From a mass of data bearing more directly upon the number of
slaveholders in the ranks of the Virginia soldiers, we select two
citations:
Major Robert Stiles, late a prominent member of the Richmond Bar,
referring to the personnel of the Richmond Howitzers (of which he was
a member) and the motives which impelled them to fight, writes:
"Why did they volunteer? For what did they give their lives?...
Surely, it was not for slavery they fought. The great majority of
them had never owned a slave, and had little or no interest in the
institution. My own father, for example, had freed his slaves long
years before."[218]
This command was composed of representatives of the leading families
in the city of Richmond, at that time the largest slaveholding city in
the state. Here one would expect to find the slaveholding soldiers.
Dr. Hunter McGuire, the medical director of the Stonewall Brigade, has
left on record his estimate of the number of slaveholders in the ranks
of that command—which, being drawn from all portions of the state,
was more representative of the citizenship of Virginia, East and West:
"The Stonewall Brigade of the Army of Northern Virginia," writes Dr.
McGuire, "was a fighting organization. I knew every man in it, for I
belonged to it for a long time; and I know that I am in proper
bounds when I assert, that there was not one soldier in thirty who
owned or ever expected to own a slave."[219]
But it is also urged that, while men without slaves filled the ranks
of the Virginia regiments, yet slaveholders led these soldiers into
battle as they had led the people into revolution.