It was, with a large following, an auxiliary to the Confederate army.

The North would have been much stronger with a hundred thousand of these men in the Confederate ranks and the rest of their kind thoroughly subdued, as the Union sentiment was in the South, than we were as the battle was fought.
As I have said, the whole South was a military camp.

The colored people, four million in number, were submissive, and worked in the field and took care of the families while the able-bodied white men were at the front fighting for a cause destined to defeat.

The cause was popular, and was enthusiastically supported by the young men.

The conscription took all of them.