Inaccurate. 36% of the 1861 volunteers came from slave owning families.
http://deadconfederates.com/2011/04/28/ninety-eight-percent-of-texas-confederate-soldiers-never-owned-a-slave/
% of 1865 volunteers?
Don’t know that one. CSA went to conscription in April of 62, over a year before the Union did.
The same law extended the term of enlistment of all one year volunteers to three years. The Union never did that.
I have seen the numbers for occupations, and the “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” meme isn’t really true, except perhaps at the pinnacle.
It’s also seldom noted that all our earlier wars also allowed men to pay a substitute.
The point I was trying to make is that the common meme that slavery was engaged in by only a small percentage of southern whites is simply not true. Overall, if I remember right, about one third of white families in slave states owned at least one slave. In SC and MS it was about or possibly over 50%.
A major reason the average net worth of southern white families was twice the northern average in 1860.
For instance: The agrarian south's armies were very rarely short of munitions, but the men starved in the ranks, and were ill-clothed and badly shod. The South had some brilliant officers, all right, but what about logistics? Feeding the men is a key part of military skill.
In both of Lee's invasions of the North, he fared badly, saving his army after both Sharpsburg and Gettysburg only by brilliant retreats and rear guard actions. OTOH, Neither Jefferson Davis or Mr. Lincoln, nor their military advisors seem to have paid enough attention to the war in the west, where the Confederacy suffered its most serious strategic losses, especially after Johnston was replaced by Hood.
Some brilliant officers on both sides somehow seemed to have escaped much notice and the praise of their Commanders. Cleburne, Johnston for the South; George Thomas, Reynolds, Meade, MacDowell and others for the North. They never get their due in the hagiographic post-war histories and biographies.