Jim, thanks for the fine summary. My stance is that the number of free blacks and slaves who served in Confederate units or participated in combat should fall in the hundreds rather than the thousands, especially the tens of thousands. There simply is no creditable evidence that there were anything like 30,000 black Confederate soldiers. As you say, there were thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of free blacks and slaves who performed support roles, but the overwhelming majority of them could not/cannot be considered "soldiers" even in the broadest interpretation of that term. And we simply do not know how many of them did so willingly and with enthusiasm. The slaves most likely to have willingly supported the Confederate army were probably more supportive of their owners, whom they accompanied to war as servants. Their loyalty was to their owner, not to the Confederacy. That such men existed is shown by a few cases where they fell into Union hands, were sent to a Northern prison, and refused release or to take the oath of allegiance.