Civil War Greed Analysis

Greed is a common vice among many people, especially during the Civil War era in the South when so much importance was placed on wealth, personal property, and therefor, upon honor (Greenberg, The Nose, the Lie, and the Duel in the Antebellum South, Pages 57-74). It was human nature to protect one’s personal property and asset’s before even considering the general well being of the rest of the population. However, the cooperation and scarification of all that a large plantation owner could afford to give was especially important to the war effort in this time period. In such an even fight against the Union, any upper hand advantage was greatly needed; in this case, the advantage was the enslaved population. The real question in this situation …show more content…
This idea made sense in the minds of the officials, because why not use such an abundant resource as slave labor? Initially, slaves would be used to dig trenches in which the Confederate soldiers would later fight in. The problem with this arrangement was that the slave owner’s were not willing to give up their very valuable workers for a cause that would give them no monetary return. There was also the threat that when returned, their slave would not be in as good as a condition before they were sent to work for the army. Confederate officials wanted to believe that slaves were a part of the central government as to utilize them in the war efforts, but the slave owners knew that the enslaved people were their own personal property, and thus heavily resisted Confederate recruitment efforts, especially when the time came later in the war when talk was started about actually allowing the enslaved men to fight in …show more content…
What many slave owners worried about even further was that the slaves would escape the Confederate troop’s command. Upon a slave’s liberation from the Confederate army they would attempt to flee to the Union troops up North to seek freedom. On arrival many slaves offered any possible service they could to the Union Troops as a way of thanks. These services may include the offer to serve in the infantry, give any information held about the South, or work as spies. Many slave owner’s worried about the possibility of their slaves escaping the war and returning to the plantation to seek revenge for all the maltreatment they received in their times working for their master. The addition of enslaved men to the army would afford the North with a huge benefit. For every slave added to the Confederate troops there was a chance for an escape to the Union troops in the North and be considered contraband in the war