More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms.

Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history.

About the Author
Kevin M. Levin is a historian and educator based in Boston. He is author of Remembering the Battle of the Crater: War as Murder and the award-winning blog Civil War Memory.

Reviews
"Levin's timely and telling account should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the uses and abuses of history and the power and dangers of mythmaking."--Library Journal, starred review





Book Information
ISBN 9781469653266
Author Kevin M. Levin
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint The University of North Carolina Press
Publisher The University of North Carolina Press
Weight(grams) 540g