Greg, you seem to think this topic should be off limits...

Not at all- I just get tired of mis-information, dis-information, innuendo and the wilful distortion of historical fact.

This topic has been exhaustively dealt with and all your questions answered in any number of authoritative and well-researched books and monographs. Did some slaves and free blacks "support" the Confederacy: Yes. How many? a miniscule minority of the Black population. Why? Fear, coercion, concern for their wives & children' treatment, self-interest, Poole's "Black Vichy", Stockholm Syndrome, and a host of other reasons we'll never know; there were likely as many reasons as there were individuals.

That should be an end to it. The endless discussion of this minor and insignificant phenomenon lends it an importance and a legitimacy and a currency it doesn't deserve- kind of like "debating" with "Holocaust deniers.