Cleburne, Patrick Ronayne

An Irish immigrant, Cleburne was a well-respected Confederate general perhaps most notable for his proposal to emancipate slaves who served the southern war effort. He was killed in action in late 1864. Cleburne served in western campaigns with several Dickinsonians, including Flavel Barber and Isaac Sullivan.
Life Span
to
Full name
Patrick Ronayne Cleburne
Place of Birth
Birth Date Certainty
Estimated
Death Date Certainty
Exact
Gender
Male
Race
White
Sectional choice
South
Origins
Free State
No. of Spouses
0
No. of Children
0
Family
Joseph Cleburne (father), Susan Tarleton (fiancee)
Occupation
Military
Attorney or Judge
Other
Other Occupation
Druggist
Relation to Slavery
White non-slaveholder
Military
Confederate Army
Foreign military

Patrick Ronayne Cleburne (American National Biography)

Scholarship
Cleburne, however, is best remembered as the first prominent Confederate officer to advocate enlisting blacks in the army and rewarding them with emancipation. During the winter of 1863-1864 Cleburne circulated through the Army of Tennessee a proposal to use slaves as soldiers. It did not garner much support, but a copy was sent to Jefferson Davis.

What made Pat Cleburne willing to promote black freedom? Most likely, his Irish birth gave him a perspective different from that of his fellow Confederates. On the one hand, he believed that Confederate defeat would put the South in the same relationship to the North that Ireland had to Britain, and he was willing to sacrifice slavery to prevent that. He believed that the Confederate patriot should "give up the negro slave rather than be a slave himself." On the other hand, he had no doubts that an agrarian labor force could be exploited without the institution of slavery. Finally, despite more than a decade's residence in the southern United States, Cleburne had never owned a slave.

Cleburne's vision brought him little applause. Davis ordered his proposal suppressed. Cleburne received no preferment after filing his proposal--a case where a man's ideological unreliability overshadowed his undeniable competence.
Reid Mitchell, "Cleburne, Patrick Ronayne," American National Biography Online, February 2000, http://www.anb.org/articles/04/04-00241.html.
How to Cite This Page: "Cleburne, Patrick Ronayne," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/5414.