Civil War: Black Confederate Soldiers, Real or Myth?

Nobody questions that the Confederate Army utilized blacks as cooks, teamsters, and body servants.  As for accepting slaves as soldiers, there had been resistance among Confederates to placing arms in the hands of slaves.  Fears of slave uprisings were factors.   Some assert the “black confederate” soldier is a myth.    

An iconic photograph has often been used as evidence of black confederate soldiers.  It is a 160-year-old tintype depicting Andrew Chandler and his slave Silas, both in Confederate uniform. 

Today, the descendants of Silas Chandler state firmly that Silas was Andrew Chandler's servant and slave. Silas Chandler was there when his master, Confederate Sgt. Andrew Chandler, was  wounded at the 1863 Battle of Chickamauga in Tennessee. Silas helped his injured master return home, saving Andrew’s leg from amputation.  But a Confederate soldier?  Perhaps not.

Yet in diaries we find references to the black Confederate soldiers:

"As usual with the enemy, they posted their negro regiments on their left and in front, where they were slain by hundreds, and upon retiring left their dead and wounded negroes uncared for, carrying off only the whites, which accounts for the fact that upon the first part of the battlefield nearly all the dead found were negroes." - Federal Official Records, Vol. XXV, Chapter XLVII, pg. 341 Report of the Confederate Commander, Savannah, April 27, 1864   

Although the Confederates did not officially enlist blacks until March 1865, when desperate for manpower, the Confederate Congress had passed a law allowing African Americans to serve in combat roles.  Some states allowed them to serve on a local level as early as 1861.  Perhaps no one knows how many blacks served as soldiers in the Confederacy.