For those who might be interested, I've web-published an article on the touchy subject of black Confederate combat soldiers on my Civil War website. The article is titled "Black Confederates, Political Correctness, and a Virginia Textbook: Black Soldiers in the Confederate Army."
Both sides in the Civil War debate have mistakenly argued or assumed that admitting that some blacks fought for the Confederacy invalidates emancipation. Many (not all, but many) pro-Confederate authors have cited the evidence of black Confederate soldiers to discredit emancipation, and most orthodox scholars seem to have unfortunately accepted this false premise and have gone to the extreme of dismissing the substantial evidence that several thousand blacks voluntarily fought for the Confederacy.
The article is available on my Civil War website:
The American Civil War: An Alternative View
Here is the direct link to the article:
Black Confederates, Political Correctness, and a Virginia Textbook: Black Soldiers in the Confederate Army
EXCERPT:
The chief inspector of the U.S. Sanitary Commission in the Army of the Potomac, Dr. Lewis Steiner, reported that he saw about 3,000 well-armed black Confederate soldiers in Stonewall Jackson’s army in Frederick, Maryland, and that those soldiers were "manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army." Jackson’s army was part of Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Said Steiner,
Wednesday, September 10 -- At four o'clock this morning the rebel army began to move from our town, Jackson's force taking the advance. The movement continued until eight o'clock P.M., occupying sixteen hours. The most liberal calculations could not give them more than 64,000 men. Over 3,000 negroes must be included in this number. These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only in cast-off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. These were shabby, but not shabbier or seedier than those worn by white men in rebel ranks. Most of the negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabres, bowie-knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy Army. They were seen riding on horses and mules, driving wagons, riding on caissons, in ambulances, with the staff of Generals, and promiscuously mixed up with all the rebel horde. (Report of Lewis H. Steiner, New York: Anson D. F. Randolph, 1862, pp. 10-11)
None other than African-American abolitionist Frederick Douglass complained that there were “many” blacks in the Confederate army who were armed and “ready to shoot down” Union soldiers. He added that this was "pretty well established":
It is now pretty well established, that there are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may. . . . (Douglass' Monthly, September 1861, online copy available at Frederick Douglass :: Fighting Rebels With Only One Hand | radical journal | Edited by Saswat Pattanayak)
In a Union army battle report, General David Stuart complained about the deadly effectiveness of the black Confederate soldiers whom his troops had encountered. The “armed negroes,” he said, did “serious execution upon our men."
