Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth by Kevin M. Levin (review)

The scene has been viewed by millions all around the world: the enslaved foreman of Tara plantation, Big Sam, assures a flustered Scarlett O'Hara that he and a gang of other shovel-toting slaves will stop "'them Yankees'" from invading Atlanta, Georgia (p. 127). Without knowing it, every viewer of this brief exchange from Gone with the Wind (1939) has been pulled into the world of so-called black Confederates. Enter Kevin M. Levin's Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War's Most Persistent Myth. The book provides a much-needed atlas for this ahistorical and often bizarre sector of Civil War history and memory; indeed, Levin's study is the first of its kind to blueprint and then debunk the mythology of enslaved African Americans who allegedly served voluntarily in behalf of the Confederacy.

Early chapters focus on camp slaves. These men found themselves sent off to war with white masters who either could not, or would not, bear the burdens and traumas of soldiering without a servant in tow. Levin pieces together an account of the daily experiences of camp slaves—arguably the definitive account—and then explores how and why their collective legacy was gradually transformed by the Confederate heritage community from loyal chattel to eager belligerents. He argues that, in the wake of the civil rights movement and a renewed historical emphasis on slavery as the war's root cause, advocates of the Lost Cause groped for ways to spin the Confederacy's white supremacist origins and settled on the idea of black Confederate soldiers. Lost Cause apologists began asserting that the presence of black slaves fighting for the Confederates proved that the Confederacy could not have been built on a racist foundation or established to safeguard the institution of slavery.

Throughout its six chapters, Searching for Black Confederates systematically dismantles the "historical" argument(s) for black Confederates. Levin sleuths when, where, and how various cases (involving Silas Chandler, Frederick Douglass, John Noland, and a photograph of the United States Colored Troops at Camp William Penn, to name a few) have been intentionally presented out of context, misquoted, digitally altered, or outright fabricated. He is up-front about terminology. Levin concedes—correctly—that black men routinely dug trenches, built defensive works, tended crops, and even bore stretchers that benefited the cause of white Confederate soldiers. He also notes—again correctly—that Confederate enlistment policies changed out of desperation in 1865. Most important of all, however, is the book's clear differentiation of an impressed laborer from what is actually implied by neoConfederates who invoke the black Confederate label: a black man who volunteered to fight alongside white Confederate troops to defend a nation founded upon his continued enslavement. As Levin ultimately underscores, the evidence simply does not exist at this time to corroborate the Lost Cause notion of a black Johnny Reb.

The book is not without problems. While of much value to Civil War historians, the opening chapters on camp slaves can be repetitive and sometimes refer to a Confederate heritage community that Levin has not yet fully parsed for nonacademic readers. A more detailed portrait of Lost Cause organizations and their activities comes later in the book but would have been useful sooner. Additionally, while Levin produces undeniable evidence that the black Confederate myth has proliferated in dark corners of the internet, some critics will question if, or to what extent, the average American is actually aware of the debate, and thereby if, or to what extent, online neo-Confederate propaganda has really influenced the way he or she remembers the Civil War. In Levin's defense, the question of precise quantification is a red herring commonly hurled at memory studies of the Civil War—yet anyone who reads the book objectively will grasp the broader significance of setting this record straight...