> “My understanding was that the average southern soldier was conscripted, so what he wanted would have been moot.”
“Conscripts accounted for one-fourth to one-third of the Confederate armies east of the Mississippi between Apr. 1864 and early 1865.” http://www.civilwarhome.com/conscription.htm (I don’t know myself, but that’s the first source I came across). Both sides used the draft, of course, but I believe that it was in the North where you were more likely to see draft riots.
None among my Southern ancestors owned slaves at the time of the Civil War (though some branches had been slaveholders earlier in the century). In one branch of poor farmers, when news reached the family that an eighteen-old had died fighting for the Confederacy, his sixteen-year-old brother volunteered for service. They weren’t fighting for slavery.
Although not all were conscripted, southern states had a well developed system to coerce members of their militia.
Since the war was mostly fought in the southern states, the local militia would be called up, and though not counting against conscription numbers by the pretended confederate government, they were just as coerced as if they had been.
The south resorted to conscription earlier than the US, because they had to. Some men were double conscripted, being wounded, sent home on convalescent leave, and reconscripted first for state militia service, and then to satisfy new demands by the pretended confederacy.