Patrick Cleburne

What if the South had listened to Confederate Maj. Gen. Patrick Cleburne and freed the slaves?

and offered them land, eternal freedom if they would fight for the South. I know many might have just fled north, but if many had accepted, would the North have been held off long enough for the South to gain their independence?

Not just Cleburne, General Lee and Jackson both wanted to do the same thing but the politicians over ruled them. Gen Lee did not own slaves having freed his and those his wife brought into the family through marriage had in the early 1850′s. Some blacks did fight for the South in both military units and volunteered to help but this is often “forgotten” as not agreeing with the view that the American Civil War was about slavery. One standing order at Union prisons was that all blacks captured who were fighting for the South were to be shot as they entered the camps and when the South issued the order that blacks captured fighting for the North were to be sold in to slavery (it was after the Union order) it was widely published and still talked about today. No evidence exists that black Union soldiers were ever sold as slaves but more then one Union prison has remarks about black Confederate soldiers being shot as they entered the camp.