But, hey, listen to Birdwatcher...he'll expound as to how every Southern fought for slavery or was pressed into service for the same (never mentioning the Germans and Irish pressed into service in the North against their will)
Sir, you didn't answer the question...
Both side instituted a draft, but that is not what we are talking here.
..what would have happened to people like that anonymous Austin TX carpenter in '61 if they did NOT side with secession?
For clues here in Texas google up the "Treue Der Union" monument in Comfort, and the largest public lynching/execution in our entire US history in Gainesville.
But it ain't just Texas, look up such incidents all across the South.
As for the sentiments of those guys actually in combat, drafted or not, in the '64 election the Union troops overwhelmingly voted for Lincoln like 5 to 1 even in the midst of the horrific bloodletting after Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac.
We dunno how the Confederate soldiers would have voted at that same time, we do know that the Confederate armies were by then evaporating out from under their commanders through steady losses to desertion despite the draconian punishments imposed for the same, tho' in fairness Confederate desertion in of itself at that time likely had little to do with political sentiment
Birdwatcher
