As a Civil War example....
Union General Fremont's men at the Battle of Port Repbulic, didn't distinguish between non-armed or armed Confederates when they attacked Jackson's rear guard, unfortunetly the rear guard was about 700 wagons, of teamsters and pioneers. Captain A. M. Garber, assigned to the Quartmaster's train, wrote "one of the black drivers" [performed] "as brave an act as we witnessed during the war." [Federal riflemen had crawled down to the riverbank...and began shooting at the Confederates] "Just as [the driver] was ready to pull out, his saddle horse was killed under him, but he coolly snatched the harness off, mounted the off wheeler and drove out whistling a march, being a regular fifer on a whistle." Garber then asked a superior officer what [he and his Black pioneers] should do next, he was told "Run like the devil, you fools" and Garber and his pioneers did just that, "we stood not upon the order of our going, but WENT." They left 19 dead horses and mules behind them. Fremont was cut-off from Jackson's men, because all the bridges had been burned, so he let loose his artillery onto the now cold battlefield, where ambulances and stretcher-bearers were collecting Union and Confederate wounded. A Confederate detachment of Black stretcher-bearers come under Fremont's artillery fire. Chaplain Richard McIIwaine of the 44th Virginia was superintending the removal of a wounded soldier from his regiment when Fremont opened. "Not one of the negroes flinched," McIIwaine reported proudly, "and in a few moments by quick-step we were hidden from the malicous and cowardly scoundrels by the woods." The man those Black Confederates saved was Robert S. Campbell, who would be a County Sheriff in 1906. Conquering the Valley, by Robert K. Krick, 1996.
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David Upton