This narrative fits neatly into the burgeoning Lost Cause narrative. As you will read in my forthcoming book on the subject, former Confederates almost never referred to impressed slaves and even personal body servants as soldier. They were not at any time referred to as soldiers, but as loyal slaves fighting side by side with white men in a cause that united both races. Notice that Forrest was careful in the way he characterized these men. Those boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better confederates did not live. I said to them at the start: ‘This fight is against slavery if we lose it, you will be made free if we whip in the fight, and if you stay with me and be good boys, I will set you free. When I entered the army I took forty-seven Negroes into the army with me, and forty-five of them were surrendered with me. One of them centers on an interview Nathan Bedford Forrest gave in 1868. Over the years the neo-Confederate community has relied on a short list of narratives purporting to demonstrate the existence of significant numbers of loyal black Confederate soldiers.
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