Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South by Jaime Amanda Martinez (review)

86 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South Jaime Amanda Martinez The Confederate States of America used the mechanism of impressments to coerce slaves to support the army in the war with the United States. This copiously documented monograph looks at impressments in the Upper South, in the states of Virginia and North Carolina. As Jaime Amanda Martinez writes in Confederate Slave Impressment in the Upper South, slaveholders “temporarily surrendered control over portions of their slave populations to state authorities, military officials, and finally the national government ” (2). Martinez considers it an irony that slaveholders who had left the Union because of its meddling with slavery accepted Confederate power to require them to send slaves to build fortifications in order to save their new nation from defeat. Slaveholders would never enthusiastically accept impressments; however, they forced state and national leaders to consider their interests as they requisitioned slaves. The author also shows that enslaved Africans did not merely succumb to being instruments of the Confederacy; they frequently escaped, especially as they came close to Union military camps. Martinez uses Virginia and North Carolina to develop this dramatic narrative about impressments . She carefully documents that military leaders used ad hoc methods developed in the field in response to the exigency of the war. The Confederate army needed manpower to move heavy equipment, cut down trees, dig trenches to fortify military camps and safeguard southern cities from Union encroachment. Impressment was the answer to the critical need for workers, and the state and national government endorsed this policy. By 1864, both levels of government cooperated in calling on slaveholders to supply 20,000 workers to support the war. Virginia and North Carolina played unique roles in slave impressments, and that’s why Martinez uses them as case studies. Virginia slaveholders responded to calls for slave laborers and local governments hired slaves to work in various departments in the Confederate army, including medical units and railroad construction. North Carolina’s pro-impressment governor also used state power, including the militia, to requisition slave laborers. These states, therefore, seem to be excellent choices when evaluating coerced laborers and public and private responses to the impressment system. The Confederate government ultimately made the Conscript Bureau responsible for impressments, but their endorsement did not resolve tensions inherent in a policy whereby the government seized the assets of private citizens to achieve national goals, even though Confederate success in the war would have resulted in the preservation of slavery. The author approaches impressments methodically , describing the call for slave laborers in 1861. Brigadier General John Bankhead Magruder led the way when he asked slaveholders for laborers to build-up defenses along the James River. He hoped that slaveholders would cooperate freely, but would seize the slaves if he had to. By September of that year General Magruder had actually begun to seize slave and free laborers to build fortifications . Actions as his forced state governments to Book Reviews BOOK REVIEWS FALL 2014 87 draft policies for impressments, in order to minimize conflicts with slaveholders who feared the loss of their property would have made it difficult for them to harvest their crops. Once impressments commenced, not only were free blacks threatened byit,NativeAmericanswerealsoforcedintoservice as laborers, despite their protest. As Martinez states, “State and Confederate officers in Virginia and North Carolina routinely appropriated the labor of Native American men, whom state laws classified as ‘free colored men’” (21). The Confederacy later targeted inmates in penitentiaries, which did not annoy slaveholders who had mixed feelings about releasing their slaves to the army. Slave laborers served in many roles while in the field. They sometimes dug trenches and built fortifications to protect key Confederate areas. This meant that enslaved workers did the backbreaking work of swinging heavy picks and shovels as they cleared away dirt to make ditches. They also cut down trees, transported supplies, and built bridges. This dangerous work frequently aroused concerns among slaveholders who feared the shape their slaves would be in when they came home, should they survive the dangerous military theatre. It is no wonder, as Martinez explains, that “Some slaveholders [began]…hiring slaves to meet their requisitions rather than sending their...