Local author releases novel on blacks in Confederate South

By Bryan G. Robinson

January 16, 2003

Did free blacks support the Confederacy during the Civil War?
About 10 years ago, this was the question Winston Jones of West Chester asked himself.

What he discovered was that, yes, free blacks did support the Confederacy and in November, he independently published a novel "For God, Country and the Confederacy" through First Books, based on those findings.
The novel follows the St. Claire family, a free black family who owns a farm and owns slaves to help work the land in New Orleans, and begins the day Fort Sumter was attacked and ends, one year later, the day New Orleans falls to the Union.
The book is available online from Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble and
Jones has signings planned locally throughout the months of February and March. The book is also available at Barnes and Noble at Main Street at Exton.
The first signing is on Sunday, Feb. 9 at 3 p.m. at Art Partners Studio in Coatesville. Another signing is planned for Saturday, March 8 at noon at the Dane Tilghman Gallery also in Coatesville.
Jones, a playwright who works at HDX in Exton as an engineer, spent five and 1/2 years researching the novel, which he first began as a play. Most of the time, he said, he spent checking and re-checking notes to insure that he was being historically accurate.
"When I was in school, I was taught that blacks in the Confederate South were either slaves or were trying to escape to the North. They were uneducated and had no rights," he said.
He said the information found in history books didn't give the full picture, because what he learned was that free blacks did live in the South. "They could read, they were educated, they had businesses and had an economic foothold in the Confederacy," he said.
When the Civil War started, he said about 40 percent of the Confederate South was black and between 50 to 7 percent or a quarter of a million of those blacks were free. "In many cases, they had five to 10 generations of freedom," said Jones.
He said some also had slaves.
"We need to get this information out, so black kids growing up don't feel like they're victims and so white kids don't think all whites are oppressors," he said. "Blacks were more than just slaves, but we were never taught that. We were not given enough information so we could make our own decisions."
He said he is an one-person campaign to get the history books correct. "The kids are the leaders of tomorrow," said Jones. "If we continue to raise our children by telling them that one race is the victim and the other is the oppressor, then there are going to continue to be problems between the races understanding one another."
He said all most people know about the Confederate South is from three movies, "Birth of a Nation," "Gone with the Wind," and "Roots." And all three deal with blacks being victims, he said. "As a nation, that brings with it a lot of guilt," he added.
He said as a result of his research, he learned that blacks were not always victims and that he and his wife, Jodi, are raising their son, Elliot, 11, to think differently about blacks in the South. "Not every black was a slave," he said. "Some were free, educated, owned businesses and were part of the economy in the South."
However, he stressed that he was not saying that slavery was good. "It is a scar on America's past, but not every black was a slave in the Confederate South."
Asked why he chose to put this information in the form of a novel, he said, "Because all the research is out there, but it's dull and clinical."
He said that he does include a bibliography in the book for those that want to study the issue further.
So why independently publish the book? He said he tried when President Bush was first elected to sell the book to prospective publishers, but at the time the issue was too hot with controversy over Confederate flags being flown at state capitals. He said he sent 75 query letters and received all of them back within a few weeks with a negative response.
That is part of the reason why he chose to publish the book himself. However, he said the book is not about race, but about how the Civil War impacted a free black family of the Confederate South, specifically, in this case, the fictional St. Claire family of New Orleans.
In addition to the signings already mentioned, Jones has the following book signings scheduled:
n Wednesday, Feb. 12 at 7:30 p.m. at Barnes & Noble at Main Street at Exton
n Saturday, Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. at the Chester County Conference and Visitor's Bureau in Kennett Square
n Thursday, Feb. 27 at Hudson United Bank in West Chester.
There also may be two others later in March at the Chester County Book Store in Downingtown and West Chester, dates to be determined.