| In January 1864 Cleburne took the then radical step of advocating
emancipating slaves who agreed to fight for the Confederacy. In a letter
first presented to his subordinates that he sent to the general commanding
the Army of Tennessee he wrote:
"Moved by the exigency in which our country is now placed, we take
the liberty of laying before you, unofficially, our views on the present
state of affairs....We have now been fighting for nearly three years, have
spilled much of our best blood, and lost, consumed, or thrown to the flames
an amount of property equal in value to the specie currency of the world.
Through some lack in our system the fruits of our struggles and sacrifices
have invariably slipped away from us and left us nothing but long lists
of dead and mangled. Instead of standing defiantly on the borders of our
territory or harassing those of the enemy, we are hemmed in today into
less than two-thirds of it, and still the enemy menacingly confronts us
at every point with superior forces. Our soldiers can see no end to this
state of affairs except in our own exhaustion; hence, instead of rising
to the occasion, they are sinking into a fatal apathy, growing weary of
hardships and slaughters which promise no results....
Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation
before it is too late. We can give but a faint idea when we say that
it means the loss of all we not hold most sacred - slaves and all other
personal property, lands, homesteads, liberty, justice, safety, pride,
manhood. It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written
by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers;
will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be
impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant
dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision....
...The President of the United States announces that 'he has already
in training an army of 100,000 negroes as good as any troops,' and every
fresh raid he makes and new slice of territory he wrests from us will add
to this force. Every soldier in our army already knows and feels our numerical
inferiority to the enemy....Our single source of supply is that portion
of our white men fit for duty and not now in the ranks. The enemy has three
sources of supply: First, his own motley population; secondly, our slaves;
and thirdly, Europeans whose hearts are fired into a crusade against us
by fictitious pictures of the atrocities of slavery, and who meet no hinderance
from their Governments in such enterprise, because these Governments are
equally antagonistic to the institution. In touching the third cause, the
fact that slavery has become a military weakness, we may rouse prejudice
and passion, but the time has come when it would be madness not to look
at our danger from every point of view, and to probe it to the bottom.
Apart from the assistance that home and foreign prejudice against slavery
has given the North, slavery is a source of great strength to the enemy
in a purely military point of view, by supplying him with an army from
our granaries; but it is our most vulnerable point, a continued embarrassment,
and in some respects an insidious weakness....Like past years, 1864 will
diminish our ranks by the casualties of war, and what source of repair
is there left us?....
Our country has already some friends in England and France, and there
are strong motives to induce these nations to recognize and assist us,
but they cannot assist us without helping slavery, and to do this would
be in conflict with their policy for the last quarter of a century, England
has paid hundreds of millions to emancipate her West India slaves and break
up the slave-trade. Could she now consistently spend her treasure to reinstate
slavery in this country? But this barrier once removed, the sympathy and
the interests of these and other nations will accord with our own, and
we may expect from them both moral support and mateiral aid....This measure
will deprive the North of the moral and material aid which it now derives
from the bitter prejudices with which foreigners view the institution,
and its war, if continued, will henceforth be so despicable in their eyes
that the sources of recruiting will be dried up. It will leave the enemy's
negro army no motive to fight for, and will exhaust the source from which
it has been recruited. The idea that it is their special mission to war
against slavery has held growing sway over the Northern people for many
years, and has at length ripened into an armed and bloody crusade against
it....Knock this away and what is left" A bloody ambition for more
territory, a pretended veneration for the Union, which one of their own
most distinguished orators (Doctor Beecher in his Liverpool speech) openly
avowed was only used as a stimulus to stir up the anti-slavery crusade,
and lastly the poisonous and selfish interests which are the fungus growth
of the war itself. Mankind may fancy it a great duty to destroy slavery,
but what interest can mankind have in upholding this remainder of the Northern
war platform?
The Constitution of the Southern States has reserved to their respective
governments the power to free slaves for meritorious services to the State.
It is politic besides. For many years, ever since the agitation of the
subject of slavery commenced, the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and
his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications
that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt
dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field....The
slaves are dangerous now, but armed, trained, and collected in an army
they would be a thousand fold more dangerous; therefore when we make soldiers
of them we must make free men of them beyond all question, and thus enlist
their sympathies also....
It is said that Republicanism cannot exist without the institution.
Even were this true, we prefer any form of government of which the Southern
people may have the molding, to one forced upon us by a conqueror....It
is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up we give
up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies
are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority
and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights
and liberties."
For more information about Maj. Gen. Cleburne, please visit with The
Patrick Cleburne Society at http://www.patrickcleburne.com |
