The best books about slavery and the confederacy

This slim volume packs a mean punch. Following the secession of the seven Deep Southern states in 1860-61, commissioners were sent out to the remaining uncommitted slaveholding states to convince their leaders of the necessity of joining the new Confederate States of America. While the arguments of these secession commissioners included constitutional arguments in favor of secession, they relied even more so on emotional pleas that framed the election of the nation’s first Republican president as a direct threat to the institution of slavery and white supremacy. Their speeches were laced with horrific images of emancipation and a region plunged into racial violence. Charles Dew offers a compelling argument that highlights the importance of slavery and race in the outbreak of war.

The Confederacy relied extensively on slave labor throughout the Civil War. The Confederate War Department and Engineer Bureau utilized enslaved labor to construct fortifications at key sites, build and repair railroad lines, and manufacture war materiel in places like Richmond’s Tredegar Iron Works. According to historian Jaime Martinez, this impressed labor forced slaveowners into close cooperation with an increasingly centralized Confederate government that struggled to conduct a war against an enemy that enjoyed advantages in manpower and other resources. One of the most valuable aspects of this book is its coverage of the conditions that slaves operated under while on military duty. Many became sick and died while others took their chances to escape to the Union army. Finally, Martinez argues convincingly that the Confederacy’s impressment policies influenced the timing of Lincoln’s push toward emancipation as a way to undermine the Confederate mobilization of slave labor.

Most Confederate soldiers were not slaveholders, but as historian Colin Woodward argues, all of them were products of a slaveholding culture and, as a result, fought to maintain the rigid racial hierarchy that had come to define their respective communities. Appreciating the central place that the defense of slavery occupied for most Confederates helps us to better understand why the war lasted as long as it did. Some of the most interesting chapters in this book explore the roles played by thousands of body servants that accompanied officers from the slaveholding class. Enslaved men performed a wide range of jobs, including cooking meals, washing clothes, and digging ditches. Their presence served as a constant reminder of the army’s reliance on enslaved labor and its broader significance as the Confederacy’s “cornerstone.”

Over one million men served in the Confederate army between 1861 and 1865. Their letters and diaries offer insight into every aspect of military service, including their views on slavery. Irby Goodwin Scott’s published letters track his movements in the Army of Northern Virginia and include detailed coverage of some of the bloodiest battles of the war. They also offer a window into the relationship between one officer and two body servants that accompanied him at different times during the war. Scott relied on his body servants in camp, on the march, and even on the battlefield, but he also acknowledged a shared experience brought on by the exigency of war. Together master and slave experienced being away from family, suffered through inclement weather, and bouts of sickness. The relationship between master and slave evolved over the course of the war, based on a wide range of factors. Violence was never completely absent as a means of control. While historians have had to rely almost exclusively on the letters of Confederate officers for insight into how body servants experienced the war, this collection includes a few letters from enslaved men themselves. 

The Confederacy was consistent throughout most of the war that Black men could not be recruited to serve in the army as soldiers. This was a war to preserve slavery and white supremacy and Black enlisted men would have undermined the very justification for secession and the creation of a new nation. As the war entered its fourth year, however, more and more people realized that this policy was no longer tenable. Historian Bruce Levine offers a thorough analysis of the very public and bitterly divisive debate that took place throughout the Confederacy in 1864 over whether slaves could be recruited as soldiers. Confederates debated this subject in the capital of Richmond, in the army, and in countless newspapers. The question was clear: Should the Confederacy recruit Black men as a way to avoid defeat? That it took the Confederate government until mid-March 1865 to finally approve slave enlistment—much too late to make any difference to the outcome of the war—reinforces just how important protecting slavery was for white southerners, even in the face of military defeat.