Aside from accounts of captured/freed blacks REFUSING to serve the yankee armies - several state very vehemently that their only desire was to be fighting on the side of the Confederacy. Luminaries such as Booker T. Washington acknowledge the love and devotion shared by slaves and the masters - he cites this from personal experience.
The Slave Narratives have numerous accounts of "good" relations between slave and masters. One that I previously posted opined that she wished her master would buy hundreds more slaves. Others document their living conditions, Sundays off for church, a week off around Christmas, spare time one their assigned chores were done, etc. Anyone that has ever worked on a farm knows that a lot of the time you're standing around, besides planting and harvesting - there's a lot of slack time in between.
Sure, there were some that had bad conditions, just as there are people today that abuse their own children, ask anyone involved in fostering/social services. But today we have the stereotype of the abused slaves as being the norm. If all the slaves were so badly mistreated we would have suffered slave revolts long before. It's ludicrous to assume that if living conditions were so bad that blacks could not rise up in revolution (almost a 1:1 ratio). Poor whites were considered to be beneath most blacks.
What's more evident is that the South was much more integrated that the North. And I think this explains the difference in acconts of Northern/Confederate blacks serving. In the North, entire regiments were segregated and comprised exclusively of blacks. Yet in the South, due to integration, the blacks were spread out across the army. It's quite easy to pick out a regiment, yet when intermingled among an army the numbers just don't stand out.
How many more free blacks did serve the yankee armies- there was one regiment of free blacks from Louisiana who joined the Union army once they occupied New Orleans. Thousands of slaves followed the Union army when they came to their area, leaving their former masters. I would guess that most black "loyalty" to the Confederacy arose from fear of being on the unpopular or losing side- if the South had won, they could be reenslaved or worse. Once it became clear that the North was winning, most blacks in the South sided with the Union.
The Slave Narratives have numerous accounts of "good" relations between slave and masters. One that I previously posted opined that she wished her master would buy hundreds more slaves. Others document their living conditions, Sundays off for church, a week off around Christmas, spare time one their assigned chores were done, etc.
The narratives also have accounts of abuse and severe hardship suffered by slaves, which neo-Confederates like yourself tend to ignore or minimize. Even many of the slaves who had "good" masters tended to emphasize that their conditions were exceptional- that other slaves on other plantations were treated worse.
It's ludicrous to assume that if living conditions were so bad that blacks could not rise up in revolution (almost a 1:1 ratio).
The ratio of whites to blacks was 2 to 1, and while almost every white family had at least one gun, blacks were forbidden to own firearms. The slave holding South is a large land area, and it would be very difficult to overthrow as an unorganized group. There were slave revolts (including Nat Turner in 1831) but they were soon suppressed, which included the execution of the rebels as well as severe punishments for other non-participant slaves in order to "teach a lesson". In an slave society with different conditions, Haiti, slaves did successfully rebel with brutal massacres of the tiny white population. This event was not forgotten by Southern slaveowners, and they took steps to make sure that it would not happen here- including forbidding firearms. In such a society, it is unlikely that Southern whites would readily accept regiments of armed blacks.
Poor whites were considered to be beneath most blacks.
Where did you get this, Gone With the Wind? No poor white person would have trade their lot with that of a slave, and they certainly saw themselves as superior to even the wealthiest of free blacks. White Superiority was unquestioned in American society, both in the North and the South, and neo-Confederate attempts at PC does not change this fact.