pp. 39-40
  When Volunteers failed to meet increasing military needs, the Confederate government authorized the impressment of slaves and agreed to compensate the owners (thirty dollars a month and the full value of the slave in case of his death). ... The glowing reluctance of planters to part with their slaves, even to sustain a war for the preservation of that property, compounded the problem of meeting military labor requisitions “Have you ever noticed the strange conduct of our people during this war?” a Confederate congressman from Georgia asked. "They give up their sons, husbands, brothers & friends, and often without murmuring, to the army but let one of their negroes be taken, and what a howl you will hear” Still another legislator claimed to know a planter with five sons in the Army who resisted attempts to impress his slaves. “The patriotic planters,” he observed, “would willingly put their own flesh and blood into the army, but when you asked them for a negro the matter approached the point of drawing an eye-tooth!".
p-42
  The usual procedure was to keep them behind the lines, not only to protect their lives but to safeguard the owners’ investments as well. “I hear you are likely to have a big battle soon,” a Virginia slaveholder advised his son, “and I write to tell you not to let Sam go into the fight with you. Keep him in the rear, for that nigger is worth a thosand dollars."