'Black Confederates' in the Official Records.

jgoodguy

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I’ll try to have a better look, but according to this source there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of Black Condederates in the ORs.
eyewitness [/B]reports of Black Confederates in the ORs.
[URL]https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/black-confederates

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This is not to say that no black man ever fired a gun for the Confederacy. To be specific, in the “Official Records of the War of the Rebellion,” a collection of military records from both sides which spans more than 50 volumes and more than 50,000 pages, there are a total of seven Union eyewitness reports of black Confederates. Three of these reports mention black men shooting at Union soldiers, one report mentions capturing a handful of armed black men along with some soldiers, and the other three reports mention seeing unarmed black laborers. There is no record of Union soldiers encountering an all-black line of battle or anything close to it.

In those same Official Records, no Confederate ever references having black soldiers under his command or in his unit, although references to black laborers are common. The non-existence of black combat units is further indicated by the records of debates in the Confederate Congress over the issue of black enlistment. The idea was repeatedly rejected until, on March 13, 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law to allow black men to serve in combat roles, although with the provision “that nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize a change in the relation which the said slaves shall bear toward their owners,” i.e. that black soldiers would still be slaves. (I do not recall that any Confederate officer referenced the preexisting use of black troops when talking in favor of the law to enlist slaves as soldiers in the CSA army which passed in March 1865. )​

 
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