Is There Evidence of Black Loyalty to the Confederacy?

The short answer is: Yes. There is plenty of evidence that Black Southerners expressed what could be interpreted as loyalty to the Confederacy. No, I haven’t finally turned to the dark side and embraced the neo-Confederate fantasy of the “loyal slave” narrative.

Source: Wikimedia Commons, The Burial of Latane

I am simply acknowledging that evidence can be found in newspapers and other places. Of course, the fact that such evidence exists, alone, doesn’t tell us much of anything. As historians we must interpret this evidence based on the questions that we are attempting to answer, in light of other relevant evidence, and within historical context.

Let’s look at one example of a historian who approaches this question with the seriousness that it deserves.

Consider A. Wilson Greene’s analysis of Petersburg, Virginia’s free Black population in his book, Civil War Petersburg: Confederate City in the Crucible of War. In 1860, Petersburg was a majority Black city. Twenty-six percent of the city’s free population was Black and within the Black community 36% were free. A sizable number, according to Greene, “owned town lots, and some achieved surprising wealth for the time.” (p. 8). 

Much has been made of the growing percentage of the Upper South’s free Black population throughout the antebellum period and its significance during the war years. Historian William Freehling contends that this general trend towards greater Black freedom in the Upper and Border South threatened the states in the Lower South who believed that such changes would eventually spill into their own backyards.

Freehling has also argued that the racial dynamics in the Upper South played a crucial role in the evolution and outcome of the war. Questions of how to manage large free Black populations while at the same time maintain sufficient control of the slaves abounded. 

Greene presents a very interesting written document by a free Black man by the name of Charles Tinsley (29 years old) who openly declared his loyalty to Virginia’s cause by volunteering to aid the militia in 1861:

We are willing to aid Virginia’s cause to the utmost extent of our ability.  We do not feel that it is right for us to remain idle here, when white gentlemen are engaged in the performance of work at Norfolk, that…is more suitable to our hands…. There is not an unwilling heart among us…and we promise unhesitating obedience to all orders that may be given us…. I could feel no greater pride, no more genuine gratification than to be able to plant [the Confederate flag] upon the ramparts of Ft. Monroe. (p. 36)

While Greene does not dismiss out of hand Tinsley’s declaration of loyalty to Virginia and the Confederacy he is rightfully skeptical. The disruption of trade with the  North had already taken a toll on tobacco companies and other businesses which employed free Blacks. Greene cites one resident of James City County who believed that allowing these men to work on fortifications, “would be putting them out of harm’s way, thereby lessening the chances of servile insurrection, which it is well to guard against as far as possible.” (p. 36) 

I tend to agree with Greene’s conclusions here:

Although some of the black volunteers may have felt a genuine loyalty to Virginia and found sincere motivation n serving their native state, it is difficult to believe that men like Charles Tinsley did not exaggerate their Confederate patriotism out of a sense of self-interest.  Free blacks in Virginia had become experts at accommodation and survival, and their eagerness in volunteering for unarmed military service comported with this instinct.  Calculations of self-protection undoubtedly tipped the scales in favor of cooperating with the rapidly mobilizing whites. (p. 36)

Free Blacks understood all too well the precariousness of their legal standing in the years leading up to the Civil War. I don’t think it is a stretch at all to suggest that their very public claims of loyalty were, in part, an attempt to assuage the kinds of concerns expressed by the above-cited resident of James City County. Accepting free Blacks for volunteer service reinforced white Virginian’s own sense of paternalism as well as their fears of slave revolts at a time when the security and stability of their communities remained uncertain.

One could also look at other communities like New Orleans that included significant numbers of free Blacks to better understand this subject, but let’s never lose sight that the overwhelming number of African Americans were enslaved throughout the Confederacy and that is exactly what they were fighting to maintain.