A considerable number could be placed in the ranks by relieving all able bodied white men employed as teamsters, cooks, mechanics, and laborers and supplying their places with negroes … It seems to me that we must choose between employing negroes ourselves, and having them employed against us.80 In no way did Lee want emancipated slaves in his ranks, but he desperately needed more men to contend with the U.S. forces under Grant and his own lack of manpower, exacerbated by the losses of the Gettysburg campaign. By early 1865, he advocated using enslaved men as soldiers because
