How was this supposed to work?
If freed, were ex-slaves to be rewarded with guns?
Or, if the Confederacy gives slaves freedom then they owe guns to the Confederacy?
One only needs to read the statements of secession by the various States to know this. Yes, for the average Joe there were lot of reasons, but it was the fundamental political reason.
Instead, when Davis fired Johnston (again) after giving ground to Sherman outside of Atlanta in the summer of 1864, he appointed twice wounded and heavily drugged John Bell Hood as commander of the Army, ultimately leading to the debacles at Franklin (where Cleburne was killed) and Nashville.
“The fact that it was rejected shows that for the people in charge of the Confederacy, it was ALL about the defense of slavery. “
You’re not a very bright person since you jump to illogical conclusions. You want to say the War of Northern Aggression was about slavery so you jumped to that conclusion. Bias is stupidity.
Interesting.
Strategically speaking, he had a good idea, but a poor application.
The only use for “questionable” troops is in the rear area, not in the front lines. However, because there is such a need for rear area personnel, they can displace more reliable rear area troops who can then go to the front lines. (Even the US did this in WWII).
Likewise, his pitch was wrong. Instead of speaking to the slaves, “fight with us and you will be freed”, it should have been directed at the slaveholders, “we will lease your slaves for our use, and their wages will buy manumission from you”. This is a more traditional technique for slaves to buy their freedom, going back to even the Roman Empire.
The appeal of this approach is that slaveholders had a substantial investment in an adult male slave, around $1000 each (comparable to a million dollars today). The government would have had to essentially seize their assets, then “turn around and give them away”. Not a fair deal at all.
Instead, the government would still take the slaves, but would pay the slaveholder their military wages, until their purchase price.
Slave *rental* in the South at the start of the war was about $30 a month, whereas the pay of a white private was only $11 a month, later going up to $18 a month. Properly speaking, was the government to take male slaves for this purpose, it would have to remit to their slave owner an amount closer to $30.
Thus the bottom line would be that slaves would “only” work for the South for about 2-1/2 years before earning their freedom. Slave owners would get their money back for the eminent domain. And there would be a lot more white troops sent to the front.
The end result was almost half a million fresh troops for the Confederacy at the time when they needed them the most. Bolstered by these new troops, the Confederacy went on the offensive, driving Sherman out of Georgia and Eastern Tennessee and hammering Grant out of Virginia.
Just wait till the Southern “War of Northern Aggression” guys see this.