How were confederates using slaves in the civil war?

Answer 1

Some 100,000 former Black slaves became Union soldiers during the US Civil War to help the Union end the Southern rebellion They got payed less than white Union soldiers in the battle.

Near the very end of the war, the South used slaves as soldiers. Prior to that, Southern slaves worked on farmlands and plantations in the South. They also served in the Confederate army as "helpers" to the army. They acted as carriers of supplies and ammunition.

Answer 2

The slave owners used their slaves during the Civil War the same way they had been using them before the war, as a source of cheap labor. Slaves were not used in the Confederate Army, because once slaves were given weapons, they might choose to use those weapons to kill the people who had enslaved them. So the slaves continued to be used as farm labor, construction labor, household help and so forth, at least those slaves were used who did not take the opportunity to escape to the North during the war, as many did.

ANSWER

The Confederates used to employ the three and half millions slaves in building field fortifications, repairing railroads, as wagoners and all sort of manual works to support the Army and the industries, not to count their "normal work" of farm labourers which secured the continuity of the agricultural production.

By so doing they spared a lot of troopers who could be employed in the fighting units.

This was a great advantage over the Union Army which had to use military personnel for most of those purposes.

Furthermore this help, partly at least , to explain why the Union Armies, on the whole, hardly ever or never, outnumbered the Confederates in pitched battles by a higher ratio than 2:1 commonly considered "decisively overwhelming".

They could reach at best an outnumbering average ratio between 1,5 - 1,75:1