Replies

People tend to forget that there were substantial numbers of free blacks in the South. Half of the blacks in Maryland were free when the War started. Some of these free people owned slaves themselves, since slavery was an economically efficient way to do the work of a farm. Naturally free black people had an economic stake in the continuation of the status quo, and few of them were willing to suffer, fight, and die so that the Union would be preserved, particularly as they also endured the economic problems the Union imposed on all Southerners. So when the War came, some thought it served their best interests to fight for the Confederacy.

We look back today and wonder at their short-sightedness, but we have the wisdom of hindsight. They could not imagine that, 140 years in the future, the black citizens of a unified US could become doctors, lawyers, justices of the Supreme Court, fantastically rich entertainers, the Secretary of State, or the National Security Advisor. And many of them were fighting for a beloved homeland that was being invaded by people of a different culture and different beliefs but no less racism than the whites in the South.

Doubtful. Maryland was a special case. And it's not clear how many Blacks in that union state would have gone to war to fight for the Confederacy. It wasn't the status quo for them.

There were few freed Blacks in the Deep South (check out the statistics if you want). There was a unit of "Colored" militia in Louisiana, but it wasn't mustered for action by the Confederacy. In time, that unit fought for the Union.

Many Whites who weren't enthusiastic about slavery were trying to avoid military service, so it's not likely that Blacks would have been clamouring to serve. Doubtless some -- slave or free -- worked for the army and might have picked up a gun at some point, but that there was no serious Black enlistment in the Confederate Army's fighting ranks.