The concept of African Americans serving as Confederates during the civil war is often considered far-reaching because of the belief that why would slaves support the Confederate cause. However, it must be understood that African Americans may have supported the cause because they were forced to or because of the possible propaganda that the Confederates may have placed toward African Americans. Therefore, Slaves may have felt that they had far to less of numbers to rebel against the Confederate forces “IF” they were armed. Also, they may have been told lies regarding how Union soldiers will receive them and may have thought that Union soldiers would commit crimes against them.

However, a greater subject of debate is whether African Americans were ever armed and fought for the Confederacy before the Confederate President Jefferson Davis made it legal in 1865. Dr. Lewis Steiner’s account has gained a lot of attention because it claims that African American’s were armed, in uniform and fought in the Battle of Antietam in 1862. There have also been various smaller claims that African American’s served as Confederates but there has been a lack of supporting documents. African Americans who have applied for a veterans pension for various states do not verify armed service but rather labels them as cooks, servants or other domestic or labor occupancies.

I therefore decided to look through several memoirs of Civil War leaders and soldiers. Some of those include Lieutenant General James Longstreet who was considered as General Robert E. Lee’s trusted war horse, Lieutenant General John Hood, Brigadier General Edward Alexander and Private Samuel Watkins. In each of these memoirs there was never any mention of any armed African Americans fighting for the Confederacy. Yet, I still refrain from saying that altogether African Americans did not serve. I believe that African Americans did fight for the Confederacy but not in organized units as I do not believe the Confederates believed the African American’s suitable to that requirement. However, I do believe that African Americans accompanied their masters on reconnaissance missions, raids and ambushes based on a individual augmentee structure.

Finally, I find it hard to believe that the organized structure of slaves into fighting units could not have been kept a secret – someone would have reported it in a battle report or one of the aforementioned memoirs. The 1800’s had limited resources to report on battles – usually through newspaper, telegraph communications and very structured photographs. The time it took to take one photo meant that oftentimes it was not practical or safe to take actual battle photos. That is also why a lot of civil war photos have been staged. Consequently, the information regarding this topic is often sparse and lacking supporting documents. In today’s world the use of hand held camera’s and social media networks close that gap that the civil war did not have the ability to.