Black Confederates - Civil War

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 soldiers” were merely slaves the Confederate soldiers brought with them.  They say the “black confederate” soldier is a myth.  Others claim the opposite; that there were actual black confederate soldiers.  It is a controversial subject.

Why have we not heard more of these black soldiers?  The answer may lie in several possibilities:  1) ignorance of the situation or  2) bias.

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, 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.