Yesterday I posted on the Civil War Memory Facebook page an NPR
interview with Noah Andre Trudeau that focused on Robert E. Lee
and recent commemorative events of the Civil War. I didn’t
listen to it straight through so I missed this little gem of a
comment on black Confederates. It’s a bit disappointing given
his work on black Civil War soldiers that I used throughout the
research phase of my Crater study. This is from Jim in
Birmingham: I’ll celebrate my ancestors in north Alabama who
joined the First Alabama Cavalry USA and fought the slaveholders
in Alabama and served with Sherman on the march to the sea. And
Andy Trudeau, that reminds us: This is not a simple conflict.
Mr. TRUDEAU: No. There are so many complex threads involved
here. You cannot say something never happened. And right now,
I’m a little concerned that there’s a polarization and that
there’s groups that claim it was only about states’ rights.
There’s another group that’s saying that it’s absurd to think
that a Southern African-American woul