Soldiers
Men from all economic and social levels, both slaveholders and nonslaveholders, as well as former Unionists, enlisted in the Confederate military in great numbers. The only areas that sent few or no men to fight for the Confederacy had few slaves, a high percentage of poor families, and a history of opposition to secession, were located on the border with the North, and were sometimes under Union control. 40% of Virginian officers in the United States military stayed with the Union, however.
Read more about this topic: Virginia In The American Civil War
Famous quotes containing the word soldiers:
“According to U.S. strategy, if you never see the other, his destruction will be more acceptable ... so that when Iraqi soldiers surrendered, sooner than expected, it was as if they emerged from a dream, a flash-back, a lost epoch—an epoch when the enemy still had a body and was still “like us.””
—Serge Daney (1944–1992)
“When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle- field, they have all one rank in my eyes.”
—Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)
“How red the rose that is the soldier’s wound,
The wounds of many soldiers, the wounds of all
The soldiers that have fallen, red in blood,
The soldier of time grown deathless in great size.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)