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Zero, repeat ZERO, blacks fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War. At the onset, a regiment of Louisiana free blacks was formed, but the CSA refused to accept it, which then joined the Union forces. Two weeks before Appomattox, the Confederate Congress authorized black regiments, but none were formed. To put Lincoln's racial views in context, the Democrat position at the time was that blacks were to be chained and whipped. As for the Radical Republicans, their name referred to them being radically against slavery. Their bad reputation in history books is due to the fact that most history book are written by Democrats.

Zero, repeat ZERO, blacks fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War.

Well, tell that to my friend who just got through compiling a whole reference book on Black soldiers in both armies of the war. Tell that to the many descendents of Black confederates, who still have photos of their ancestors in Confederate uniforms.

Your prtisanship, plus no doubt your indoctrination in a collectivist, governmental indoctrination camp, has blinded your view of history. Washington warned us about that "spirit of party."

For the record, I am, politically above all else, ANTI-Democrat.

PS: The Radical Republicans are praised and adulated in every governmental textbook *I* have seen. They were called 'radicals" because that's what they were, and their aims are being steadily achieved, mostly these days by the modern Democratic Party.

"Zero, repeat ZERO, blacks fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War."

Not to be gratuitously offensive, but be careful when you use a term like zero. Of course it isn't true.

For a generation historians have been trying to figure out the question of how many blacks fought for the Confederacy.

Currently it seems that certain things are agreed by both sides. There were many instances of "personal servants" that went to war with a young soldier, and filled the person's slot during a leave or injury or death. There were many times where teamsters or cooks fought for short times due to emergency situations. Stonewall Jackson, who taught Sunday school for slaves before the war was a bit of a magnet for southern blacks, and Maryland civilians reported seeing some Confederate black soldiers from Stonewall's Second Corps marching in order (or as much order Confederates ever marched in) through the streets of Fredrick. There's a report from the Peninsula campaign of Union soldiers finally killing a sniper in a tree and being surprised that he was a black Confederate. In Burke Davis' book "To Appomattox", he quotes from a diary on page 176 of a soldier watching a group of black Confederates driving off a Union cavalry regiment before being itself scattered by a second charge. This may be the only time an all black Confederate group went into battle just 5 days before Lee's surrender.

Anyway, the fact that some blacks fought for the Confederacy is not disputed. Nor is the fact that many more wanted to fight, and many more donated by buying war bonds and such.

What is under dispute is whether these instances were just a few unusual cases, or if it was a larger scale movement. The best book I've seen on the topic I can't remember the title of but it was something like "Black Yankees and Afro Confederates", but it was the best treatment of blacks in Civil War Virginia, the state that had the most slaves, and the second most freed blacks before the war (Maryland first).

Anyway, in the middle of this years of research and argument, it's not helpful when someone says "zero" blacks ever fought for the Confederacy. It doesn't help either side's argument. It just comes across as unlearned.

Zero, repeat ZERO, blacks fought on the Confederate side during the Civil War.

Here is an excerpt from an article "Black Confederate Soldiers" by the black George Mason professor (who sometimes fills in for Rush) Walter Williams (Source: http://www.lizmichael.com/blkconfd.htm )

"DURING OUR WAR OF 1861, ex-slave Frederick Douglass observed, "There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty ... as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down ... and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government." ... Erwin L. Jordan's book "Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia" cites eyewitness accounts of the Antietam campaign of "armed blacks in rebel columns bearing rifles, sabers, and knives and carrying knapsacks and haversacks." ...

In April 1861, a Petersburg, Virginia newspaper proposed "three cheers for the patriotic free Negroes of Lynchburg" after 70 blacks offered "to act in whatever capacity may be assigned to them" in defense of Virginia. Erwin L. Jordan cites one case where a captured group of white slave owners and blacks were offered freedom if they would take an oath of allegiance to the United States. One free black indignantly replied, "I can't take no such oaf as dat. I'm a secesh nigger." ... A second slave said, "I ain't going out here on no dishonorable terms." One of the slave owners took the oath but his slave, who didn't take the oath, returning to Virginia under a flag of truce, expressed disgust at his master's disloyalty saying, "Massa had no principles."

... These are but a few examples of the important role that blacks served, both as slaves and freemen in the Confederacy during the War Between the States.

The flap over the Confederate flag is not quite as simple as the nation's race experts make it. They want us to believe the flag is a symbol of racism. Yes, racists have used the Confederate flag, but racists have also used the Bible and the U.S. flag. Should we get rid of the Bible and lower the U.S. flag? Black civil rights activists and their white liberal supporters who're attacking the Confederate flag have committed a deep, despicable dishonor to our patriotic black ancestors who marched, fought and died to protect their homeland from what they saw as Northern aggression.

They don't deserve the dishonor. "

As for the Radical Republicans, their name referred to them being radically against slavery. Their bad reputation in history books is due to the fact that most history book are written by Democrats.

Ditto that. The term "radical" was applied to them because they not only saw slavery as wrong (most moderates did as well) but because they also believed that blacks were the equal of whites and deserved all the protections under the constitution that whites recieved. That was a very radical idea in the mid 19th century.