Sasquatchs
    “Bigfoot is one of the more famous examples of cryptozoology, a subject that the scientific community classifies as pseudoscience because of unreliable eyewitness accounts, lack of scientific or physical evidence, and over-reliance on confirmation rather than refutation. Scientific experts on the matter consider the Bigfoot legend to be a combination of folklore and hoaxes. Despite that status, Bigfoot is nevertheless a popular symbol….

    ”With only a slight change of wording, the preceding paragraph could be applied to the legions of “black Confederates” conjured up in the fevered imaginations of a certain segment of the Civil War community. No one denies that a handful of blacks (perhaps as many as 450) served in the Confederate army. No one denies that many blacks served as teamsters, cooks, and body servants. No one denies that these men sometimes carried weapons. No one denies that occasionally they fired them. But entire black units? Thousands, nay tens of thousands, of dusky warriors in gray? In a word, poppycock.

    One of our correspondents in this issue’s Crossfire column expresses the view that for any historian to claim that an issue is definitively settled is a mark of arrogance. And he explicitly points the finger at Bruce Levine’s conclusions regarding “black Confederates” as an instance of this. In general I would agree with the proposition that the humanities lack the clear-cut conclusions possible in the physical sciences (though given the state of modern physics, that statement can be challenged). However, there are instances where the evidence is so overwhelming that, after careful consideration, only those with a perverse axe to grind will fail to acknowledge it. Such a case, I believe, is the one concerning black Confederates. But don’t take my word for it. Simply read Bruce’s letter in this issue, with an open mind, and draw your own conclusions.

    Having considered the evidence, I find myself regarding Sasquatch and black Confederates in much the same light. There is no credible evidence pointing to the existence of either. You can, however, read about a popular version of the Sasquatch (“Susquatch”) in HulkComic, and about the equally fictitious black warriors on a host of neo-Confederate sites on the blogosphere.