Ok. Read it. No problem. I see no reason to make an argument over numbers anyway. The higher the number of black confederates, in my eyes, brings even more shame on the CSA politicians and editorialsts, who "with a see no evil, hear no evil" metality denied it was a reality. Since it was CSA congressmen who made the choices that denied armed slaves emancipation then they put their personal priorities ahead Of Ewell, Oates, Hindman, Forrest, Lee, and now even Stonewall Jackson, who the book claims was using 3,000 blacks in his forces at Antietam.

So there it is: accept this usage of black troops as fact, then the CSA congress, and all the angry ediorialists who castigated Lee's proposal, so bitterly and publicly in their newspapers, the fire-eater portion of the political power structure, had been holding as illegal and as a reprehensible disgrace, what Stonewall Jackson and others had already put into practice. The CSA congress was completely out of step with the military.

It does however, make me also wonder this: if Stonewall Jackson, one of the most beloved figures in the CSA, was already using armed black soldiers in such numbers, why did Johnston and other generals, and Davis and his executive branch, so forcefully suppress Cleburne's proposal from even being openly discussed? Why refuse any discussion of something that one of the most effective military leaders was already doing?

It only strengthens my argument that the choices of the CSA politicians to defy and deny Lee and Cleburne etc, and who put their own priorities ahead of their country, sank the CSA's final hope.

Oh, the other interesting point made in the book was that the Louisiana free blacks were fighting to preserve their own right to have slaves.