central_va: "How do you explain the numerous first hand accounts from Yankee Officers and others of black rebel troops? Were they lying?"
I said, "occasional reports", and that's all you have.
Of course, we would expect that masters would bring their slaves with them, and some would even be trusted to fight -- especially, as donmeaker points out, many slaves were brothers & cousins of their masters.
My point remains valid: there were no Confederate colored troops remotely equivalent to those 178,000 (most from slave-states) who served & fought in the Union Army.
North Carolina fielded mixed race units. The most rural of the original colonies, the tar heels had a long tradition of miscegenation. They had permitted freedmen to vote until 1835, and were much less enthusiastic about the rebellion than South Carolina. yet their units were most effective at Chicamauga, Gettysburg and Franklin. Lee sent Pickett to buck up the cause, and Pickett has a fair number of captured US soldiers from NC hanged. Pickett was well known as the ‘goat’ of his class as West Point.