“LIKE A DROWNING MAN CATCHING AT STRAWS”
This chapter asks whether, and under what circumstances, the original project of arming and emancipating slaves might have proven viable and might even have altered the outcome of the war. Fierce opposition to emancipation stripped the original plans of inducements that Cleburne, Lee, Davis, and Benjamin had forcefully advocated. By refusing to guarantee the freedom of black volunteers — much less of their family members and of the slave population in general — the predicted swift recruitment of black soldiers by the hundreds of thousands, resulted in no more than two hundred and very likely considerably fewer forces being raised. The elan and commitment of even that small force also left much to be desired.
Keywords: slaves, war, emancipation, South, Confederacy, Union, Confederate, recruitment
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .