The word "negroes" appears twice in that book, "negro" once. If they were major characters in the story, one would think they'd get more than an off-hand mention.

The book reads like a novel to me, with its omnipotent narrator. It doesn't read like a true eyewitness account. He's not a dispassionate narrator, either, in my reading of the first 20 pages.

http://theaporetic.com/?p=651

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Even though Gen­eral Lee in Jan­u­ary 1865 requested that the CSA Con­gress enlist slaves, they still resisted the idea. How­ell Cobb of Geor­gia in Jan­u­ary of 1865 called the use of negroes as sol­diers “the most per­ni­cious idea that has been sug­gested since the war began,” con­tin­u­ing, “you can­not make sol­diers of slaves or slaves of sol­diers.… The day you make sol­diers of them is the begin­ning of the rev­o­lu­tion. If slaves will make good sol­diers, our whole the­ory of slav­ery is wrong.“3

So even in Novem­ber of 1864, when the rebel army was starv­ing, and in des­per­ate straits, the CSA con­gress still opposed enlist­ing slaves, and it was not legal to do so until March of 1865.

So where does the claim of black Con­fed­er­ate sol­diers come from?

Well, when Rich­mond fell the Union Army did find some par­tial com­pa­nies of slaves who were train­ing as soldiers–the exact num­ber is unclear, 200 at most, says David Blight.4

The sin­gle biggest source for this, though, is very star­tling and worth look­ing at. North­ern Dr. Lewis H. Steiner wit­nessed the Con­fed­er­ate cap­ture of Fred­er­ick, MD in 1862. Steiner wrote “Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this num­ber [of Con­fed­er­ate troops]. These were clad in all kinds of uni­forms, not only in cast-off or cap­tured United States uni­forms, but in coats with South­ern but­tons, State but­tons, etc. These were shabby, but not shab­bier or seed­ier than those worn by white men in the rebel ranks. Most of the Negroes had arms, rifles, mus­kets, sabers, bowie-knives, dirks, etc.….and were man­i­festly an inte­gral por­tion of the South­ern Con­fed­er­ate Army.“5

Peo­ple who want to believe that loyal slaves fought for the Con­fed­er­acy take this very strong account, and assume that it rep­re­sents the aver­age num­ber of black sol­diers in the Con­fed­er­ate Army, and con­clude that as many as 50,000 black men fought for the con­fed­er­acy! 6

There are all sorts of prob­lems with this. A: was Steiner right about the num­ber? B: was he right that he saw sol­diers, and not slaves in sup­port units? C: can you extrap­o­late what he saw to apply to the rest of the Con­fed­er­ate Army D: what was Steiner’s agenda?

Steiner’s account, which can be read on Google Books, is worth exam­in­ing. Steiner was a par­ti­san: a ded­i­cated Yan­kee, his account of the Con­fed­er­ate Army is clearly designed to ridicule and belit­tle. He mocks the CSA sol­diers for being dirty and ill smelling. He writes, of the black sol­diers: “The fact was patent, and rather inter­est­ing when con­sid­ered in con­nec­tion with the hor­ror rebels express at the sug­ges­tion of black sol­diers being employed for the National defence.” Was he report­ing an accu­rate num­ber, or try­ing to mock the CSA and its Army? It’s also worth not­ing that Steiner’s account describes How­ell Cobb, quoted above, as march­ing into Fred­er­ick with this col­umn of 3000 black troops–the same How­ell Cobb who would write, less than three years later: “you can­not make sol­diers of slaves or slaves of sol­diers.… The day you make sol­diers of them is the begin­ning of the rev­o­lu­tion. If slaves will make good sol­diers, our whole the­ory of slav­ery is wrong.” Can Steiner be right?

Mean­while, none of the other accounts from the occu­pa­tion of Fred­er­ick sup­port this obser­va­tion. None of the con­fed­er­ate sol­diers who were at Fredrick write about black Con­fed­er­ate soldiers–in fact, as Chan­dra Man­ning points out, white CSA sol­diers were for the most part strongly opposed to using slaves in the Army. And again, there’s the fact that the govt. of the CSA for­bid the enlist­ment of slaves in 1862, when Fred­er­ick fell.

There are no accounts from natives of Fred­er­ick of describ­ing 3000 armed black men in town. There are very few accounts from north­ern sol­diers of black troops in arms for the CSA. And keep in mind Civil War bat­tles were heav­ily cov­ered by reporters. Fred­er­ick is not far from Wash­ing­ton. There are no con­tem­po­rary accounts from reporters of large num­bers of armed black sol­diers in the CSA.

So we have a case of one source–Steiner–being taken as gospel and then enlarged to the point where it has turned into 50,ooo black sol­diers, approx­i­mately 1/3 the total CSA Army in 1865.

It’s a case of wish ful­fill­ment. Peo­ple want to believe in black Con­fed­er­ates, and they reuse to let his­tor­i­cal evi­dence stand in their way. It’s pos­si­ble some black men fought for the con­fed­er­acy: it’s a big coun­try, there are a lot of peo­ple in it with a lot of motives. It’s very likely some slaves and pos­si­bly free blacks served in sup­port posi­tions and as ser­vants. Nos­tal­gia, after the war, might remem­ber that ser­vice as sol­dier­ing. To turn it into a large scale phe­nom­e­non of black men fight­ing for the Con­fed­er­acy, you have to ignore the facts.


Emphasis added.

HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.