On January 2, 1864 Confederate General Patrick Cleburne brought in the the New Year with a bang. He had the audacity to propose the arming of slaves along with granting them and their family freedom if they would fight for the Confederacy. Although his proposal was only heard by a few Confederate Officers it was enough to shake a few of them to their very core. Arming slaves was a taboo subject in the South. Something that the mere thought of had frightened them for many years. Mainly because of the bloody slave rebellion in Haiti in 1791 and the Nat Turner rebellion in Virginia in 1831. Yet by 1864 the South was clearly losing the war. The year 1863 saw several turning points. In July Robert E. Lee had been beaten at Gettysburg and Vicksburg had fallen to Ulysses S. Grant which split the Confederacy in half. The Confederate Army of Tennessee, the army that Cleburne served in, had been defeated decisively at Chattanooga in November. Now the door to the deep South was wide open to invasion. Because of casualties among white Confederate soldiers the South was in desperate straits and fighting for it's very survival. Cleburne wrote "We can see three great causes operating to destroy us: First, the inferiority of our armies to those of the enemy in point of numbers; second, the poverty of our single source of supply in comparison with his several sources; third, the fact that slavery, from being one of our chief sources of strength at the commencement of the war, has now become, in a military point of view, one of our chief sources of weakness".
Cleburne shared his idea with other officers and 13 of them endorsed his proposal. He asked his corps commander General William Hardee to set up a meeting with the commander of the Army of Tennessee. Army commander Joseph E. Johnston and other high ranking officers met with Cleburne at headquarters in Dalton Georgia. His proposal was met by staunch opposition during the meeting. General Howell Cobb stated ""You cannot make soldiers of slaves, or slaves of soldiers. The day you make a soldier of them is the beginning of the end of the Revolution. And if slaves seem good soldiers, then our whole theory of slavery is wrong." General A.P. Stewart said the proposal was “at war with my social, moral and political principles.” General States Rights Gist called the proposal was “monstrous…” Major General Joseph Wheeler said that Cleburne would have been hanged if he suggested such a thing in Alabama. General Johnston did not want this proposal to go any further up the chain of command, or to become public. He ordered his officers to keep the proposal to themselves. General W.H.T. Walker thought the proposal was treasonous and against Johnston's orders he made sure that the president of the Confederacy Jefferson Davis learned about it. Davis was also against making Cleburne's proposal public and the idea was stopped cold. To Cleburne's credit, when he was challenged by Richmond he left the names of the other 13 officers off of his proposal and took the heat by himself.
Major General Patrick Cleburne was born in Cork Ireland and was one of the best generals in the Confederate army. Jefferson Davis had given him the nickname "Stonewall Jackson of the West". Southerners revered the memory of Jackson and this was a great honor to be compared to him. Cleburne was wise enough to know the damage that had been done to the South by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The North was benefitting from the recruitment of free blacks and slaves into their army. The bleeding of slaves away from the Southern farms and plantations was encouraging desertions from the Confederate Army. Men were leaving the army to keep their families from starving. The South was being denied their labor and it had been a huge factor in keeping England and France neutral. The English and French aristocracies did not want to be seen by their own citizens as supporting slavery if they intervened on the side of the South. Cleburne stated that "Our country has already some friends in England and France, and there are strong motives to induce these nations to recognize and assist us, but they cannot assist us without helping slavery, and to do this would be in conflict with their policy for the last quarter of a century".
The North had a population of 22 million opposed to the South's 9 million. Four million of the 9 million were slaves. Cleburne saw the situation in practical terms. These 4 million slaves were an untapped resource and if they had the promise of freedom they would fight as hard, if not harder than white soldiers. Cleburne said “For many years, ever since the agitation of the subject of slavery commenced, the negro has been dreaming of freedom, and his vivid imagination has surrounded that condition with so many gratifications that it has become the paradise of his hopes. To attain it he will tempt dangers and difficulties not exceeded by the bravest soldier in the field. The hope of freedom is perhaps the only moral incentive that can be applied to him in his present condition.” The idea that the black man would not fight had been a huge problem in the Union army. Because of racist white officers, such as William Tecumseh Sherman, many times black Union soldiers were only allowed to perform manual labor or to guard outposts in rear areas. Sherman never allowed black combat troops in his army. They proved their bravery, however; at places like the battle of Fort Wagner, the battle of the Crater at Petersburg, the battle of Nashville, and at Jenkins Ferry which was featured in the movie Lincoln. My favorite Union general, George H. Thomas, did not think that the black soldier would fight until he saw dead black and white troops piled together on the battlefield of Nashville. He said to his staff “Gentlemen, the question is settled, negro soldiers will fight.”
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| Black Union soldiers |
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| Cleburne's statue at Missionary Ridge |
Cleburne believed that it was better to win the war and gain the Souths independence without slavery than to keep slavery and lose the war. He said "As between the loss of independence and the loss of slavery, we assume that every patriot will freely give up the latter — give up the negro slave rather than be a slave himself". Even the slave owner George Washington was wise enough to finally realize that he would have to allow black soldiers to fight in the Continental Army in order to gain our independence from England. Like these Southern generals he was initially against the idea but the realities of the situation allowed him to adjust his thinking. The reaction to Cleburne's proposal proves what I have claimed for years. The Southern Confederacy, which was primarily made up of the Democrat party, was always centered around protecting the institution of slavery. It was not about states rights or the tariff issue. Confederate Vice president Alexander Stephen's, a Democrat, had stated the South's main reason for being in his famous Cornerstone Speech at the beginning of the war. "Our new government['s] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." This is in stark contrast to the United States of America's cornerstone truth "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal"
It is hard to know whether or not Cleburne's idea would have secured victory for the South. I have always believed that the South's best chance for gaining their independence from the start was to secure an armistice rather than an outright victory. If they had pursued a George Washington like strategy used in the American Revolution, that was focused on not losing the war rather than winning it,would have been their best strategy. A strategy focused on preserving the Confederate army rather than risking it's annihilation. As Washington learned in the American Revolution, if the army survived the new American Republic survived. The same was true of the Confederacy. As long as the Confederate army survived the Confederacy survived. One can argue that if Sherman had been delayed past the 1864 presidential election in capturing Atlanta Lincoln might not have been reelected in November and a Democrat administration under George McClellan might have negotiated an armistice with the South. Democrats are great at snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Who knows, the sudden influx of black soldiers into the ranks might have delayed the capture of Atlanta, but with a commander like John Bell Hood commanding the Army of Tennessee, maybe not. By the time of Cleburnes proposal it might have already been too late for this policy to help the South that much. When the Confederate Congress actually did begin conscripting black soldiers in March 1865 it was definitely too late.
One thing for sure, Patrick Cleburne died much earlier than he should have. Because of Cleburne's proposal to arm slaves he was passed over for promotion to Corps commander on several occasions and inferior officers always got the promotions. Cleburne was the greatest general in the Army of Tennessee and possibly the entire Confederate army but he would remain a Division commander. Corps commanders remained "in the rear with the gear" as the modern soldier might put it. They would direct their part of the battle usually from a much safer location than Division commanders who were expected to lead their troops into battle. Confederate officers from the Division level down suffered a very high casualty rate during the war. Cleburne was always in the thick of the fighting but until November 30, 1864 he had led a charmed life. As his Division spread out along the Winstead Hills in the late afternoon, 2 miles south of the entrenched Federal forces in front of the Carter House, Cleburne, along with his aide Brigadier General Daniel Govan observed the Union lines from a nearby knoll. Army commander General John Bell Hood had ordered a frontal assault against this almost impregnable position.
Cleburne knew a suicidal assault when he saw one. Govan turned to him and said "Well General, there will not be many of us that get back to Arkansas". Cleburne replied "Well Govan, if we are to die, let us die like men". That is exactly what he and many of his men did that day. Cleburne had two horses shot out from under him as he approached the Union breastworks. He died from a single bullet through the heart as he attacked the breastworks on foot. There were 7,000 Confederate casua;ties and 3,000 Union casualties in the space of about 5 hours. Cleburne was one of 6 Confederate generals killed at the battle of Franklin and one of the 4 that were laid to rest on the back porch of Carnton plantation. He lay right beside generals that had opposed his idea of arming black men so vehemently. Cleburne was a very brave man who not only faced the physical danger of battle but had the courage to stand by his convictions unto death.
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| Cleburne charging the breastworks at Franklin |
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| Cleburnes frock coat that he was wearing when he died |
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| Cleburnes grave in Helena Arkansas |
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