This is not surprising to me. A great many southerners fought for Southern sovereignty and states' rights, and simply to defend their home territory from what they perceived as Northern invasion of an independent country. It was inevitable that a certain number of black men would have served willingly, even enthusiastically, in their ranks.

Robert E. Lee was opposed to slavery, but loyal to his home state of Virginia. That's why he fought for the South. There were many others like him.

Slavery was not the only issue in that war, which was also a war of longstanding economic issues and political issues quite apart from slavery.

Some blacks supported the South, some didn't. It would be quite interesting to see what the actual proportion was of blacks who supported the South, but I don't think we'll ever know. It's not considered politically correct now, so you don't hear about it much.

Other examples of this kind of thing abound in history. Many Western Europeans and Russians (particularly from the Ukraine), for example, willingly fought for the Nazis in World War II, for a whole variety of reasons...which seemed like good reasons to them AT THE TIME. They backed the "wrong horse", but they did it for reasons which no doubt seemed entirely sensible and proper to them, given their particular local view of the situation.

These things tend to be conveniently forgotten or swept under the rug afterward by the victors. It's not a result of evil, it's a result of the many complexities of human existence.

- LH