These are two variables I never placed together. The political controversey of arming over a hundred thousand black men (mostly slaves) and the logistical problem of arming them. Had the Confederate Government and the States decided to enlist black men as early as the summer of 1863, would there have been enough firearms to equip them? Perhaps no one can ever know, but I suspect that much of the captured Union supplies were re-captured or destroyed because there were not enough resources to save them. I do not imagine the Confederates ever had tens of thousands of small arms left in factories or warehouses.