You lost me at the 'racial-pandering' bit, AC, but then you seldom make sense when it comes to 'race' anyway.  But by all means, tell us what you meant by that.  Were the black Union troops somehow incompetent or 'inferior' according to you?  Should they have been relegated to cooks and stewards for the officers, as they would be in the US military only a decade or so later?

Sorry, that wasn't what contemporary observers had to say about the matter.  Were it not for the 'colored' troops, it's likely the Confederacy would have won the war (instead of subsequently achieving a 'victory' of sorts via infiltration and political treachery that continues to this day).

I believe it was in a letter to Karl Marx that Frederick Engels observed the Union was doomed to defeat without black troops, and if they refused to conscript them "...they'll get a hiding, and they'll deserve it."