The (Very) Posthumous Enlistment of “Private” Clark Lee
Kevin and Brooks have been all over the Georgia Civil War Commission, and particularly of its handling of the case of Clark Lee, “Chickamauga’s Black Confederate Soldier.” I won’t rehash all of that, but there are a few points to add.
First, kudos to Eric Jacobson, who noticed that the modern painting of Lee used by the commission on its marker (right) is almost laughably tailored to affirm Lee’s status as a soldier, including the military coat with trim and brass buttons, rifle, cartridge box belt, military-issue “CS” belt buckle, and revolver, all backed by a Confederate Battle Flag — even though the Army of the Tennessee didn’t adopt that flag until the appointment of General Joseph E. Johnston, well after the Battle of Chickamauga.
It’s probably also worth noting that the man in the painting looks a lot older than 15, the age the Georgia Civil War Commission says Lee was at the time of the battle.
As it turns out, several weeks ago the SCV and other heritage folks installed and dedicated a new headstone for Lee, explicitly (and posthumously) giving him the military rank of Private. The stone also states that Lee “fought at” Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, the Atlanta Campaign, and a host of other engagements by the Army of Tennessee. These are very specific claims, so it’s worth asking what the specific evidence for them is.
E. Raymond Evans (center, with umbrella), author of The Life and Times of Clark Lee: Chickamauga’s Black Confederate Soldier, speaking at an SCV memorial service for Clark Lee in April 2013. From here.
As is so often the case, there doesn’t appear to be any contemporary (1861-65) record of Lee’s service. There is no compiled service record (CSR) for him at the National Archives. Presumably the historical marker, the headstone, and a recent privately-published work on Clark Lee are all based on his 1921 application for a pension from the State of Tennessee, where he had moved in the years after the war. You can read Lee’s complete pension application here (29MB PDF). I cannot find a word in it that mentions or describes Clark Lee’s service under arms, or in combat. There is a general description of Lee’s wartime activities, but it’s quite different from what the Georgia Civil War Commission wants the rest of us to understand about him. I’ve put it below the jump because of some of the unpleasant themes expressed.
Lee’s pension file is longer than most — 20 pages — in part because it was initially denied by the state pension board, and there was much subsequent correspondence to establish his eligibility before he was finally approved. One of these items is a letter, dated June 16, 1923, addressed to U.S. Representative Gordon Lee. The letter in the pension file is unsigned — it’s presumably a carbon of the original — but the writer may have been State Senator Edgar Jones Graham of Hickman County, who originally put forward the legislation creating the program two years before. The letter lays out Clark Lee’s situation and claim for a Tennessee pension:
It’s one of the great ironies of Black Confederate Soldier advocacy that one of its central talking points — they received pensions, therefore were considered to have been soldiers, Q.E.D. — is undermined again and again by the actual content of those very documents. We saw it with Thomas Tobe, we saw it with Richard Quarls, we saw it with Wade Childs, and we saw it with Louis Napoleon Nelson.
And now with “Private” Clark Lee.
______________
Dead Confederates, A Civil War Era Blog 
Great work as always Andy.
Thanks. If we’re going to talk about Clark Lee, or anyone else, we oughter go back to the source material.
Absolutely.
Another fine article on the black Confederate phenomenon, Andy. I find the painting particularly amusing–not too many Army of Tennessee troops had such a military look as “Private” Clark Lee does here. Lots of the white enlisted men in this army were wearing civilian coats and belt buckles. Revolvers generally weren’t permitted in the ranks, either–though they were used as props in portraits, of course. The intent of the painting is pretty obvious.
Excellent post, Andy. Examples such as these never cease to amaze me. How can you possibly give a man the rank of private and assert he “fought” when there’s no historical evidence he did so?
What historically oriented groups should be doing, in cases such as Thomas Tobe’s, where grave markers are in dire need of replacement, is to simply work with the family – if any still survives – to purchase and erect and tasteful gravestone, rather than a VA marker.
Whether there would be any mention of the interred’s service as a servant during the war would be up to the family, but it should not be the focus. That seems much more respectful than using these long-dead ex-slaves as pawns in modern social-political squabbles.
Families sometimes get drawn into these things, too. Presumably they — like most Americans in the early 21st century — know very little about their ancestors from 150 years ago. So when some heritage group genealogist calls and says, “we’ve researched your g-g-g-grandfather, and found out he was a Southern hero, and we want to hold a military ceremony honoring him,” that’s very appealing. They’re just as vulnerable to this narrative as the general public.
I just love how the Lost Causers beg for people to “let the facts speak for themselves.” Then they go out and change the facts because the facts prove them dead wrong. The whole black confederate thing is nothing more than a gigantic distortion of the facts. This Georgia Civil War Commission is just the continuing attempt of Lost Causers to create a past that did not exist. Apparently their tourist concept is aimed at aging white conservatives who want to believe in a fictional past.
Jimmy, this is the list of proclamations the commission has issued, from their website. Notice any leanings?
Robert_E._Lee’s 202nd Birthday_Proclamation(2009)
Robert E. Lee’s 205th Birthday Proclamation(2012)
Robert_E_Lee’s 206th Birthday Proclamation(2013)
Gov._Deal_150th Anniversary of Battle of Sharpsburg(2012)
Alexander_Hamilton_Stephens (2012)
Confederate_History_Month (2003)
Confederate_History_Month (2008)
Confederate_History_Month (2009)
Confederate_History_Month (2011)
Confederate_History_Month (2012)
Confederate_History_Month (2013)
Hmm, there could be a general trend there. I’m not sure. May need to do some more research. I may wait for them to commemorate Sherman’s March to the Sea. I’m sure they can post links to all the burned out and destroyed places along the way while advertising Antebellum mansions and buildings and whole Antebellum town squares that aging white conservatives will flock to.
That and maybe celebrating all the black men from Georgia who enlisted in the USCT and fought to preserve the Union and stop the traitors who were attempting secession.
I’m sure they’ll be announcing those celebrations any day now.
Jimmy, the North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission, a private group set up to counter the “cultural Marxism” of that state’s official observance, puts USCTs from North Carolina under “Acts of Treason Against North Carolina</strong>.”
Can’t make this up.
No, you really can’t. Those that prefer the lie will go to great lengths to perpetuate it. I just used the Georgia case in my doctorate course on education to show the other students how false information is sometimes promoted by government websites. Then I explained how we call this propaganda. I’ll let you know if anyone comments.
I don’t usually get into discussions of who is a traitor, but your link to that website is troubling. I spent an evening riding Long Ridge Rd last week, visiting the many family cemeteries that dot the landscape. This road runs from outside Little Washington to Plymouth. You will find many proud Americans with 1st North Carolina Union Volunteers emblazoned upon their tombstones. These men risked it all and have not been given the respect that is owed to them by this country.
…..thanks for plowing through the bull-roar….
Andy…somehow I missed this post…again…very nice work.
Since the Georgia Civil War Commission can bestow rank on someone without a scintilla of proof that person ever took up arms, I’d like to do the same. Henceforth, Clark Lee shall be known as Rear Admiral of the Confederate States Zeppelin Corps.
Don’t forget Peter Phelps…
https://deadconfederates.com/2011/05/15/peter-phelps-was-not-a-negro-in-grey/
Phelps is a different sort of case. He really was a soldier. He just wasn’t African American. 😉
Yes, true, but you are letting history get in the way of Heritage…
I’m a repeat offender.
Nice work, as always
Thanks.
I’m sure, Andy…you WILL “offend” again! LoL
I continue to be baffled by the fact that this sort of nonsense is a problem Civil War scholars face.
Thanks for posting the pension file– I have never had the chance to read one of those before.
Most Civil War scholars ignore it altogether. They see it as a fixation of a small group of people, part of a larger schema of rationalizations, deflections and false narratives necessary to lionize the Confederate cause as a whole. They see it as unworthy nonsense, and to an extent, they’re right.
What they miss, though, is that the black Confederate narrative has been stealing a march (or four) on them wit the general public’s understanding of the war, at a basic, grass-roots level. Every graveside ceremony, newspaper story or historical marker moves this narrative forward a little more. Taken individually, these stories (like Clark Lee’s) are very easily challenged, but there’s always another, equally contrived example to cite for those who want to believe.
But good on you for reading through the pension application. You’ll find several others in posts I’ve written on this subject. Advocates of the black Confederate meme love to hand-wave at pensions as evidence for their claims, but either don’t know or don’t care that those same documents often undermine the very claims they’re making.
It is easy to understand why these groups want to believe these variations of the Lost Cause narrative, but harder to comprehend that they do. The mistrust of historical research and critical analysis that generally permeates their ranks just does not compute with me.
Pension applications provide such a wealth of information. I’ve only read veterans’ invalid and widows’ pensions, but it’s remarkable how much you can piece together about the lives and experiences of the individuals through these records. I would love to see some sort of digital project that can make these “body servant” pension records more readily available for the public’s perusal, as well as written scholarship.
There’s a set of core beliefs that binds the heritage movement that all go together — war was about tariffs, slavery was relatively benign, etc. — but they don’t stand up well to direct challenge. There’s a heritage group on Facebook that has made it official policy that their members should not visit blogs like mine, ostensibly because pageviews generate advertising income for me. There is no paid advertising on this blog and never has been, but they’re got to come up with some reason, right? 😉
Kaci, the other thing to remember is that the modern black Confederate narrative is a modern updating of the old “faithful slave” meme that is one of the foundational concepts of the Lost Cause. Its purpose now, as then, was to frame slavery as a fundamentally benign and mutually-beneficial institution, in which these men’s highest aspiration was “to serve their white folks.” That argument doesn’t cut it anymore, so the narrative has been shifted to make them not loyal to their owners, but loyal to the Confederacy and willingly serving as soldiers under arms. It’s a old and rancid idea, fitted out in a fresh, butternut uniform.
Indeed. Remarkable how the Lost Cause Myth refuses to die after all these years.
It’s like the whole modern day Southern Heritage agenda for many is a religion!
There are similarities.
Southern politicians, landholders, slave-owners (Southern Gentry) found a willing and unwitting accomplice to their end of retaining power in the South: enlist the white populace by appealing to the darker side of their nature. The majority of white Southerners at the time was of English or Scots-Irish heritage and ascribed to a personal code of honor and a distrust of centralized power (The Government). It wasn’t hard to convince them that the U.S. Government was out to steal their very way of life, and the only way to preserve it was to secede. Ironically some of the same thinking seems to linger on in (mostly) the South to this day and it will likely be many generations (if ever) before this mentality subsides.
I don’t blame most of these folks for believing this, it’s in their upbringing. You have to wonder though; will historical fact and reality ever really sink in?
Seems to be a racist page here, using buzz words as “posthumous”, “laughable”, etc. Lee’s portrait is merely a portrait of respect and honor and, to racists, a bit “overdone”. Have some respect for this gentleman. The Confederate forces had Blacks fighting with them side by side. The Union forces, segregated Blacks by placing them in separate units as pawns.
I stand by what I said. The portrait is laughable, and clearly designed to depict Lee in a role that he did not have. The figure in the portrait isn’t even the right age. I have said nothing disrespectful about Lee, but I have very little use for people who are misrepresenting him for their own purposes.
Do you laugh at portraits of Martin Luther King? Were you there at the time of Lee Clark? How do you know?The said people are not misrepresenting him “for their own purpose”, but are recognizing him for his achievements. This whole “posthumous” bit is laughable. Please do not stand on any more weak ground.
If you have documentation that Clark Lee was enlisted and carried the rank of Private, post it.
Andy,
Recently I encountered some statements supposedly made by Nathan Bedford Forrest, that he told several of the slaves who were with him as servants that if they fought alongside him they would be freed. He later claimed to have freed them when he was afraid of dying, not wanting to leave his promise unfulfilled. And also something to the effect that these men were “as good Confederates as any white soldier.”
Have you addressed this and can you point me to the post, or if you haven’t, would you consider making a post about it? If true it would seem to be a rare instance of a contemporary white man saying that he considered black men soldiers of the Confederacy. Did he say these things, and were they true? If true, who were these people and why haven’t I seen them trotted out by Southern apologists?
That quote is trotted out regularly. I haven’t addressed it because it’s a postwar statement attributed to Forrest, and there’s not really any way I know of to verify or refute the accuracy of it. Forrest was not above making self-serving statements of that sort.
“If true it would seem to be a rare instance of a contemporary white man saying that he considered black men soldiers of the Confederacy.”
“As good as” is not the same thing as saying “they were.” He’s praising them and comparing them to soldiers, but at the same time acknowledging that they were not. Keep in mind that the question of “soldier or not” is a very specific and knowable one, that hinges on the mens’ recognized status within the C.S. Army. It’s not a question of Forrest’s opinion (or mine) about what qualified as a “soldier.”
Absolutely. But in my experience, when held with semi-reasonable human beings, the conversation tends to go, “There were black soldiers in the Confederate army, such as X.” “X was a servant according to the pension rolls.” “Oh, well, he wasn’t OFFICIALLY a soldier but his fellow soldiers considered him one.” “There’s contemporary evidence that wasn’t true, based on the statements or behavior of his fellow soldiers.” “Why do you hate black history?”
I wondered if this was, at least, an example of a contemporary saying he considered them soldiers. If these (41 people, if I recall) men were freed by law during the war, oughtn’t there to be a record of it?
Andy, my impression from reading the pension file is that the (white) veterans knew a black man who had been a body servant in the war who was of advanced age at the time and wanted to provide for him, not an unusual (paternalistic) response to that situation. Tennessee and maybe another state or two made provision for such black persons in these situations. I think the BCS books enumerate those pensions (not more than a hundred) which exist in those states. But not the basis for tens of thousands of BCS.
Scott:
Thanks very much for taking time to comment. most of the former Confederate states established pension programs for African-American men who had been servants, cooks, etc. during the war with the Confederate Army. These programs very state to state, but generally they were established many years after similar programs for white veterans, did not extend benefits to dependents (e.g., widows), and provided smaller stipends. It is absolutely true, as you suggest, that there was a good bit of paternalistic intent and genuine affection in some cases that motivated white veterans and other Southerners to encourage their states to create these programs in the first place. The best example I’ve seen of this movement appears in an editorial essay from the old Confederate Veteran magazine that you can read here. Sorry about the language used in it, but that was common for that day.
While I don’t have hard numbers, my guess is that across the former Confederate states there were probably between 2000 and 5000 African-American men who receive some sort of pension or stipend based on their activities during the war. That’s a tiny fraction of the number of white Confederate veterans and their widows who were pensioned during that same period, but it’s not an insignificant number.
What I have seen, though, is that in the last 25 years there has been a widespread and largely successful effort to rebrand these men who served almost entirely in noncombatant roles, and generally were considered to be civilians, as actual Confederate soldiers in the ranks of the Southern Army. The man profiled here, Clark Lee (and especially that portrait, that appears to be based on nothing more than the artist’s imagination), is a good example of this. His actual record during the war, what we know of it is pension statement, is completely at odds with the way he wwas presented by this local SCV group, that even assigned him the formal rank of private. Although that has no basis at all in the historical record, it’s now written in stone quite literally. I believe, frankly, that various heritage groups have badly misrepresented the actual lives of these men, and that is a real disservice both to their memory and to the historical record.
if you’re interested in further reading on Confederate pensions, I would recommend the late James G Hollandsworth, Jr’s essay, “Looking for Bob.” It’s a very good introduction subject, that explains what Confederate pensions are, and are not, and how they are best used for historical research:
Click to access pensioners.pdf