African American Gregory Newson, a talented artist, was raised in New York but now lives and does his work in South Carolina. He has made contributions, both in art and writing, to Confederate history that deserve to be better recognised.
In 2016 he published Get Forrest, a beautifully illustrated biography. One could not ask for a more fair and interesting treatment of a controversial subject, a good gift for younger people or for anyone. Mr. Newson has courageously contradicted the prevailing ideological assumptions and given portraits of and written about real people— which is what historians should do. He has produced a number of works as well as the Forrest and provided illustrations for Shotwell’s children’s book on Lee written by Anne Smith Wilson.
He has appeared widely at reenactments and other public events and given interviews as a black Confederate, recently speaking at an Abbeville Institute summer school. He has always stressed the salience of blacks in the Confederate army.
Mr. Newson’s latest work, Heroes by Force (Newson Publishing, 2022), is an exhaustively researched compilation of African Americans who helped sustain the outnumbered Confederate armies. (The title’s use of “Force” is a little misleading.)
It is little known, but Southern states postwar provided pensions for black men who had served in the Southern War of Independence. These pension rolls (along with other sources) provide many hundreds of names and identities of black Confederates, including the units with which they served and in what capacity. Not only the eleven Confederate states but the Border States of Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Oklahoma provided such pensions.
There were many servants, cooks, teamsters, musicians, and nurses among them, but that is not the whole story. Some were useful spies and misleaders of the Yankee enemy. The memoirs of Confederate partisans show a number of such men who served throughout the war.
There are several good books about black Confederates, but Mr. Newson has published an exhaustive documentary record that cannot be easily dismissed.
In his book The Retreat from Gettysburg, the noted historian Kent Masterson Brown writes that an estimated 5,000 black men went with Lee’s army to Gettysburg—and back. The survivors of Pickett’s Charge were greeted by many black faces on returning to Confederate lines. President Davis when visiting the armies shook hands with and greeted black as well as white men. Mr. Newson has recently published The Politically Correct President Jefferson Davis, a very informative study of Davis’s lifelong and positive relations with African Americans.
Forrest took thirty of his bonded men with him to the war, promising freedom for loyal service. In the midst of war he made out emancipation papers for all but one of these men. Several rode in his elite headquarters company
On the other hand, the hard-fighting Union soldier Ambrose Bierce wrote that the only black people who saw in three-and-a-half years were the concubines and servants of Union officers. Some Union soldiers complained of black men shooting at them.
Any long view of history can make it easily understandable that race relations in the Old South were frequently familial, and that servants might side with their masters against vicious invaders. Union soldiers in their routine atrocities harmed black Southerners as much or more than the whites.
Mr. Newsom indicates that the motive of his work is the wisdom that “inclusion” is the only way to eradicate racial division. That is good to remember for those of us working to keep the Southern tradition.
A black neighbor’s wisdom.
Any time the facts are told about this history it is a good thing and I’m sure it is a fact that many black slaves fought for the Confederacy. I know that there are many lies told about Jim Crow because I lived under it. I did not live in a city but I know that in small town life blacks made families with a mother and father in the home and they were law abiding and they worked for a living. I remember that relations with them was more convivial than they are today between blacks and whites. My dad, mother and grandparents voluntarily socialized with them and it was nothing like forced PC or integration.
There was one town in my county that was a no-go zone for blacks at that time. It was like inner city black neighborhoods being no-go zones for whites today. But for the most part there were no problems. Blacks were not killing each other like today in the inner city ghettos and you didn’t have to be afraid of them. The people who created welfare and the inner cities in place of Jim Crow now refer to their creation as the black undertow.
But as for blacks being part of the white families who owned them I’m not sure that was a good thing. Under normal circumstances these blacks would have wanted to be free and to go back to their homelands. But they were taken care of by white people and as a result of their low average IQs were dependent upon them and that is not the same as everybody being like family. It’s not a rosy feel-good thing and white people shouldn’t take pride in it.
They were slaves and it’s sad that they fought for their slave masters if we’re honest about it. They should have seized the opportunity to flee and try to get back to Africa. But they didn’t have the necessary conditions to motivate them since they were so backward. Can anybody imagine white people being like family with the people who owned and enslaved them?
Of course blacks want inclusiveness. So do all the other non whites. What does it cost them? They all benefit from living around white people in white homelands. But our solemn responsibility to is future generations of white people. Period.
Living around whites for hundreds of years has not raised the IQs of blacks nor changed their natures. White children are already a minority in the United States and in western Europe. White western civilization is being destroyed. California is already third world and whites are fleeing it and NYC. Inclusion is white suicide. 72% of black kids are on welfare. Now we’re feeding and housing practically every language speaking people on earth. Inclusion is for losers. I don’t get the feel-good sentiment.
I found one of Newsom’s books on Amazon for $40. I think I’ll wait for it to land on abebooks.
Here is an interview of Elvis’ black childhood friend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrFCyNMvZWk
MS Barbara, you wrote an interesting piece, but I differ with your premise if you are saying the slaves were not considered ‘part of the master’s family.’
I have always marveled that the white masters and their eligible sons went off to war and left the women folk to care for their farms and the slaves that worked the farms – ALONE. What a perfect opportunity for the slaves to have risen up and rebelled and committed atrocities on the white folk, yet there was NO REPORTED UPRISING by the slaves anywhere in the South during the War. So why wasn’t there any violence?
There can only be two possible explanations: i.e.., the slaves considered the master and his relatives to be ‘their family (and vice-versa) and willing to protect their ‘kinfolk’,’ or your theory that the slaves were not intelligent enough to realize the opportunity for freedom. The latter can be easily disregarded when one reads the voluminous amount of information available specifically describing the slave’s loyalty to the master and his family. Those historical documents often record the willingness, even to death, of slaves who refused to divulge where the white women folk were hiding from the rapacious Union Army or reveal where the family silver was buried and, amazingly, doing mental gymnastics with the soldiers from the North in an effort to save buildings from burning and cattle being taken. That is proof to me of the familial relations of master and slave in the antebellum South. Enough said!
[From my experience – if you are waiting for Mr. Newson’s book ‘Heroes By Force’ to appear on Abebooks at a cheaper price than $40, you will be waiting until ‘hell freezes over’ as the sellers on Abebooks retail their wares along the price of Amazon, etc., often with an extremely high price, especially if the subject matter deals positively with the South and/or Confederacy]
The KKK was created in order to defend southern women and children from marauding blacks when there were mostly crippled veterans and old men left to defend them after the war.
To imagine that slaves in the past could be treated like family is the same as virtue signaling today. You want to pretend that there was something special about us that we could enslave people and yet treat them like family. Blacks had no choice in the matter.
We don’t choose to live around blacks today and we’re no different than our ancestors. If blacks move into our neighborhoods we move out. Buckhead is now going ahead with plans to secede from Atlanta. You insult blacks and it’s ridiculous to pretend about slavery and rewrite it as sentimental and familial. You treat them differently than you would white people and you’re only able to do that if you feel very superior to them and don’t give them the respect and humanity that you would demand as a white person.
Look back in history at times and places where whites were slaves and tell me about affection you feel for those who enslaved us and were free to abuse us and rape white women. You think we were just part of their families?
MS Barbara, where do I state that the master and slave were equals? Cannot families have within their ranks persons of a higher social order than others? How about children and their parents? There certainly, or at least ought to be, a social order of one in a higher status (authority) within the family, such as the parent/child. I believe that was the condition of the slave in the master’s family: a child member needing protection and was looked at as a valuable member, perhaps with the slave having more of a financial worth than others, but still needing familial care.
As for Buckhead, the governor shot that down, the city will stay in the mega-monster hell-hole called Atlanta.
The KKK has had three manifestation of its existence, which one are you referring to? I cn only assume you are referring to the first gathering with Gen Nathan Bedford Forest at leadership. That group was VERY short lived, and Gen. Forrest issued only one order as its leader – disband and to burn ALL Klan apparel and regalia.
You make a general statement that white people do not want to live in a neighborhood with blacks. Are you speaking of all white people or only for yourself? But what about some of the black people? Do you think they may not want to live in a neighborhood which has whites in it? How hypocritical! And I am ‘insulting blacks?’ Who is insulting who?
As to white slavery, my maternal family came to this continent in 1619, at Jamestown with the arrival of my 9th great-grandparents as indentured servants to Sgt William Barry and assigned to Elizabeth City Hundred. You can make all you want of ‘indentured servants’ not being the same as slaves, but keep in mind the first Africans brought here were also called ‘servants’ until the 1650’s when the term slave was put on them and the work required from both was the same! My ancestors had a double whammy, not only being ‘white slaves’, religiously, they also were Separatists among a colony of very staunch Anglicans. You can guess where that got them.
The Native Americans had a saying, “You speak with forked-tongue.”
Maybe we should just bring back slavery. This country has a big, healthy, energetic workforce in the inner cities but they just don’t work. We could enslave them and force them to work and once again become one big happy family. I can’t wait to see the books written by the happy blacks of the future.
But what if they’re like Nat Turner who didn’t think too highly of the happy families?
Rick – one other thing. It seems to me that the only reason a black man would choose to write sentimentally about slavery in the south would be his desire to be at peace with the urgent need on behalf of non whites to be around white people. He wants desperately to feel like an American and to be accepted by white people.
On the one hand it is kind to encourage that and I understand a white person’s inclination to that kindness. But I cannot help but see it for what it is and I don’t think that we can afford to go along with it. We will be dragged under. The people behind the Great Reset do not intend for the third world to be brought to the level of the west but for us to come down to the level of the third world. We cannot provide for the entire world and we cannot change the natures of all the different races. They come to hate us for who we are and all we represent and when you pander to them they hate us more for what they perceive as our weakness in pitying them and allowing them into our country.
I canwrite “sentimentally about Blacks, as I was raised with Blacks and still, today, retain friendships and communications with Blacks from those times BEFORE the civil rights movement.
I was questioned by the Sheriff when I interfered in an a ttack on a Black man being perpetrated by several of the ‘elite’, well to do, White boys from the town.
Please, let other opinions be known, as well as your own, but do no deny that there ar some great, well meaning and brilliant on both sides odf the issue.
Personally, I believe that ‘racism’ would die of starvation, were it not for the need of race hustlers like Jackson and Sharpton and Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright to retain their cash cow and their ability to rake in the extortion money, aided by the entirety of the Democrat Party and a compliant and activist media and judiciary and the mentia patient *president* that is residing in our White House.
I’ve lived around blacks all my life. I never met one that needed my help. The major violence in this country today is black on white. I have nothing to prove to anyone and don’t care if someone calls me racist.
What is your definition of a racist?
Sorry ladies, the major crime in this country is perpetrated on black people BY blacks. Eighty percent of black crime is black on black, but you dasn’t even mention that or you will be called ‘racist’ by the white regimental guardians of the criminal element. How sad for their people. How utterly condemning for the white elitists whose heads are in the wrong anatomical position.
Miss Barbara and Miss Cribb, may I recommend a book I found enlightening?
It is called ‘Barracoon’ and was written by Zora Neale Thurston. If you haven’t heard of her, or read anything written by her, I am not surprised. Although a very gifted writer, she is black, and her writings are not too widely circulated in white circles.
The book is the story of Cudjo Lewis, and the more than 100 Africans crammed into the ship’s hold on the Middle Passage, and is perhaps, the last slave ship from Africa carrying new slaves to the States. The ship was the ‘Clotilda’ and was scuttled and burn in a bayou off Mobile Bay in the mid 1860’s, after releasing the occupants to scramble ashore and fend for themselves. They were never slaves and eventually built a community at a place they named ‘Plateau, Alabama.’ The ship has recently been discovered on the bottom of the inlet and raised. The National Geographic has done an interesting expose of the ship.
MS Thurston went to Plateau in 1927 and again in 1931 spending many hours interviewing Mr. Lewis about his ordeal. He was the last survivor still alive at the time from the ship. Her book was written not long after her visits to Plateau, but for whatever reasons was not published until 2018.
The reason I mention MS Thurston and her writings is she is self-assured and writes from an era not befuddled by the ugliness of the last 75 years of racial disharmony. I leave it to you to determine if it was a worthwhile read or a waste of your time. As I said, I found it enlightening.
I’ve read Thurston and I think she was a great writer but she died in poverty. It was Jews who owned the slave ships and did trading in slaves. Jews were the greatest percentage of slave owners in the south. Jews never supported emancipation.
I’ll look for that book, thanks!
Miss Barbara, first let me say how I am enjoying our tete-a-tete.
In response to your latest blurb, I would like to point out that the majority of ships that brought Africans to the New World were from New England, principally Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and the biggest single slaver family (the De Wolfe) were from Rhode Island, among many other prominent families from the states mentioned. Most, if not close to all, were descendants of the original Puritans, who did not see any reason that slavery was inherently, or religiously, questionable. John Hancock of Massachusetts fame supposedly signed the Declaration of Independence, his signature writ large to show his patriotism, so King George ‘could read his name without his spectacles.’
Bah! It was to show the king Hancock’s displeasure with the monarch issuing his edict requiring all slave ships to be of British registration, thus cutting off Hancock’s lucrative African trade. Only one ship with Charleston (SC) registration was from the South in the decades preceding the War.
There are many facts about New England’s involvement with the trade. ALL states allowed owning slaves legal, although the northern states have scrubbed clean their record of slave holding and have placed the entire blame (theirs’s included) on the Southern states ONLY! I guess that act makes the northerners feel like they have been washed clean and sanctified by blaming others.
I am not disputing that there were Jews involved in the African trade, or were slave holders, but not to the extent you seem to infer.
Cheers
Read this Ron Paul article and see the extent of Jewish control of this country.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/03/ron-paul/the-federal-reserves-magic-trick-big-tech-2/
The Fed is owned by a few European Jewish families. Jews have such central banks in nearly every nation on Earth. They use the International banks they created to get poor nations in debt and then they can manipulate and control their governments. When you read history of how the British waged this or that war or France, England and Germany were always fighting for control of all Europe, perhaps you should remember that Jews rule the world and they have so much control over us through the use of new technology that they’re not even bothering to try to hide it any more. Germans should and could have controlled all of Europe but the Jew made certain that didn’t happen and now they’re destroying the greatest country in the history of the world and you’re eye witness to it.
Why would Jews not have been involved in the slave trade since they were always historically involved? It’s one thing to have slavery as a part of something but it’s quite another to be the center of an institution like slavery. White men were not centrally involved in it. It was not our thing. That would have been a great way to make a lot of money if you were organized and could have such a business. And Jews were spread around everywhere and could have had that business. Slaves were never sold on Jewish holy days. Why was that?
Who were the slavers in the Caribbean and other places around the world? Are there any issues in the Gentile world that Jews are not involved in? How many Jews are in Biden’s White House? Does Biden actually make any decisions? Is he capable? How do you explain the fact that Americans know very well that Biden is senile and yet we tolerate him being in our White House and Congress sees no evil, hears no evil and speaks no evil about it? Explain that? Who controls our media so that they are not watchdogs on the elected but are their propaganda machines? Is that why we have a free press? Is that it’s intended purpose that our forefathers intended for us?
Who do you think owns the big pharma that makes the killer vaccines? Name them.
Are Americans the ones waging the current continual wars? Who benefits from them? Why are we cannon fodder in the middle east but not allowed to defend our own borders? Do you know what PNAC was and who it’s members were? Why did we vote to become a minority race in our own country? Why do we care about Ukraine’s borders? Why do we care that Russia is the last nation to have Russian nationalism and Christianity?
How did our economy get liquidated in China? Which Americans decided that we wanted to get rid of fiat dollars in favor of a digital currency? How can you justify having a small group of Jews in NYC controlling our nation’s public airwaves? When did we vote to take Christianity and God out of the public schools? Why do we choose to indoctrinate our children in queer sex and allow trans people to groom them? Abortion is a Jewish religious belief and not a Christian one so how come we had Roe v Wade? Should Nazis run Germany or should Jews? Should Americans govern ourselves or be ruled by Jews? You think Jews are sweet innocent bystanders who have no Jewish interests of their own?
Why wouldn’t Jews have controlled the slave trade? How can you accept that the Jew has a right to their own state but nobody else does? Why are Jews in every Gentile country? How do we benefit?
5 parts of the slave trade…the sellers were African chiefs/ kings…the buyers were in the New World of all races…the enforcers/tax collectors were the British Navy…the financiers were the bankers (no one carried gold onboard a ship, instead, letters of credit were carried)…finally, builders of ships, the vast majority of which were built in New England.
Slavery was legal, supported by royalists and bankers. Willing buyers and sellers…smugglers were burnt to the waterline by the British Navy…yet White Males are the target of the globalists…why? White Males cannot be controlled…so they must be eliminated.
Southern White Males defeated the British, twice (Yorktown and New Orleans). Southern White Males gave you gave you Alvin York and Audie Murphy…birth control is the only reason Southern White Males don’t rule the world. We have been poisoned since the mid-1960s…by big pharma…and the pink ribbons are just the beginning.
The “pill” is genocide, disguised as “freedom”.
Miss Barbara, I believe the water of our discussion is becoming very muddy by going far-afield! We began discussing the Black Man, who is the subject of this blog, from which we have strayed away. I apologize, if, perhaps, I wasn’t paying close awareness to what you have been saying, writing, and meaning.
The original issue we were discussing was slavery in the United States and I limited my participation to that subject. I did not question the motives of Mr. Newson for his writings, only that they were valid. You question his motives and added the ‘Jewish-ness’ to this discussion.
Reiterating my position: I have found nothing of involvement with the slave trade by American Jews. Although, the American slave trade was only a small percentage of the global trade, where Jews may have been involved in the larger world-wide trade, but I am not aware of that history. Only that in this country, to which, I have responded.
Yes, I am aware of the history of global banking, beginning when a German Jew by the name of Bauer who moved to England and changed his name to Rothchild, an effort to hide his Jewish ancestry and be in good graces with British politicians, all to further his financial machinations. His first success was the Bank of England, it becoming the “mother” bank and the rest of the global banking history is, as they say, history.
Now, the blame for our national banking system, currently the Federal Reserve, cannot be totally placed on Jews. Woodrow Wilson should carry the majority of the blame, for he was the principal player in establishing this U.S. national bank. How about FDR, who used this national bank to further his Depression Era policies? Using it to expand the reach of the national government, tremendously. Neither of these two were Jews. I find it laughable to involve Jews to a greater involvement than that of just these two pompous presidents. And we don’t have time or space, here, to discuss the constitutionality of the national bank, and, certainly, not enough space to discuss the doings of these two egomaniacs.
To single out one ethnic group of people and ‘hang’ them is disingenuous.
As a Christian, I would point you to the Diaspora. It will explain why Jews are found in almost every country in the world. Also, how about the Abrahamic Covenant (Gen 12:1-3; 13:15) God made with that great Patriarch giving the land Israel now occupies to Abraham’s descendants, not for a few years, or decades, but forever! The Arabs living there are not descendants of its original inhabitants; they are immigrants. So, who has the best claim? I have studied Daniel 9, Ezekiel 36-39, Zachariah, II Peter, Jude and Revelation 9; I have read the ‘back of the book.’ For me, I chose the Jew.
Who is profiting from the numerous wars our government keep starting and our young men and women must fight? The answer is the political cronies and the national government leaders. It has been this way since the 16th president decided the original federated republic established in 1789, needed to be destroyed in order that his New England (ie., capitalist) cronies could get a place at the public hog-slop trough. He started a war in 1861, to accomplish that objective.
Sadly, that is still the focus of our national government, however today with a much-expanded largess and super-sized egos. Their greed must be renewed and refreshed often, thus war and more war. And who sponsors these wars? Do I hear anyone say, the national bank? Of course, saddled with large interest rates on the loans. Our wars are very profitable, or they would not be fought. Once again, many bankers are Jews, they cannot be made the scapegoat for Washington’s bureaucrats and elected politicians.
You may have grown-up with black people around you, for which you seem to be very resentful – I didn’t.
I grew-up with many Jewish families around me and I never was suspicious of them, nor did I have any reason to scrutinize their motives in their business dealings, even those that involved me. In fact, I found them very attentive to their Gentile neighbors, especially, when their Christian neighbors suffered misfortune or tragedy! Many time, those Jews were the first to reach-out to those in need.
This was in a northern Midwest city of medium size that didn’t allow blacks to spend a night (even black baseball players on the city’s team had to live OUTSIDE the city limits – one was Hank Aaron!) and only tolerated the Jews, because they owned the mercantile stores, and they were often met with a lot of sarcasm and indignation. Eventually, the Jews sold out & moved from that city- within a year. When I asked a few who were friends, the reason, they would only say, “There is ‘new’ money coming to town.” The meaning, I knew, was the source of this money was corrupted – ie., organized crime, which manifested itself a few years later. Morally and religiously, they could not, and would not, be a part of it.
Lastly, I would ask, if “Jews are in every Gentile country? How do we benefit?”, specifically, what are the benefits you are lacking or think you should have?
Jehovah was a pagan god of the Jews. He was no different than Odin, Zeus or Apollo and other mythical gods. I am not saying that there is no God or creator. I’m simply saying it is not Jehovah even though Christianity is a pillar of our civilization and therefore to be respected. We cannot know a creator unless that is revealed to us.
Jews wrote the Bible and Jews being who they are of course they claimed that they were chosen. What sort of God would have favorites and not want to save everyone? Do you believe in blood sacrifices? Because that is what Jesus supposedly was. People believed in that sort of thing in ancient times but surely nobody thinks that way today.
The Bible, the New Testament teaches that God chose the Jew, and then changed his mind. Gentiles were grafted onto the tree of Abraham and fulfill God’s prophecy. If Jews reject God then what are they left with? You can’t straddle the fence. By their fruits you know them.
Perhaps you might read this book about the fed. https://archive.org/details/TheCreatureFromJekyllIslandByG.EdwardGriffin
There was an interview on PBS where Allan Greenspan was interviewed by host Bill Moyers. That interview has been scrubbed from the internet but in it Greenspan replied to a question by saying that the government had no control over the Fed and they could do as they pleased. And it doesn’t please them to run the Fed to benefit America. The federal government is charged with creating our money but they don’t, the privately owned fed does. Hows that for power and influence? Jews cause the bubbles and the economic crashes and make out like the bandits they are.
The Jews lecture us that we must keep a separation of church and state although there is no such law. Yet we’re to consider the Bible in our dealings with the Jews and help them commit atrocities against Palestinians in their own homelands? You should not believe any more Jew lies and if you claim to be Christian you should seek the truth.
Here’s a site you can read daily to learn what is actually going on regarding Israel. https://ifamericansknew.org/
The fact that you grew up around Jews is anecdotal and proves nothing.
Thank you, Barbara, I am aware of the, “The Creature…” book and its contents.
One final comment: the Jews (or more correctly, the Hebrews) used many names for their ‘God.’ Jehovah was just one and was the most often used, often with a descriptive attachment: ex., Jehovah Jireh – the Lord our provider, Jehovah Rapha – the Lord of Heling. Jehovah comes from the root ‘je’, or sometimes ‘ye’, and that root is found in at least 28 different names all used for ‘God: Joshua, Jehosophat, Yeshua (Jesus), to name a few.
They also used the semitic word ‘el’ and its more than thirty variations. In Genesis 1:1 is, “In the beginning, ‘Elohim’ created…”
All different words were used to describe the attributes or a description of a place (Bethel – House of God; Bethesda – House of Mercy, etc.) of the ‘God’ they worshipped.
And there are others used. In fact, more than 100 different names are used in the Bible.
This is a VERY SHORT summary; so, how many different names can you add to ‘Odin, Zeus, or Apollo? ‘
If all those names are intended to be used for the same god “Jehovah” then what’s your point?
At IBM, I worked for a man raised in the South who recounted the following:
His Grandmother told him “Garland, don’t you ever let people say that war was about slavery. Your Great-Grandpappy fought in that war, and we wuz closer to BEIN’ slaves than ownin’ them.”
Rick are you still checking this page? I hope so because I desperately want you to read this
https://www.unz.com/lromanoff/americas-buried-history-of-white-slavery/?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=weekly
UNZ IS A JEWISH INTELLECTUAL