[BroJoeK]

LS: "He thinks Ervin Jordan (Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees) and his estimate of 100,000 throughout the entire war is probably too high-—maybe 60,000, none under arms except the rogue “onsies and twosies” that were in some frontier cavalry troops."

Here's what people need to understand:

1. Of the South's four million slaves in 1860 it is certain tens of thousands and likely hundreds of thousands served the Confederacy, in one capacity or another.
   Allen Guelzo estimates as many as 30,000 slaves accompanied Lee's army to Gettysburg, serving in every workman role imaginable except as soldiers.
   Multiply Lee's 30,000 slaves times every Confederate army, plus tens of thousands more working on fortifications, bridges, munitions factories, railroads, logistics, etc., etc.

   But Confederate slaves were not "drafted" and certainly not paid.
   They were rented out and their "owners" paid for their services.

2. Doubtless some slaves did carry arms and helped fight -- for their masters as body servants carrying spare guns & ammunition, etc.
   If Master was wounded in battle, his body servant might pick up a weapon to help defend him.
   How many such were there -- hundreds? dozens? a handful? Nobody knows.

3. Americans had won the Revolutionary War because George Washington enlisted more Africans as fighting soldiers than the Brits did.
   Everybody, especially Washington, understood that black enlistment meant the promise of emancipation at war's end.
   A German officer in the surrendering British Army at Yorktown in 1781 estimated one in four of Washington's soldiers there was black.
   During the Civil War Confederate leaders also fully understood that enlisting slaves meant emancipation -- and for precisely that reason they totally refused to even consider it until the war was all but lost.

4. The only Confederate black unit was mentioned above in posts #37 and #40 -- the 1861 First Louisiana National Guard which was quickly outlawed by the Confederate Louisiana legislature.
   Many of it's members later volunteered to join the Union Army.

Of course our Lost Causers wish us to forget the absolute centrality of slavery to Civil War Confederates, after all it doesn't help advance the mythology of heroic "freedom fighters" against Big Bad Washington Gub'mint.
But the real facts are glaringly obvious to anybody who makes any effort to find them.

[LS]

Yes, as I pointed out, a Confed. Colonel in 1863 suggested arming slaves, giving them freedom in return for fighting. His letter and ALL copies (they thought) were destroyed by Jeff Davis out of fear it would get out to the regular forces.

[Bull Snipe]

Thanks