Kevin M. Levin. Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth. Civil War America Series. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. Illustrations. 240 pp. $30.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4696-5326-6.
Reviewed by Kelly D. Mezurek (Walsh University)
Published on H-CivWar (February, 2020)
Commissioned by G. David Schieffler (Crowder College)
Kevin M. Levin skillfully demonstrates how and why contested ideas about race, slavery, and the causes of the American Civil War continue to provide the mythical black Confederate soldier fertile grounds in which to thrive. In Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth, he methodically challenges the widespread claims that up to one hundred thousand black men served as soldiers in an integrated Confederate army. Levin carefully explains how for over 150 years various groups of Americans have continued to “fight” the Civil War as they tried, and continue to try, to make sense of their own lived experiences. He does so by analyzing how the convergence of collective and historical memory has been complicated by the multiple meanings and consequences of public and popular memories, concepts also explored by Barbara A. Gannon’s recent work, Americans Remember Their Civil War (2017).
Levin begins by exploring the various roles of African Americans who were present among Confederate officers and soldiers during the war. Although the black men had little if any say about their participation as camp slaves, they used the opportunity to test their enslavers’ control. The author explains the context for why enslaved and free black people would have been on, or more likely near, the battlefields. He then carefully explains the ill-fated March 1865 attempt by the Confederate government to enroll black men into military service. Although the Confederate army’s actual use of African Americans provided the foundation for the creation of the black soldier myth, Levin deftly concludes, “The very question of whether enslaved people could be made into soldiers serves as a reminder that camp servants, cooks, musicians, or others attached to the army were not recognized as such” (p. 39).
In the chapter “Camp Slaves and the Lost Cause,” Levin interrogates how the portrayal of African American men shifted from “loyal slaves” to faithful camp servants in late nineteenth-century Confederate commemorations and remembrance. Using their own words, celebrations, and artifacts, he shows how ex-Confederates presented African American service through the lens of the faithful and loyal servant. Levin then provides an excellent lesson on how to interpret and use the Civil War pensions provided by five former Confederate states, although such document titles as “Application of Indigent Servants of Soldier or Sailor of the Late Confederacy” should have stopped at least some of the pervasive misrepresentations of such sources.
The Lost Cause camp became even more defensive of their accounts after historians, influenced by the civil rights movements and the growing interest in “history from the bottom up,” increasingly placed slavery and emancipation at the center of scholarship on the causes and consequences of the Civil War. Heritage groups transformed the loyal enslaved black men into faithful soldiers. Levin persuasively demonstrates how, beginning in the 1970s, the Sons of Confederate veterans, along with other organizations, such as the Daughters of the Confederacy, developed the myth of the black Confederate soldier to further justify their Lost Cause narrative. This allowed them to make the false claims that the people and events they commemorated were not grounded in racism and white supremacy. Levin adamantly asserts that the concept of black Confederates would have been inconceivable to those who lived through the war and its immediate aftermath.
The impact of new scholarship encouraged in part by the nation’s commemoration of the Civil War sesquicentennial, 2011-15, has reinvigorated heritage groups to further entrench their claims of an honorable Confederate cause. Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, individuals and groups seeking to defend Confederate battle flags and monuments have misinterpreted and continue to misappropriate the role and actions of African Americans during the war. This has contributed to strained race relations in the United States and has led to increased violence, sometimes deadly, leading historian David Blight to refer to the “mythical problem” of the black Confederate soldier as “a lethal narrative” (book jacket). As Levin carefully explains, defenders of the Lost Cause supported their claims using information gathered from inaccurate textbooks, museum interpretations, and content frequently disseminated across the internet. He warns that this misrepresentation will most likely continue due to poor digital media literacy and the lack of interpretive and analytical skills required to understand historical sources. And because the Lost Cause narrative is often deeply entwined with contemporary political and social agendas, the myth of African American soldiers who fought for the Confederate army became “part of the standard narrative of the Civil War” (p. 141). This is further complicated by the participation of a few “modern-day black Confederates,” who, according to Levin, demonstrate “that African Americans have long played a role in legitimizing the loyal slave and black Confederate myth” (pp. 162, 169).
Throughout the book, the perceived, expected, and demanded loyalty of African American men to their enslavers, the Confederacy, and the Lost Cause is an integral part of Levin’s analysis. Yet the author does not explicitly articulate how the concept itself changes, or not, over time, especially as applied by white supremacists to enslaved peoples, freedmen, and later African American citizens. It is surprising that Levin chose not to engage the historiography of loyalty precisely because of his skillful and trenchant analysis of the creation and perpetuation of myths about slavery, the role of black men in the military, and the larger implications of the Civil War.
Overall though, this excellent work deserves the high praise garnered in the few months since its release. The six tightly written chapters in Levin’s book, composed with inciteful analysis and important context, are based on extensive research that he assessed as he shared his findings and interpretations on his well-known website, Civil War Memory (cwmemory.com). In addition to an introduction and conclusion, the volume includes a bibliography, endnotes, the index, and eighteen images.
This book should be required reading for graduate students and would be valuable in upper division undergraduate courses. But it is with the general population that I see the most potential for impact. Although Civil War remembrance is a difficult subject to engage across audiences that continue to contest it, Levin’s social media presence has made significant contributions. His ability to connect his online scholarship, this book, and multiple audiences will surely continue to set a high bar for how historians might seek to engage the larger public.
Levin has made a significant contribution to the scholarship on the American Civil War and with this volume secures his place as one our most important memory scholars. His methodical evaluation of memory and the black Confederate myth demonstrates ways we can and should explain how and why fabricated historical narratives emerge and are maintained. More importantly, historians must integrate the varied lived experiences of African Americans so that we can have, as Levin argues for, “an honest national conversation about the history and legacy of slavery” and “deteriorating race relations” that continue to affect the United States today (pp. 11, 9).
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Citation:
Kelly D. Mezurek. Review of Levin, Kevin M., Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth.
H-CivWar, H-Net Reviews.
February, 2020.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=54437
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