There is no question that tens of thousands of enslaved and free African Americans served with Confederate armies as body servants, laborers, teamsters, hospital workers, and cooks. But were these men “soldiers” in any real sense of the word? Partisans of the “Black Confederate” viewpoint answer in the affirmative, comparing the roles black men played in the Confederate army with analogous job descriptions of modern American soldiers, the labor battalions in the World Wars (especially those who were drafted and thus “forced” into service), and even the menial labor that U.S. Colored Troops units performed during the Civil War.

But were African American laborers in the Confederate army formally enlisted in the army, equipped with uniforms, arms, and accoutrements, and paid for their own work, as were African Americans in the U.S. Army? No. Their status was that of enslaved or marginally free laborers serving in capacities in a military setting analogous to their roles in civilian life. Referring to such men as “soldiers” ignores a fundamental distinction between forced labor and military service.

However, even before the last months of the Civil War, there were African Americans in Confederate armies who met some of those customary criteria to be soldiers. Beginning in 1862, the Confederate army formally enlisted hundreds of cooks and musicians; those men were paid, but almost certainly not armed or uniformed.

In March 1865, the Confederate Congress passed a law providing for the formal enlistment of African-American soldiers. When the Confederate army implemented the law it required masters to recognize slaves’ freedom before they could enlist. Not surprisingly, recruitment was slow. Possibly a few hundred men enlisted before Appomattox. Some of those men drilled on Richmond’s Capitol Square shortly before the Confederates evacuated the city, and apparently some traveled with Lee’s army and were involved in the Appomattox Campaign.