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  • Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War
  • Mark Grimsley
Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath: No Quarter in the Civil War. By George S. Burkhardt. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2007. Pp. xiii, 338. Cloth, $37.95.)

Over the past two decades, historians have scrutinized the Civil War’s destructiveness in ways that focus heavily on the experience of whites, and whatever their assessment of the conflict’s ferocity—some emphasizing its severity, others its comparative restraint—all acknowledge that on the battlefield, North and South accepted the surrender of enemy soldiers and extended protection to the wounded. Although this rule applied with less certainty to guerrillas, it remains the case that both sides conducted the war largely as a contest between de facto sovereign nations.

The picture shifts dramatically when one turns to the African American military experience. Official Confederate policy regarded black soldiers and their white officers as illegitimate combatants, with the former subject to reenslavement and the latter to execution as inciters of slave insurrection. In practice, however, the usual fate for black soldiers who could no longer make effective resistance was either a merciless death on the battlefield or cold-blooded execution afterward. Journalist George S. Burkhardt has crafted the most complete exploration of this grisly subject yet written.

Southern troops gave no quarter to African Americans virtually from the time the first black units appeared in combat. Although Confederate soldiers acted largely without orders, Burckhardt argues persuasively that their government had a “de facto policy” of giving no quarter to blacks because the practice “was condoned, never punished, and always denied” (1). Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, for example, reacted sharply to reports that Lt. Gen. Richard Taylor had taken black prisoners. “I hope this may not be so,” he wrote, “and that your subordinates . . . may have recognized the propriety of giving no quarter to armed negroes and their officers. In this way we may be relieved of a disagreeable dilemma” (61).

The “disagreeable dilemma” stemmed from the fact that while the Confederacy did not regard U.S. Colored Troops as legitimate combatants, the Union government insisted they were and might make reprisals upon rebel prisoners in order to compel proper treatment for black soldiers. This was indeed the North’s official stance, though Burkhardt observes how frequently it was observed in the breach—in stark contrast to the swift retaliation that generally followed any unlawful killing of whites.

Burkhardt does somewhat better at documenting the massacre of black [End Page 414] troops than he does at explaining it. He argues that southerners reflexively slaughtered African Americans because they saw their military presence as an affront to honor and a potential catalyst for slave insurrection. This is reasonable but simplistic. He draws upon none of the ample theoretical literature on the anatomy of atrocity, fails to give adequate attention to the many instances in which Confederates did take black prisoners, and, despite the “Yankee wrath” of the title, documents only one instance in which black troops gave no quarter to Confederates—at Fort Blakely, Alabama, in April 1865. He contends, unconvincingly, that the scattered killing of white soldiers (mostly foragers) in 1864–1865 signaled a turn toward a wholesale no-quarter policy analogous to what occurred on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Strangely, he ignores the 1862 Dakota Sioux Uprising, 1863 Bear River massacre, and 1864 Sand Creek massacre, as if the interracial fighting in the Far West were hermetically sealed from the contest in the east. And he sometimes strains too hard to distinguish his work from that of other historians. He objects, for instance, to “racial hatred” as an accurate characterization of Confederate attitudes, favoring instead such terms as “an almost feral rage” and “fierce anger” (5).

These shortcomings are minor, however, compared with the book’s achievements. While much of Confederate Rage, Yankee Wrath will be familiar to specialists, those new to the subject will find it a well researched, lucidly written introduction to one of the Civil War’s darkest aspects.

Mark Grimsley
Ohio State University
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