It is a fact, not very creditable to many slaveowners, that some men made greater objections to to the impressment of one of their negro men to build breastworks and forts, than to parting with a son to go into the ranks to fight and take the chances of being killed. There was money in the negro slave. p. 497
Returning to the end of 1862, when the Emanicpation Proclamation took effect, Oates says,
The people of the South paid no attention to it. It was tantamount to saying, "Lay down your arms and return to the Union with your slaves. If you do it by January 1st next I will not interfere with you." If the war was merely for the retention of slavery, the Confederates could have won by accepting the terms of the proclamation. p. 495
My representative in Congress, the Hon. James L. Pugh, said, "If we free the negroes to make soldiers of them, that is simply throwing aside the bone of contention, and we had as well stop the war at once."I replied that if the Confederate Government would send an authorized agent to Lee's army and let him proclaim to every regiment in it that the war was being fought solely for the maintenance of slavery, it would close in ten days; that two-thirds of the men in the ranks never owned a slave, and they would not offer their lives as a sacrifice for that consideration. p. 497