retire. It is simply a proposition to fight the balance of the war
with Negro troops. You can't keep white and black troops together and
you can't trust Negroes by themselves.... Use all the Negroes you can
get for all purposes for which you need them but don't arm them. The
day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the
revolution. If slaves make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery
is wrong."[29] General Beauregard, Commander of the Department of
Georgia, South Carolina and Florida, wrote to a friend in July, 1863,
that the arming of the slaves would lead to the atrocious consequences
which have ever resulted from the employment of "a merciless servile
race as soldiers."[30] General Patton Anderson declared that the idea
of arming the slaves was a "monstrous proposition revolting to
southern sentiment, southern pride and southern honor."[31]

The opposite point of view was expressed by the group of southerners
led by General Pat Cleburne who in a petition presented to General
Joseph E. Johnson by several Confederate Officers wrote: "Will the
slaves fight?--the experience of this war has been so far, that
half-trained Negroes have fought as bravely as many half-trained
Yankees."[32] J. P. Benjamin, Secretary of State, urged that the slave
would be certainly made to fight against them, if southerners failed
to arm them for southern defense. He advocated also the emancipation
of those who would fight; if they should fight for southern freedom.
According to Benjamin, they were entitled to their own. In keeping
with the necessity of increasing the army, the editor of a popular
newspaper in Charleston, South Carolina, was besought to commence a
discussion on this point in his paper so that "the people might learn
the lesson which experience was sternly teaching."[33]

In a letter to President Davis, another argued that since the Negro
had been used from the outset of the war to defend the South by
raising provisions for the army, that the sword and musket be put in
his hands, and concluding the correspondent added: "I would not make a
soldier of the Negro if it could be helped, but we are reduced to this
last resort."[34] Sam Clayton of Georgia wrote: "The recruits should
come from our Negroes, nowhere else. We should away with pride of
opinion, away with false pride, and promptly take hold of all the
means God has placed within our reach to help us through this
struggle--a war for the right of self