In September 1863, two of the Confederate generals who had been involved, at a distance, in the battle of Milliken’s Bend began to consider the unthinkable – arming slaves.

In the immediate aftermath of the battle in June, Trans-Mississippi commander Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith had encouraged Maj. Gen. Richard Taylor to recognize “the propriety of giving no quarter to armed negroes and their officers.” Likewise, Smith made a similar suggestion through his assistant adjutant general to Brig. Gen. Paul Octave Hebert in Monroe, Louisiana, though Smith recommended turning over “slaves in arms” to State authorities to be dealt with through civilian, rather than military, channels.

After the fall of Vicksburg in July, the manpower shortage in the Confederate Trans-Mississippi became acute. Confederate conscription was met with more resistance than compliance. Even if the South had had sufficient men in the ranks in the West, a famine of weaponry would have prevented them being fulled armed and equipped.

By September – a mere three months after the engagement at Milliken’s Bend – both Smith and Hebert were ready to consider how slaves and some free Southern blacks could be used in a greater effort to support the Southern cause. Smith wrote an officer stationed in Houston of Smith’s quartermaster issuing a call for 3000 Negro men, who would be “regularly organized under white superintendents for duty in this Dept.” These men would be used for “elements of labor and military defence in our cause.” But Smith knew that he was walking a fine line: “This is as near a military organization as I dare embark upon,” he wrote, feeling it was a matter for the States to decide, adding that should they approve, he would have “no hesitation” in “calling out a military force from amongst the slave population” when sufficient arms and equipment could be obtained.

At the same time, Brig. Gen. Paul Octave Hebert had apparently made a similar proposal. Smith responded through his aide-de-camp that such a suggestion was “totally at variance with the policy of the Government.” Arms shortages were already acute, and besides, Smith said, he would not take up such an issue without action on the part of the States.

It is telling that just months after Smith and others had shouted about the heinous crime of enlisting slaves into the Union army, that they began to consider it themselves. Even if such a proposal was tabled due to lack of legislative action, it is astonishing that a Confederate general of the rank and stature of Edmund Kirby Smith would consider the possibility of such an action – most particularly when it was evident that doing so would be “at variance” with Confederate national policy. By the fall of 1863, times were indeed becoming more difficult for the Confederate Trans-Mississippi.

Sources: Milliken’s Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory , pp. 115-116, 191-192, 188.
Sept. 21, 1863, Official Letter Book, (microfilm reel 5), Edmund Kirby-Smith Papers (#404), Southern Historical Collection, Manuscripts Department, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.
War of the Rebellion: The Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. 26, part 2, p.312.