Leadership found themselves in a position in which they could choose to perpetuate slavery or give everything they had to win the war and secure independence—a choice many Confederate leaders were unwilling to accept. Robert M. T. Hunter, a senator from Virginia, is reported to have said, “What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?” Another Confederate leader, General Howell Cobb, was even more explicit: “If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”
