Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia / Edition 1

by Ervin L. Jordan Jr.

Overview

On the eve of the Civil War, more Afircan-Americans lived in Virginia than in any other state- 490,000 slaves and 59,000 free blacks- and they were active participants in the single most dynamic event to shape the American consciousness. Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia is the first comprehensive study of Civil War Afro-Virginian history and culture. Through it we witness every aspect of black life: slave and free; rural and urban; homefront and battlefield; at work on plantations but also in munitions factories in Richmond; as wartime Union spies and as soldiers in the Confederate army.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813915456
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	01/29/1995
Series:	A Nation Divided
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	476
Product dimensions:	(w) x (h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., is Assistant Professor and Associate Curator, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library. He is author of Charlottesville and the University of Virginia in the Civil War and, with Herbert Thomas, Nineteenth Virginia Infantry.

Editorial Reviews

This exhaustively researched treatise will shatter some rose-tinted ideas about African American participation in the Civil War. Though original sources are incomplete and most written by whites, Jordan (Charlottesville and the University of Virginia in the Civil War) pieces together an astonishing portrait of slaves and free blacks in pre-and post-War Virginia. Of the 3.65 million blacks in the South, one in every six lived in Virginia, ``a breeder state'' where dealers boasted ``Slavery is our business and business is good.'' By classifying blacks as Afro-Virginians, Afro-Yankees or Afro-Confederates, Jordan explores one of the War's most vexing questions: Why did some slaves and free blacks join the Confederate Army? Those ``who boasted the loudest of their desire to fight Yankees,'' Jordan believes, ``did so... in hopes of obtaining privileges within the confines of slavery.'' In fact, in Virginia the most revered slaves, body servants, did triumph by fighting Yankees-in 1924, that state provided for pensions to those body servants, hostlers, teamsters, cooks who ``rendered service to the Confederacy.'' That $25 annual pension was paid to heirs as late as the 1950s. Yet perhaps most shocking is what Jordan calls the ``Confederate paradox of humanity and inhumanity to blacks,'' like providing excellent medical care for enlisted men while making it legal to whip or execute slaves or free blacks for not showing proper respect, praying without permission or gathering in groups of more than five. Some slaves were allowed to purchase themselves, earn wages and own land, yet they could be lynched for ``eyeball rape.'' ``African-American history is not for the squeamish,'' Jordan says in his preface, and he is right. But Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees should be read by everyone, as a corrective to simplistic moralizing interpretations of the legacy of the Civil War. Photos. (Feb.)

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