This week’s prompt asked you to consider how, when, and why Confederate officials began to embrace the idea of enlisting slaves as soldiers, and if this Confederate measure could be called “emancipation.” Adam’s post offers a detailed explanation of how and when Confederates embraced the enlistment of the enslaved as “essentially a last ditch effort.” Craig also explains the how, when, and why of Confederate “Emancipation.” Although he approached Levine’s book with skepticism, he found Confederate Emancipation’s argument convincing because it “ranged across multiple factions” to provide a maximal explanation for slave enlistment, and because Levine’s arguments tied into our previous discussions in this course. Jocelyn’s post takes on Prompt 2, and analyzes Union emancipation in tandem with “Confederate Emancipation.” Jocelyn succinctly argues, “Despite the differences in their concepts of emancipation, though, the Confederacy’s and Union’s reasons for emancipation were surprisingly similar.”
Could differences and similarities between Union and Confederate “Emancipation” reveal something about understandings of masculinity as well as race? What do debates over emancipation – among northerners and southerners – suggest about the co-construction of race and gender?