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Black Confederates in Oakwood?
08/25/2010 9:33 AM by John M
The Lost Soldiers in this week’s Style Weekly looks into the possibility of black Confederates buried in Oakwood:
It was late May 2002, says Davis, a Hampton-based independent historian, when she showed up at the administrative offices for Richmond’s cemeteries, then managed by a woman named Patricia Taylor. Davis, who is black, was researching the city’s African-American burial grounds for a book, “Here I Lay My Burdens Down.” She says Taylor showed her a 19th-century map of Oakwood Cemetery. “And on it, it said ‘Colored Confederates,’” Davis says.
Conscripting blacks into the confederate army was advocated by Patrick Cleburne the so called “Jackson of the West.” He made several formal attempts to the Confederate leadership to allow slaves enlistment in the Confederate army, to no avail. He had several aides that fought along side him in battle but they weren’t regular soldiers; irregulars I guess, but they were still soldiers. He was killed at the the Battle of Franklin Tennessee in 1864. His view was that if the Confederates used conscripted slaves that the South may have been able to not win the war but fight to a stalemate. He wasn’t alone in his beliefs.
Let’s see if I got this right:
Veronica Davis, an “independent historian” who describes her research method as “I don’t sit behind papers and books and stuff,” thought she glimpsed a map eight years ago describing the burial place of African American Confederate soldiers. Despite the lack of any documentary evidence of this remarkable fact, Davis persists.
Now even though the existence of black troops in Richmond would have been hugely news-worthy, the record of them is limited to a feeble attempt by the Confederate government to muster a few troops in Confederate uniform just before the fall of Richmond. The entry into battle and subsequent deaths of these men would have been enormously important to the history of the Civil War. Real African Americans in Confederate gray could change the entire dynamic of discussion about the Civil War. But that didn’t happen.
Despite the fact this story is supported by one flake blabbering along about something she imagined seeing eight years ago (“I’m telling you what I saw”) Style Weekly is so bereft of either editorial control or journalistic ethics that it decides to devote a story to Davis, exploring this idea and hinting at a conspiracy that keeps this information from the public. Sara Dabney Tisdale canvasses Richmond historians, and despite their advice that this is a non issue and makes both her and Style look like idiots, the story is run.
I wanted to bring to the attention of Style Weekly that in May 2003, I saw a drawing on a place mat at Poe’s Pub showing the location of a secret cavern under Church Hill where slaves dug coal and diamonds. Honest – I really saw it! And I don’t need books and maps and stuff to know it is true.
Sara- call me any time. Once this secret cavern story gets out we’re going to rip the lid right off this town.