed to this narrative of black confederate soldiers, this is all the evidence they need and what they dont understand, of course, for a number of reasons which i will go into is that, in fact, what youre looking at is image of interracial military service in the confederacy, youre actually looking at an image from the history of slavery because what youre looking at the right, you are looking at enslaved man, he moved with the family to west point mississippi in 1840s and when the war start in spring of 1861 the man on the left Andrew Chandler inlested in 44th mississippi infantry and like many enlisted and officers from slaveholding class, they would have brought a body servant or a camp slave as their personal slave. Hierarchy, likely taken in the studio, early in the war perhaps traveling to the camp. Its likely that what you see in terms of weaponry are studio props, even the uniform that silas is wearing is probably studio prop. Camp slaves did wear uniforms which i will talk about a little bit later. When i look at this photograph now after looking at it how many times now over the last 10 plus years, theres something quite funny about it, right, i end up chuckling quite a bit when i look at it, what i see is not two confederate soldiers, what i see is a young confederate andrew, 17, 18 years old, never went off to car, walks into the studio and sees weapons lying around and first thing that comes out, someone who wants to demonstrate manhood in form of photograph that he will send back to family, he wants to cram in as many weapons as possible. [laughter] right . Can you fit one in coat jacket, stick one there. Its highly unusual as we will see in a second, most of the photographs are enslaved men standing next to their master, but this one ive never seen anyone, another photograph quite like this one, silas is with andrew in september of 1863, silas likely escorted him home and less than a year silas went back to war as enslaved, and this unit was, in fact, one of the universities that escorted Jefferson Davis out of richmond in early april 1865, in fact, its very likely that silas and benjamin were with davis party when he was captured in georgia, silas was literally in the army from the very beginning until the very last day, last days to have civil war in spring of 1865. Its a window into this world of enslaved people and their relationship to the confederacy, tens of thousands of enslaved men throughout the confederacy were impressed by the confederate government to walk on any number projects in 1865. Here is a scene from james island in South Carolina, thousands of them would have worked on earth works, they would have been repairing and and laying rail lines throughout the confederacy, they would have been working in salt mines and working in places like the iron work in richmond producing war material for the confederate war effort, anything the confederacy needed in terms of war production that would support the war effort enslaved men are impressed to do so, to help out. Of course, they have to do this, right, because they are trying to offset the advantages that the United States enjoys, both in terms of population and also the material that are produced to fight a war. Enslaved people are everywhere. Whats interesting about slaves, they are not the men that today commonly referred to as examples of black confederate soldiers, they are nameless, they dont leave much of a record. The examples, of course, that stand out, the ones that are incredible by popular today are the camp slaves, the body servants like silas chandler, another photograph of a camp slave, they would have been everywhere in the Confederate Army enslaved men, working on various military projects but confederate armies also would have included thousands of enslaved men doing various things, both functioning as teamsters, driving trucks, working in hospitals; maintain ing supply lines, anything that the army needs even on battlefield slaves are performing those kinds of functions, but the men who stand out are the ones who stand out here, the camp slaves, they are the ones highlighted both during the war in accounts by confederate soldiers, officers and especially the decades after the war because they are the ones who are maintaining those close ties with their masters in camp throughout war and, again, the camp slaves would have performed any number of functions for their master from dawn to dusk, cooking, cleaning, getting the camp, the officers camp ready to take on long marchs, they would have assisted their masters even on the battlefield, right, so one of the things thats really i think important to sort of understand is as a result of placing the large numbers of enslaved men in the army, it refocuses us on the importance of slavery not just confederacy as a nation, one thing to say the confederacy is fighting for slavery, thats certainly true, its a little bit abstract, you want to give it some meat, one way to do that is focus on the army because confederates every day whether they are in camp, on the battlefield, whether they owned 100 slaves or dont own any slaves, they would have been reminded each and every of the importance of maintaining slavery. There is no Confederate Army, theres no confederate war effort without it be assistance of enslaved people, so one of the things i wanted to do with this book, one thing to tear down a myth, what was the role of enslaved people throughout the confederacy and especially in the army during the war . Lees army, another example, encamped slave, marching north in 1963 culminating in the battle of gettysburg, so they are they are fighting for slavery, slavery follows every Confederate Army and success again to reiterate, its success, ability to do what it needs to do depends in large parton part on enslaved men, whether they own them or dont own them, its absolute nonsense, of course, they all understood the importance of slavery to the war effort. This is another example of the photograph of master and slave. Again, notice wearing confederate uniform, one thing thats interesting to research, what happens when you pluck relationship, relationship between master and slave would have been defined and reinforced over time, what happens when you remove that and not place it in a very different situation within the military, neither party, of course, has any experience, right, how is that contingency, unknown, military life going to impact that relationship, how is it going to stretch over time, right, how enlived men going to sort of push for new privileges . What are masters going to do when they need to push back, they need to sort of reset that relationship and one one of thes that i found that was really interesting ways that enslaved men pushed for more privileges was working for money during free time. What do they do, send it home . Why they did this is not entirely clear, perhaps they wanted to feel more part of the military, perhaps they saw their own presence in sort of military terms, perhaps that would not have been such a would have been approved by their owners, but this is a way in which i think enslaved people are trying to create their own experience during the war. Of course, you know, again, masters quite often have to end up pushing back and some do so in violent ways, one master who has to punish his slave in camp and writes home to his wife in 1864, he says i layed on 400 lashes on his camp slave, so, of course, all of the experiences that are happening on the home front, plantation, they are also happening in camp at the same time its pretty clear to me that some of these men actually do form some kind of bonds of affection and i hesitate to say that because, of course, we never want to lose the fact that we are talking about the master slave relationship but important to keep in mind that they are sharing experiences, far from home, away from their families in many cases, they experience long marchs, they experience really sort of becomes apparent and also experience lack of food and especially disease. Again, i think we need to be very careful and how we characterize these relationships, what were the motives were to helping one another, a lot of that, of course, we dont have the kinds of records that we would like, we mainly are looking at the relationships through lens of the white men and, of course, that is quite problematic in many cases, these men are everywhere, the slaves and camp slaves, they are, again, they are performing the slaves of enslaved people or legal status is of enslaveed men, but theres question about whether or not the confederacy should move forward, slave as soldiers that does not take place until 1864 and what i find always bizarre when youre dealing with people today that are convinced that there are large numbers of men who serve throughout the war, the obvious sort of response is, well, why are they debating this in 1864, whats the process of debate if large numbers of black men are already serving as soldiers and it start in the military itself, clayburn, in 1864 actually does bring the idea of emancipating men if they become soldiers, one of them is horrified by the idea, sends notice to Jefferson Davis, president of the confederacy and davis immediately orders clayburn to shut his mouth, it is much too controversial, there were a few other confederates early in the war who broached the idea, early 1864, even after clayburn is told, lets keep it quiet, within a few months, the cat is out of the bag, more people are beginning to debate this, it is a very public, very divisive debate that takes place throughout the confederacy and you can imagine that people are very concerned about the implications of enlisting slaves, the soldiers, the moment you resort to negro soldiers they will be lost of you, the day you make soldiers of them is tend of revolution, our whole theory is wrong. Thats how cobb was with the army for quite some time, the richmond examiner, plenty of opeds, the negro is fit to be a soldier, not fit to be slave, the employment of negroes as soldiers would be first step but step that would involve all the rest to universal abolition. This debate, this question hits at the very core of what the confederacy was fighting for, right, to maintain slavery and White Supremacy. If we recruit the men as soldiers, clearly, what are we fighting for . Of course, some people came out in favor of it, some of the men in the army came out in favor of it, but most of them do so as a way to preserve the institution of slavery, if you can emancipate limited number, perhaps immediate families, that might be a way to offset defeat but its not going to lead to the end of the institution of slavery as a whole. So this debate continues through 1864, hundreds, if not thousands of opeds and letters and dairies, everyone is involveed. No one involved in this debate, no one that i have ever read in 10 plus years who express an opinion on this question of slave enlistment regardless of their position, no one ever included in their writing their point of view that black men were already serving as soldiers, as far as confederates themselves were concerned, this was a step in an entirely new direction, right, this would take the confederacy in a very dangerous direction, only if robert e lee support of measure did people come around, davis, of course, comes around and plenty of other people and speaks to, of course, prominence in confederacy as a whole. Long story short, pass legislation supporting enlistment in final weeks of the war in 1865, small number of men are recruited, they may have marched broad street in richmond, held in house in prison and theres no evidence that they, in fact, saw any action of the battlefield, the war ends as white mans war, the fact that it takes confederacy as long as it does to finally pass the legislation i think reminds us of how committed they were to the institution of slavery, right, but, again, remember neither the United States or the confederacy is recruiting black men at the beginning to have war, the United States, of course, resist this until early 1863 and its, of course, because how the war is evolving that they make this move, so they are both starting out from the same point, they, of course, end in very different places. Of course, harpers weekly, playing, having fun with the debate, you can, see, of course, this is what most people think is going happen if the confederacy recruits black men as soldiers, they are immediately going to drop their weapons and walk to union lines. This is northern publication poking fun at the confederacy, after the war, again, to remind us, no one knows about black confederate soldiers in april of 1865 and this is a case for decades. Helps to rationalize defeat the lost cause, one part of the narrative, crucial component, war to preserve state rights, constitutional difference but the other part of the lost cause is that slaves remained loyal to them throughout the war and the camp slave is a prominent image throughout this post war period and you can see illustration of Stonewall Jackson in camp and notice to his right you can see the camp slave, right, another image from the immediate post war period, if you look closely youll see a black man lying down by the tent and then in the background youll see, of course, African Americans, including a woman, looks like they are cooking in the back, this seems they wouldnt surprise any