Has anybody read "Black Confederates" or "Black Southerners in Confederate Armies"? I was reading some of the reviews of these books on Amazon and there is some debate about their accuracy.
One reviewer on Amazon states:
"In fact, the most conservative estimate is that some 50,000 African Americans served on the Confederate side, compared to 600,000 to 1,000,000 white Confederates (depending on who did the counting). Few of them were "properly enlisted," of course (the Confederate Congress did not authorize such enlistments until the War was in its last days), but those who worked as servants, bodyguards, nurses, cooks, scouts, barbers, teamsters, musicians, and construction workers frequently joined the fight, whether sanctioned or not. The irony, of course, is that black Confederates served within white units, while black Union troops were carefully segregated from white troops."
While another claims:
"It should be pointed out that during the Civil War, Grant captured three Confederate armies. In the official records, nor in any published memoir, regimental history or other document related to the processing of these armies is there any reference to the capture and processing of black Confederate soldiers. Either they didn't exist or they refused to come forward, for whatever reason, to identify themselves as such. The only blacks mentioned are bandsmen, cooks, teamasters and servants."
I did a quick search on Wikipedia and there seems to be a few first-hand accounts of African American Confederate soldiers:
1) "One account of an unidentified African American fighting for the Confederacy, from two Southern 1862 newspapers[52], tells of "a huge negro" fighting under the command of Confederate Major General John C. Breckinridge against the 14th Maine Infantry Regiment in a battle near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, on August 5, 1862. The man was described as being "armed and equipped with knapsack, musket, and uniform", and helping to lead the attack[53]."
2) "After the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, "reported among the rebel prisoners were seven blacks in Confederate uniforms fully armed as soldiers."[54]
3) "Dr. Lewis Steiner, Chief Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission while observing Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson's occupation of Frederick, Maryland, in 1862: "Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this number [Confederate troops]. 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 the rebel ranks. Most of the Negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc.....and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederate Army." [55]
4) "Union Brigadier-General D. Stuart observed that
"...the enemy, and especially their armed negroes, did dare to rise and fire, and did serious execution upon our men. The casualties in the brigade were
11 killed, 40 wounded, and 4 missing; aggregate, 55...."[56]
What do you guys think? Do you think it was a very rare phenomenon or more widespread? It seems difficult to believe Dr Steiner's account of 3,000 troops
in Stonewall's corps - perhaps an exaggeration? Its an interesting topic though.
