Mainstream historians address diaries, letters and newspaper reports with extreme caution relative to their veracity.  Eyewitness accounts, however, still have considerable merit when taken in the aggregate.  Many of these reports are from early in the war, yet they include reports through 1863.

Dr. Steiner’s report, in particular, has been widely criticized because it is unlikely that he observed Jackson’s entire Corps and also was not trained to count troops.  In addition, the Union intelligence service itself was not proficient at troop counting even when trained.  Nonetheless, Dr. Steiner obviously saw enough armed Black Confederates to be impressed by their numbers.

Even if Dr. Steiner over counted by a factor of 100 percent and 25 percent of these were combat soldiers, that still would be 375 armed Black Confederates.  Extrapolated to Longstreet’s Corps, this would be some 750 armed Black Confederates in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia alone. Uncle Bob Wilson, whose 1948 obituary is cited below probably, was among those in the 16th Virginia who may have passed by Steiner.

1. Diary – Lewis Steiner, Chief Inspector of the United States Sanitary Commission

Dr. Steiner observed Gen. "Stonewall" Jackson's occupation of Frederick, Maryland, in 1862 and wrote:

"Over 3,000 Negroes must be included in this number [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."

2. Black Confederate Obituary  –  Elgin (Illinois) Daily Courier-News, Monday, April 12, 1948

"Robert (Uncle Bob) Wilson, Negro veteran of the Confederate army who observed his 112th birthday last January 13, died early yesterday morning in the veterans' hospital at the Elgin State hospital...He enlisted as a private in Company H of the 16th regiment of Virginia Infantry on Oct. 9, 1862 and discharged May 31, 1863."

3. Letter from a Union soldier, published in the Indianapolis (Indiana) Star, December 23, 1861:

"Attack On Our Soldiers By Armed Negroes - A body of seven hundred [Confederate] Negro infantry opened fire on our men, wounding two lieutenants and two privates. The wounded men testify positively that they were shot by Negroes, and that not less than seven hundred were present, armed with muskets. This is, indeed a new feature in the war. We have heard of a regiment of [Confederate] Negroes at Manassas, and another at Memphis, and still another at New Orleans, but did not believe it till it came so near home and attacked our men."

4. News Release – "The Negro as a Soldier," Written by Christian A. Fleetwood, Sergeant-Major 4th U.S. Colored Troops, for the Negro Congress at the Cotton States and International Exposition, Atlanta, Ga., November 11 to November 23, 1895

"It seems a little singular that in the tremendous struggle between the States in 1861-1865, the south should have been the first to take steps toward the enlistment of Negroes. Yet such is the fact. Two weeks after the fall of Fort Sumter, the 'Charleston Mercury' records the passing through Augusta of several companies of the 3rd and 4th Georgia Regt., and of sixteen well-drilled companies and one Negro company from Nashville, Tenn. 'The Memphis Avalanche' and 'The Memphis Appeal' of May 9, 10, and 11, 1861, give notice of the appointment by the 'Committee of Safety' of a committee of three persons 'to organize a volunteer company composed of our patriotic freemen of color of the city of Memphis, for the service of our common defense.”

5. Slave Narratives –  June 5, 1937 - Alexander B. Johnson, Birmingham, Alabama

"They is all gone, scattered, and old massa and missus have died Then de war came and we all went to fight the Yankees. I was a body servant to the master, and once a bullet took off his hat. We all thought he was shot but he wasn't, and I was standin' by his side all the time...I remember Stonewall Jackson. He was a big man with long whiskers, and very brave. We all fought with him until his death. We wasn't beaten, we was starved out! Sometimes we had perched corn to eat and sometimes we didn't have a bite of nothin', because the Union mens come and tuk all de food for theirselves. I can still remember part of my ninety years. I remembers dey fought all de way from Virginia and winded up in Manassah's Gap...In all de years since de war I cannot forget old massa. He was good and kind.  He never believed in slavery but his money was tied up in slaves and he didn't want to lose all he had...I knows I will see him in heaven and even though I have to walk ten miles for a bite of bread I can still be happy to think about the good times we had then. I am a Confederate veteran but my house burned up with de medals and I don't get a pension."

6. Newspaper Report  –  The Chicago Tribune cited by the Leavenworth (Kansas) Daily Conservative, Sept. 13, 1861

"Negroes are employed by the thousands in the rebel armies to fight against the Union..."

7. Newspaper Report – The Leavenworth (Kansas) Daily Conservative, Oct. 6, 1861 

"It is well known that negroes and Indians serve in the rebel army..." 

8. Journal Article – Negroes in the Confederate Army, Journal of Negro History, Charles Wesley, Vol. 4, #3, (1919), 244

"The Governor of Tennessee was given permission in June 1861 to accept into the state militia black males between the ages if fifteen and fifty. The men were to receive eight dollars a month, plus clothing and rations."

9. Book Citation – Into The Fight - Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg; John Michael Priest, White Mane Books, 1998, pp 128: 130-131

"Color Corporal George B. Powell (14th Tennessee) went down during the advance. Boney Smith, a Black man attached to the regiment, took the colors and carried them forward... The colors of the 14th Tennessee got within fifty feet of the east wall before Boney Smith hit the dirt ---wounded. Jabbing the flagstaff in the ground, he momentarily urged the regiment forward until the intense pressure forced the men to lie down to save their lives."

10. Book Citation – The Sable Arm: Black Troops in the Union Army, 1861-1865, written by D. T. Cornish. pp 16:

"The scouts of the 1st Vermont Infantry reported a Richmond howitzer battery manned by Negroes at Newmarket Bridge, Virginia, in August (1861)."

11. Diary – James Miles, 185th N.Y.V.I., entry dated January 8, 1865

"Sargt said war is close to being over. Saw several Negros fighting for those rebels."

12. Letter from James G. Bates' to his father reprinted in the 1 May 1863 "Winchester [Indiana] Journal" [the 13th IVI ["Hoosier Regiment"] was involved in operations around the Suffolk, Virginia area in April-May 1863 ]

"I can assure you [Father,] of a certainty, that the rebels have Negro soldiers in their army. One of their best sharp shooters and the boldest of them all here is a Negro. He dug himself a rifle pit last night [16 April 1863] just across the river and has been annoying our pickets opposite him very much to-day. You can see him plain enough with the naked eye, occasionally, to make sure that he is a "wooly-head," and with a spy-glass there is no mistaking him."

13. Book Citation – Noe, Kenneth W., Perryville: This Grand Havoc of Battle. The University of Kentucky Press, Lexington, KY, 2001. [page 270]

"The part of Adams' Brigade that the 42nd Indiana was facing were the 'Louisiana Tigers.' This name was given to Colonel Gibson's 13th Louisiana Infantry, which included five companies of 'Avegno Zouaves' who still were wearing their once dashing traditional blue jackets, red caps and red baggy trousers. These five Zouaves companies were made up of Irish, Dutch, Negroes, Spaniards, Mexicans, and Italians."

14. Newspaper Report – New York Herald, July 11, 1863

“…And after the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, … reported among the rebel prisoners were seven blacks in Confederate uniforms fully armed as soldiers…”

15. Newspaper Report - Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1862

FOR US OR AGAINST US?

The correspondent of the New York Herald, in one of its late numbers, reports that the rebels had a regiment of mounted negroes, armed with sabres, at Manassas, and that some five hundred Union prisoners taken at Bull Run were escorted to their filthy prison by a regiment of black men. There is little doubt also, that the fortifications at Manassas and those at Yorktown were the work of the slaves. The same paper reports that "the rebels dug up the remains of our soldiers, and made spurs of their jawbones, cutting up their skeletons into every conceivable form, and sending the trinkets home to their friends." There is plenty of authentic confirmation of these barbarities.

Will some one now say why, if slaves are to be armed at all, they should be armed against our friends instead of our enemies? And is it not clear that the "atrocities" which it was supposed the slaves, if freed, would instantly fall to committing, are already perpetrated by the rebels? There is no recorded San Domingo "horror" more horrible than this last story.  At least twenty thousand slaves have been liberated by the necessities of the war. Will any friend of the rebels, so fearful of the ungovernable passions of emancipated slaves, please to mention the master whose jawbone they have cut into spurs or whose skull they have made into a drinking-cup?

16.  Diary - Wayne R. Austman

One cavalry officer related how he was held under guard by a shotgun-wielding black who kept the weapon trained on the Yankee's head with unwavering concentration. "Here I had come South and was fighting to free this man," the disgusted major wrote in his diary. "If I had made one false move on my horse, he would have shot my head off."

17.  Newspaper - The Liberator, July 18, 1862

Much is said about the slaves coming into Federal lines, and many complaints are made because they are not promptly given up. Are they not in the Confederate lines, and are they not used to build fortifications and do the work of rebels, and in many instances used to man rebel guns, and fight against the Union?

18.  Book citation - Ervin L. Jordan, Jr. (cited in "Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia")

After their capture one group of white Virginia slave owners and Afro-Virginians were asked if they would take the oath of allegiance to the United States in exchange for their freedom. One free negro indignantly replied: "I can't take no such oaf as dat. I'm a secesh nigger." A slave from this same group, upon learning that his master had refused, proudly exclaimed, "I can't take no oath dat Massa won't take." A second slave agreed: "I ain't going out here on no dishonorable terms." On another occasion a captured Virginia planter took the oath, but slave remained faithful to the Confederacy and refused. This slave returned to Virginia by a flag of truce boat and expressed disgust at his owner's disloyalty: "Massa had no principles." Confederate prisoners of war paid tribute to the loyalty, ingenuity, and diligence of "kind-hearted" blacks who attended to their needs and considered them fellow Southerners.

19.  Diary - Benjamin Quarles

Well-to-do Creole Negroes . . . carried themselves with a military bearing; as they informed a commanding general on a later occasion, they came of a fighting race: "Our fathers were brought here as slaves bacause they were captured in war, and in hand to hand fights, too. Pardon me, General, but the only cowardly blood we have got in our veins is the white blood."

20. Book citation -  Alfred Bellard, Gone for a Soldier, p. 56

"One of the Negro Confederates was only wounded, but the other was killed one afternoon after leaving the security of a hollow tree (probably to relieve himself). Two Confederates tried to get to his body but were driven away by the Union gunfire"

21. Newspaper -  New York Herald, July 11, 1863

". . . And after the battle of Gettysburg in July 1863, . . . reported among the rebel prisoners were seven blacks in Confederate uniforms fully armed as soldiers . . ."

22. Newspaper - The Exchange (Northern), 1861 

“The war has dispelled one delusion of the abolitionists. The Negroes regard them as enemies instead of friends.... [T]hey have jeered at and insulted our troops, have readily enlisted in the rebel army and on Sunday, at Manassas, shot down our men with as much alacrity as if abolition had never existed.” 

23. Newspaper - Providence Post, 1862

“Negroes as a mass have shown no friendship to the Union — have neither sought to achieve their liberty nor to subdue their masters.... Their sympathies are with the rebels.”

24. Newspaper - Charlotte Daily Bulletin, 1863 (from Bell Wiley, Southern Negroes, 1938) 

A slave named Titus, who was captured at Gettysburg. When pressed to join the Union army, Titus refused to “fight ’ginst my government.” In the same way, a black man imprisoned on Johnston’s Island retorted to Union officers, “Sah, what you want me to do is desert. I ain’t no deserter and down South, where we live, deserters always disgrace their families. I’se got a family doen home, sah, and if I do what you tell me, I will be a deserter and disgrace my family, and I am never going to do that.”