title;

Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth

Author: Kevin M.Levin

Pages: 248 pages

Genre: Non fiction; History

September 9th 2019

More than 150 years after the end of the Civil War, scores of websites, articles, and organizations repeat claims that anywhere between 500 and 100,000 free and enslaved African Americans fought willingly as soldiers in the Confederate army. But as Kevin M. Levin argues in this carefully researched book, such claims would have shocked anyone who served in the army during the war itself. Levin explains that imprecise contemporary accounts, poorly understood primary-source material, and other misrepresentations helped fuel the rise of the black Confederate myth. Moreover, Levin shows that belief in the existence of black Confederate soldiers largely originated in the 1970s, a period that witnessed both a significant shift in how Americans remembered the Civil War and a rising backlash against African Americans' gains in civil rights and other realms.

Levin also investigates the roles that African Americans actually performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers. He demonstrates that regardless of the dangers these men faced in camp, on the march, and on the battlefield, their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent, Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers, an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history

My thoughts

Rating: 4

Would I recommend it? yes

Will I read anything else by this author? maybe

Will I love history there was time I was a little confused about what the author was talking about , which means I had to go back and re read it , but I did learn some more about the the Civil War and how they treated their fellow men, like I said before there was times I was a little confused but that could have been on me. Still in all it was very good and the author brought to life the people he was talking about as well as that time period, with that said I want to say thank you to Netgalley for letting me read and review it exchange for my honest opinion .