Bruce Levine has conducted a pretty thorough study of black Confederate service (recently in an article in "North & South" magazine), and concludes that the total number of black volunteers who served in Confederate ranks probably in the hundreds, not thousands. He quotes Robert Krick's study of Confederate records. Krick examined nearly 100,000 Confederate service records and found between 20 and 30 "nonwhites" among them. Levine concludes that this statistic provides an estimate of about 270 men among 900,000.

Beyond simple numbers, Levine finds ample evidence that Confederate high officials had no knowledge of any substantial number of blacks fighting in the ranks. In 1863, Confederate Secretary of War James Seddon wrote to a Virginian that "no slaves have been employed by the Government except as cooks or nurses in hospitals and for labor." (quoted in Bruce Levine, "Black Confederates," _North & South_, Vol 10, No. 2 (July 2007): 43). It is hard to imagine that 3000 blacks served integrated in the Confederate army in 1862 without the knowledge of the war secretary.

Had such large numbers of blacks willingly served (and been accepted in Confederate ranks) as early as 1862, proposed ideas for widespread black service, such as that by Patrick Cleburne, would not have been so outlandish or rejected in 1864.

Overall, Levine concludes that many of the reports of blacks in the field, voluntarily fighting for the Confederacy, are exaggerated or rely on second-hand or third-hand accounts.