How the myth of black Confederates was born

And how a handful of black Southerners helped perpetuate it after the Civil War.

By Kevin M. Levin
Kevin M. Levin is a historian and educator based in Boston and is the author of "Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth."
July 17 at 6:00 AM

As the nation remains embroiled in debates about the continued prevalence of white supremacy and our fraught race relations — something hammered home yet again with President Trump’s racist tweets about nonwhite Democratic members of Congress — nothing has been more central than deep disagreements over the meaning of Confederate symbols and their continued place in our society.

The deep ties between those symbols and continued racial hatred make it stunning that one of the most vigorous defenders of Confederate symbols and the message of “Heritage, Not Hate” is an African American.

Over the past 20 years, H.K. Edgerton — a onetime president of the Asheville branch of the NAACP — has become one of the most popular attractions in the Confederate heritage movement. At gatherings of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and United Daughters of the Confederacy, his performances vindicate the belief of white audiences that the Confederacy did not fight to preserve the institution of slavery and that thousands of enslaved men fought as soldiers in the Southern army.

While both of these claims are false, Edgerton is not the first African American to perpetuate a distorted, celebratory history of the Confederacy. Like those before him, spreading such false stories may bring Edgerton personal fame, but they have dangerous consequences for African Americans pushing for racial equality more broadly.

Slavery was the cornerstone of the Confederacy and its military. During the Civil War, many slaves were forced to accompany their masters into the army as body servants or camp slaves. Their presence on the battlefields and later at reunions reinforced the belief among white Southerners that slavery was benign and that slaves supported the Confederate cause. These men likely chose to take part in these reunions for their own self-interested reasons.

The participation of former camp slaves in Confederate veterans’ reunions preserved a particular memory of the war that overlooked the actual desire of many slaves for freedom. ...

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