Here are three excerpts from the book "Speak Out In Thunder Tones, Letters and Other Writings by Black Northerners", Dorothy Sterling,editor, {Doubleday Co, 1973}. I believe that these excerpts are more representative of Black Southern reaction to the Confederacy than Black men fighting alongside of their masters:

"There were more than fout million slaves in the South, working on plantations and on Rebel fortifications. Lincoln, trying to appease the slave states tha had remained loyal to the Union, was afraid to call on slaves to leave their masters. They did no wait for his invitation. As one slave said, "When my master and somebody else quarrel, I'm on somebody else's side". [p. 311]

-snip-

"After a Northern fleet captured the Sea Islands of South Carolina in November 1961, the whites fled. Before long, the eight thousand slaves they had left behind were raising food and cotton for the Union. Charlotte Forten [a well to do free African American from the North]who went to teach in a newly opened school, repeated [their] reactions...'Shortly afterwards [the Whites had fled] a few of them had the temerity to return and try to induce the Negroes to go off with them. Harry [one of the Sea Island Black residents] says that his master told them that the Yankees would certainly shoot every one of them. "Very well, massa", said he. "If I go with you, I be as good as deas. So if I got to be dead, I believe I'll stay and wait for the Yankees." He said he knew all the while theree was no truth in what his master said.

Nevertheless, the master..cooly order them to remove all furniture from the house to an island opposite them and then go thither themselves...The people instead of obeying their master, secreted themselves so that when he and his friends returned, not a single one of the Negroes could be found to accompany them into slavery."
[pp. 311-313] from 'The Liberator' [newspaper] December 19, 1862

-snip-

'An ex-slave told what happened when Union gunboots steamed up a river in South Carolina: " The people were all a-hoeing. They was
a-hoeing in the rice field when the gunboats come. Then every man drop them hoe and left the rice. The master he satnas and call, "Run to the woods and hide, Yankee come, sell you to Cuba! Run for hide! Every man he run, and my God! run all the other way! Master stand in the wood. He say, "Run to the wood!' and every man run by him, straight to the boat. [p.313, from Thomas W, Higginson, 'Up the Edisto', "Atlantic Monthly, August 1867].



Azizi