The Confederate Armies

​

Understanding the demographics and culture of the South at the time of the war is critical for understanding and evaluating the common perceptions about the war. The Southern confederacy out of a population 5,582,322 per the 1860 census had a total of 316,632 slave owners or about 6% of the total white population.  The percentage of free Blacks who were also slave owners was about 1%. Out of the population of slave owners, 46,274 of these had 50 or more slaves which would designate them as “planters” (1 p. intro).[1]  Estimates of the number of people who were of slave holding families range from 20% to 30% which varied significantly by area. While the occupations or functions performed by slaves was not entirely agricultural, which we will address next, the distribution was not at all evenly distributed geographically as plantations could only function under certain environmental conditions and generally needed to be near waterways in order to move their product to market.

​

The state that had the lowest slave density produced the most confederate soldiers and was also the largest in terms of total population. Mountainous areas had very few slaves to the point where soldiers from these area could well have had little familiarity with the institution of slavery. As there was Confederate leaning areas in Union states, there were areas with significant Unionist populations in Confederate states.  This is how West Virginia was split off from Virginia during the course of the war.

​

The major component of the Confederacy was yeoman farmers who were not slave holders and were tied deeply to the land and an agrarian tradition. The land and the relationship to the land was very different in the South which impacted many other characteristics of the people along with cultural and religious heritage extending back to Europe as has been discussed in earlier sections.  The open range cattle production system was unique to the Southern forest and terrain. As late as 1850 only about 10% of Southern land had been cultivated.  In some of the older states like Virginia and Kentucky it was as high as 20% but in the newer states like Texas and Florida it cultivated land was only about 1%. The bulk of the land was used for purposes other than agricultural production of labor intensive crops like cotton, rice, and tobacco. Twice as much land in the North was cleared(2 p. ch. 3). It was not necessary or desirable that everything be put to its highest economic use.

 

The "fire-eaters" that emerged from the breakup of the Whig Party were influential well beyond their numbers. Douglas, with his “Freeport Doctrine” supporting popular sovereignty retained credibility in the North facilitating his reelection to the Senate but totally discredited himself with the fire-eaters. The fire-eaters rejected popular sovereignty and put forth a resolution in the Democratic convention in Baltimore that would force slavery on the territories (3 p. 105). This was economically and politically impractical and impossible. By splitting the Democratic Party into multiple factions, this ensured victory for the Republicans. The moderate Democrats had hoped that by selecting a Southerner for Vice President they could keep the party together. They initially nominated Benjamin Fitzpatrick of Alabama who refused to accept and then selected Hershel V. Johnson of Georgia. Ironically, if the Democratic Party could have remained united and elected Douglas, Johnson would have become President in June of 1861 after Douglas succumbed to typhoid and a number of other physical problems.  (3 pp. 104-05)

​

Another major component of the Confederacy was Blacks, both slave and free, and this group’s relation to the conflict was largely misunderstood then and now. In the slave narratives the government, through the Work Projects Administration (WPA), sent writers through the South and some other regions (southern migration to other area was in full swing by then) to collect testimony of the remaining ex-slaves.  Their testimony was collected and maintained in the National archives.  Reverend Steve Wilkins completed research on four of the narratives which is captured in his book “Slave Narratives”.  In over 70% of the cases the subject of the interview had absolutely nothing bad to report about their lives or their masters.  This was easily a large enough sample to be statistically representative with a narrow tolerance band. Many of the interviews revealed some unusual relationships.  In one case the slaves were loaning the master money to keep him in business (4 p. 96).  Even after the war the overwhelming majority of freedmen remained where they were. Health statistics captured by census data indicates the slave population was not statistically dissimilar to the overall population and somewhat better than Northern industrial workers. The conditions that led to slave rebellions in the Caribbean Islands simply didn’t exist in the South. While northern abolitionists wanted to create slave rebellions and fire eaters and other influential people in the south amplified the fears, this was never a real possibility on any sort of large scale. Through the course of the war, of the app. 3.5 million African-Americans in the south, about 100,000 wound up in the Union Army generally as laborers and were in various ways mistreated and certainly not considered as equals and roughly 200,000 were classified as contraband.  That is they followed the Union Armies or went behind the Union line and wound up in as many as 100 camps where conditions were squalled and ravaged with disease. The remainder remained more or less as they were.(5 pp. 18-19)

​

This leads to the topic of Black Confederate soldiers. Mainstream history and media call this a myth and, if one was to accept the position that the war on the part of the North was fought to liberate slaves from slavery that would make sense. Reaching this conclusion, however, requires that a good deal of firsthand and secondhand accounts along with pension records, pictures, reunions of confederate soldiers, and grave markers be ignored.  Because data on confederate soldiers is so incomplete, the number of Black confederate soldiers will never be completely quantified but pension records provide some quantitative data to go by.  Pensions were made available to confederate soldiers starting in the mid 1880’s depending on state.  The criteria varied by state and time and were generally limited to people who were injured/wounded or were indigent related to their service.  The data captured also varied and didn’t definitively resolve the roles played by Blacks in the war but there were over two thousand Black pension recipients. (6)

​

The following are several accounts of Black Confederates from first hand sources:

​

• In 1862 Dr. Lewis Steiner, chief inspector of the United States Army Sanitary Commission, said with regard to the occupation of Fredericksburg, Maryland, by Gen. Thomas J. (“Stonewall”) Jackson’s army, “Over 3,000 negroes must be included in this number [Confederate troops]. These 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 negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc. … and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy Army.”(4 p. 90)

• Private John W. Haley, Seventeenth Maine Infantry, gave this account of a black sharpshooter: “There seemed to be a fatality lurking in certain spots. … It wasn’t long before Mr. Reb made his whereabouts known, but he was so covered with leaves that no eye could discern him. Our sharpshooter drew a bead on him and something dropped, that something being a six-foot nigger whose weight wasn’t less than 300 pounds.”(4 p. 90)

• Two Black soldiers were taken prisoner at Gettysburg, one from Virginia and one from Louisiana. A number of Black confederate veterans were at the 50th anniversary observation of the battle. (4 p. 94)

 

In addition to the Black and White populations, there were significant minority groups that were fully integrated in the South and played important parts in the Confederate armies. There were roughly 10,000 Jewish soldiers along with Jewish Chaplains in the confederate forces. Judah P. Benjamin (a Jew) held several high ranking posts in the confederacy during the war while, on the Union side, Grant barred Jews from the Union army. The lone Confederate statue at Arlington cemetery was done by a Jewish sculptor, Moses Jacob Ezekiel, who became very well known after the war and was one of the “boy soldiers” from VMI during the Battle of New Market or “Field of the Lost Shoes”.

​

There were tens of thousands of Hispanics in the Confederate armies, generally from the Deep South and some from Mexico. Confederate military records, which were not very formal to begin with, didn’t track this sort of demographic data and a large quantity were destroyed during the war as union forces burned towns and courthouses. This assessment is made principally using Sir Name indicating the father’s line was Hispanic. People of Creole descent would have either Spanish or French heritage (or both).

​

The five Southern Indian tribes were all confederates and troops under Cherokee Chief and Confederate General Stan Waite were actually the last to surrender, fighting another 75 days after Lee’s surrender. As a result of the forced migration / deportation of Southern Indians under Andrew Jackson, most were in the Indian territories of Oklahoma and Arkansas although some remained in the original areas.  The Cherokee were by far the largest tribe. While the Indian nations were not anxious to enter the war they chose to do so largely in response to how the Union was conducting the war. The “Declaration by the People of the Cherokee Nation of the Causes Which Have Impelled Them to Unite Their Fortunes With Those of the Confederate States of America” which can be accessed on gives a firsthand accounting of this decision.  After the war the “five Civilized Tribes” of the South were made to pay dearly for their role in the war.(7 p. 276)

​

Bibliography

​

1. Fleming, Thomas. A Disease in the Public Mind - A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War. Boston MA : Da Capo Press, 2013.

2. Kennedy, James Ronald and Kennedy, Walter Donald. Punished with Poverty The Suffering South. Columbia, South Carolina : Shotwell Publishing, 2016.

3. Mitcham, Samuel W. It Wasn't About Slavery Exposing the Great Lie of the Civil War. Washington DC : Regnery Publishing, 2020.

4. Kennedy, James Ronald and Kennedy, Walter Donald. The South was Right. Gretna, Louisiana : Pelican Publishing Company, 2014.

5. Kilpatrick, Sale. Emancipation Hell The Tragedy Wrought by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Colombia, South Carolina : Shotwell Publishing, 2015.

6. Hollandsworth, James G. Mississippi History Now. [Online] April 2008. http://mshistorynow.mdah.state.ms.us/articles/289/black-confederate-pensioners-after-the-civil-war.

7. Coulombe, Charles A. Puritans Empire A Catholic Perspective on American History. s.l. : Tumblar House, 2008.