The major Confederate armies moved with huge wagon trains carrying ammunition and other supplies. Those teamsters were almost entirely Black, often free Blacks of which there were tens of thousands throughout the south.
Do they count as soldiers? There's no doubt they defended themselves against cavalry once in a while, but they really weren't fighters.
There are some documented cases of Black Confederates in the ranks of the Confederate armies. During the Seven Days, there was a Confederate sniper in a tree picking off Yankees. They eventually figured out which tree he was in and fired volley after volley into it. When they recovered the body, they were surprised to find he was Black.
A Yankee soldier wrote to his parents that when he was captured at Gettysburg (Day One) he and his mates were shocked when they were escorted to the rear by an armed Black Confederate. He said they asked him what he was doing there and his answer was something like shut up Yank.
Officers often came to the front with a slave or two. They were cooks, and camp organizers. On occasion they would fight if an emergency arose, but they were not meant to be fighters.
There were free Blacks throughout the south. Some even owned slaves, but that is misleading. Almost always when that has been looked into, the slaves they owned were kin to them. Oftentimes a free Black would buy the freedom of his relatives one at a time. The courthouse was not easy to access though so sometimes the papers still showed the person a slave though they were a slave of their uncle who really just didn't have the access to the courthouse to get the papers official.
Confederate units formed by county, and many counties had no city larger than a small town. There were free Blacks who bought their freedom through their skill as blacksmith or cobbler. When the units formed and marched off to war, did the free Black cobbler go with them. It looks like it just depended by a county by county basis.
The official policy was no, but the rules were pretty loose. It really just depended what the reputation of the Black was in the community and what the attitude of the local mayor and preacher were.
Remember the Confederacy was a brand new nation trying to form itself, its army, its laws all the while while it was fighting a war for survival. Much of it was done on the fly.
It's a complicated story.
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