There are at the present moment many Colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but real soldiers, having musket on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down any loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the rebels.
- Frederick Douglass

One of the unspoken aspects of the American Civil War is the story of the African-Americans who fought for the Confederacy during those four years that tore the country apart. In their grey uniforms, they marched into history as the Black Confederates.
From the waters off the Carolina Coast to the prairies of West Texas, there are speculations that 365,000 African-Americans in the South gave all they had and sometimes their own lives to support the Confederacy.
Without the contribution of hard labor by free men and slave alike, the Southern struggle against the Union juggernaut would have been much harder thought.
Enduring the hot sun over the fields, black laborers harvested food and worked on railroad tracks so supply trains could get through. Working in equally humid factories and sweat shops, they toiled long hours for the Confederate war effort. They helped care for the dying and the wounded in hospitals. And for some, they followed other southern men and entered into the services of the Confederate Army and Navy.

There were also state militias of black confederates that fought side by side with the rest of the armies. While most Northern states like Illinois prohibited blacks to serve in any militia, Southern states including Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee had these militias of African-Americans even before the war began. Louisiana particularly had a strong black militia tradition, going all the way back to the early 1700's.

The office of the North Carolina governor, John W. Ellis, was flooded with requests to raise troupes of Blacks for both local and state protection. One request reported that three full companies could be easily raised in a small town called Scuffletown that was settled with freed mulattoes. In the summer of 1861, Ellis read a letter that fifty to a hundred mulattoes or freed men of color were willing to assist the North Carolina Army.

At the same time, Tennessee government passed the very first petition that legislated the use of free black soldiers. Tennessee Governor Isham Harris stated that any Southerner, black or white, between 15 and 50 joined military service was to be paid $18.00 a month and received the same clothes and rations. Four months later, two black regiments (mostly engineers) along white confederate soldiers, marched through the streets of Memphis.
All through the south, these militias guarded all the major cities, putting the citizens in the hands of the black troops guarding them.

In the 1800s, Southern laws, such as in Virginia, allowed any white man to let any African-American to be treated as a white for all legal purposes. So it was perfectly legal for any Southerner to just sent one of his slave in his place in the Army while he stayed home.

Nevertheless, despite long lasting strong beliefs that only the rich high rank officers brought their slaves, the bulk of those who had servants were privates. In fact, roughly sixty to seventy percent of body servants were with captains or lower ranked men.

The body servants were the most important body of African-Americans for the Confederacy. Expanding in ages ranging from fourteen to sixty, body servants did any and every job assigned to them.
They served as cooks, foragers, laborers and teamsters. While dodging bullets, these servants ran taking care of needed ammunition, shouldering extra guns and gunpowder, and on many occasions, took up a gun in the heat of battle and fought along the side of their masters.

Before the war, body servants served on the farms and plantations but mostly worked closely with their masters' families. In some cases, they helped raise the young children with an deep fondness. The closeness with the men and women of the house, made for a tie of home and family. This tie was even more present as some servants grew up with the Master's children, forming an ambivalent friendship that lasted throughout both master and slave's life.
And when the call of war came, sending young southern men to the battle lines, their servants went with them, feeling that same bond.

And it was this bond which made the servants carry their masters back home whetever if they would wounded or dead. No matter how far from home, they made the trek back, half of the time sneaking behind enemy lines.

Occasionally, even after the death of their masters, some servants would return to fight again with the army. When his master was killed, body servant, Aleck Kean made the choice to stay on as mess cook for the famed Richmond Howitzers. He was with the battery unit the surrender at Appomattox. At his funeral in 1911, among the many white southerners attending, were three members of the Richmond Howitzers.

Individual accounts from the battle told of Black soldiers taking part of single-hand combat against the Federal Army, such as one Black Rebel who waited behind a tree while two Union soldier went by. He clubbed one with a pistol, then turned on the other, yelling for their surrender.

Reports such like that prompted Northern newspapers to publish editorials and stories of African-American firing on and killing Union soldiers. The New Bern Weekly Press criticized that Black Confederates.."jeered at and insulted Northern troops, heave readily enlisted in the rebel army and at First Manassas, shot down Union soldiers with as much alacrity as if abolitionism had never existed."
Similar disbelief was printed in the Indianapolis Star expressed by a letter written by a Union soldier when he stated..."A body of seven hundred Negro infantry fire on our men. The wounded men testify positively that they were shot by Negroes, armed with muskets. This is, indeed, a new feature in the war." The New York Tribune re-printed the letter with a headline in bold type - ATTACK ON OUR SOLDIERS BY ARMED NEGROES.

Louis Napoleon Nelson, a slave followed the two Oldham boys that he took care when they were children . They left their Tennessean home and joined Forrest's Troops. Severing in every battle of Forrest's campaign, going from battle to battle in the western theater of the war, he got the chance to drop his ladle and pick up a rifle.

After the war Nelson attended just about 39 annual Confederate veterans reunions. And like other Black Confederate veterans, he received a pension for his service.

The only real evidence we have of their existence is a few confederate papers, rare photos and a battered stone obelisk that was erected in 1895 in the memory of ..."the slaves who, loyal to a sacred trust, toiled for the support of the army with matchless devotion and with sterling fidelity during the struggle for the principles of our Confederate States of America."