UDC marks another black Confederate grave

[The Straight Story]

UDC marks another black Confederate grave

By Clayta Richards / Chronicle staffwriter

On Sunday afternoon at Old Union Cemetery in southern White County, over 180 people gathered to pay a debt owed nearly 80 years. The group included members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, Sons of Confederate Veterans, family and friends, all there to memorialize the service of Pvt. Henry Henderson, a black Confederate soldier.

Henderson was born in 1849 in Davidson County, NC. He was 11 years old when he entered service with the Confederate States of America as a cook and servant to Colonel William F. Henderson, a medical doctor. Records show Henry was wounded during his service, but he continued to serve until the war's end in 1865. He was discharged in Salem, NC, age 16.

After the war, Henry married Miranda Shockley, of White County, TN. The couple raised five children.

"We're here to honor him," said his great-grandson, Oscar Fingers, of Evansville, IN. "I think he would be proud his family has come this far and to know all we have done." Several other family members made the trip with Fingers from Indiana for Sunday's ceremony.

Sons Dalton and Lee received Henderson's first and last Tennessee Colored Confederate pension check upon their father's death in September 1926. The check provided enough funds to bury their father, but not enough to buy a headstone for his grave.

The 60,000-90,000 black Confederate soldiers are often called "the forgotten Confederates," but through the concerted efforts of the Capt. Sally Tompkins Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy along with the Sons of the Confederate Veterans, several graves have been found in the Upper Cumberland and have been or will be marked.


http://www.crossville-chronicle.com/features/local_story_229160746.html

Images at the link, looks like a trip back in time.

[bluestateguy]

1. There were no black Confederate soldiers. That's junk history.

None that made it into service anyway. Plans to organize slave soldiers in 1865 did not materialize because the war ended.

[semillama]

2. They listed him as a "private"

but from the article, it's clear he was a manservant to a white man. Did the CSA actually give military rank to black cooks/servants? First I've heard of it. I'm just slightly horrified at the Confederate battle flag plaques given to the descendents. Wouldn't that be like giving a Nazi swastika to some German jew who served in the infantry but managed to hide his ancestry?

[RaleighNCDUer]

3. Actually, it would be more like awarding a swastika plaque to a

jew who assisted the Nazi war effort by laboring in a munitions plant - as tens of thousands did, under compulsion. They had no choice, and got slightly better rations, and at the slightest infraction they were returned to Auschwitz.

An eleven year old child slave is NOT a confederate soldier, no matter how you slice it. And if he was called 'Private' it would be more like the company mascot dog being called 'the General' - everyone there knew what he really was.

[ComerPerro]

5. well, or years afterward, heirs to the "Confederacy" made him a private

[semillama]

7. good points, thanks!

didn't even think to look at his age. what a crock of horseshit.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. The 60,000 - 90,000 black Confederate soldiers

is a myth. There were black labor battalions, under white command of course, but there is no evidence that there were ever any black soldiers bearing arms for the Confederacy. None. Nowhere.

And for the apologists who believe that nonsense, just think about it.

Would any Confederate officer with any sense of self preservation go into battle with five thousand, or one thousand, or even one hundred armed slaves who are serving with the promise of their emancipation after the war? What would stop them from emancipating themselves, immediately, if they had the weapons in hand? And if they were not fighting for their emancipation, what would they fight for? The priviledge of remaining a slave?

There were black labor battalions, and they may have been issued uniforms even, but that would only signify that they were owned by the army. Nothing more.

[butterfly77]

6. What ever he was its the same story...

too much, too little, too late.