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"For more than two years, Negroes have been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They have been embodied and drilled as rebel soldiers and had paraded with white troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union." - Horace Greeley

Greeley it was who said something like: "A republic pinned together with bayonets has no attraction to me."

Within a few months, he was leading the "On to Richmond" charge. He was seldom right on anything, and he is clearly misinformed here. Black troops -never- paraded with white troops, on either side.

How about this letter:

"Headquarters Department Trans-Mississippi,Shreveport, La, June 13, 1863

Maj. Gen. R. Taylor Commanding District of Louisiana:

GENERAL:

In answer to the communication of Brigadier-General Hebert, ofthe 6th instant, asking what disposition should be made of negro slaves taken in arms, I am directed by Lieutenant-General Smith to say no quarter should be shown them. If taken prisoners, however, they should be turned over to the executive authorities of the States in which they may be captured, in obedience to the proclamation of the President of the Confederate States, sections 3 and 4, published to the Army in General Orders, No. 111, Adjutant and Inspector General's Office, series of 1862. Should negroes thus taken be executed by the military authorities capturing them it would certainly provoke retaliation. By turning them over to the civil authorities to be tried by the laws of the state, no exception can be taken.I am, general, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

S. S. Anderson"

Why would the rebels take homicidal exception in the federals doing something they were themselves doing?"

There is no credible evidence of more than a handful of black rebel soldiers.

Walt

Why would the rebels take homicidal exception in the federals doing something they were themselves doing?"

Your ignorance of history is astounding. The blacks used by the Union were primarily runaway Southern slaves. That was the stated purpose of the EP, to encourage Southern slaves to runaway and then be used as soldiers by the Union. Lincoln said so (all that "emancipation" talk is a myth created by revisionists. The EP was a war action to drain labor from the Confederacy, Lincoln said so). Many Confederates did not see those troops as soldiers, they saw them simply as runaway slaves that had taken up arms against them. They saw them as both runaways and traitors. Consider an event observed by Arthur Freemantle following the battle of Manassas. A Southern slave with the Army had run off to the union side immediately prior to the battle, and was recaptured following the Confederate victory. Two other black servants were so outraged by his action that they insistently demanded that he be shot or hanged as a traitor. This was before the North's use of black troops. If loyal slaves perceived his actions as traitorous because he would offer his labor to the enemy, imagine how they would have felt if he could have taken up arms. To the Confederates, those troops were not really troops, they were armed groups of runaway traitorous slaves.