Exactly, and well said. All of those comments are in the "Official" Records, made by Union Officers in the field as I remember. Yet these observers and others like Frederick Douglas and his comments about armed negros in the Confederate army all do not know what they are talking about because there are no comments in the Muster rolls of such things? Makes one wonder what happened regarding those records. Eyewitness testimony is some of the most inaccurate testimony that can be given in a criminal investigation. But it is also some of the most damning testimony in that same investigation. Yet we have numerious accounts as you have pointed out from several different witnesses and they all didn't know what they saw, If we are to believe the deniers.
As you said these Black Confederate were intergrated into the regular army rather that as seperate units. I believe that in one report of "black skirmishers" the Union officer reported seeing each white Confederate soldier accompanied by a armed "black confederate". Maybe all the southern gentlemen were all carrying their body servants out to the skirmish line with they to have their boots polished, I don't know.
There are a lot of things reported in the O.R.'s that don't fit with our present day notions of how things were during the War, on either side of the argument. Just because it isn't written down somewhere doesn't mean it didn't happen. In fact we do have written indications from multiple sources that it did happen, now don't we. We just don't have the definitive details and that is what this discussion is all about. Just how extensive was the use of Blacks as soldiers in the Confederate army.