How Many Southern Blacks Fought in the Confederate Ranks?

According to a history textbook used by fourth graders entitled Our Virginia: Past and Present, there were literally “thousands.”

Unfortunately, Civil War historians are nearly unanimous about the fact that there were not “thousands” of Black soldiers who fought in the Confederate ranks during the Civil War.  Here is a snippet from today’s coverage in The Washington Post:

Historians from across the country, however, said the sentence about Confederate soldiers was wrong or, at the least, overdrawn. They expressed concerns not only over its accuracy but over the implications of publishing an assertion so closely linked to revisionist Confederate history.

“It’s more than just an arcane, off-the-wall problem,” said David Blight, a professor at Yale University. “This isn’t just about the legitimacy of the Confederacy, it’s about the legitimacy of the emancipation itself.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian James McPherson of Princeton University said, “These Confederate heritage groups have been making this claim for years as a way of purging their cause of its association with slavery.”

RECOMMENDED READING

The Author’s Corner with Dillon Carroll The Author’s Corner with John Rodrigue David Barton spreads blatant falsehoods about the AP US History course, state history standards, and a bunch of other stuff. What do Americans think about Confederate flags and monuments?