Kusaimamekirai’s Reviews > A People's History of the Civil War: Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom > Status Update

“Over and over he was forced into battle but would not shoot. At first the captain asked him if he shot. ‘No, I did not shoot’. He got into another battle. After it was over the captain asked him whether he had shot. ‘No, I did not see anything to shoot at’. The captain asked, ‘Why, didn’t you see all those Yankees over there?’. The soldier answered ‘No, they’re people; we don’t shoot people’

Rich planters at the outset of the war, and well into it, were well aware of massive food shortages in the Confederacy. They in fact were given exemptions from the war on the pretense that they (and their slaves) were necessary to grow food for the soldiers.
Yet they steadfastly refused to do so, continuing to grow the far more profitable cotton and tobacco while people starved