The Confederate Negro: Virginia's craftsmen and military laborers, 1861-1865, by James H. Brewer (HB, 1969, ex-lib, $3)
On the eve of war, more than 491,000 slaves, 58,000 free blacks, and 1,048,000 whites lived in Virginia. After the war came, there were not enough whites to do all the necessary war work. The Confederacy paid slave owners to rent out their slaves to build steamers, gunships, or fortifications. Slaves were also used to work on the canals, in the mines, and in the hospitals. So many slaves helped with the war effort, that at the end of the war there were not enough workers to do the necessary farm work.
Slaves did all this, and most of us never even considered the importance of slave labor to the Civil War. Read this book, and learn even more. Look for this in the Civil War section.
