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Life NRA,SUVCW # 48,Legion 352
| Joined: | Sat Dec 2nd, 2006 |
| Location: | South Of The North 40, Minnesota USA |
| Posts: | 1050 |
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I've been thinking about this topic. I'm thinking if I'm a young, male slave when war breaks out, I would jump at the chance to be a teamster or cook or make and apply horseshoes or repair saddles and bridles or set up tents or whatnot for the Confederate army because those men probably enjoyed a degree of autonomy unknown on the plantations of the South. They were probably pretty much their own bosses for the first time in their lives.
At least I wouldn't be bent over all day long in the hot sun picking cotton or stuck up to my knees in watery rice fields.
Here's a question if Pam doesn't mind my piggy-backing on her original question. Often wagon trains or parts of wagon trains were captured. What happened to the slaves that Union forces captured? Were they put to work for the Union or were they imprisoned along with their white male Confederates or how did such an event play out for the captured slaves?
I had to do some digging to get any kind of real answer on this; it is a very good question as most teamsters would have been civilian contractors instead of military usually paid at $2 a day. And not a question I'm sure has been asked in any circle I frequent before.
The only specific reference at all on CS teamsters being taken POW I could find referrenced the Appomatox campaign and that was inconclusive for the question. Though the reference did identify several as slaves and sevedral more as freemen.
The only western reference I could find dealt w/ some of Minty's men burning a CS train and telling the teamsters to "git." In that case at least they weren't treated as POWs or even military at all. They were just told to go home.