I assume you mean 1800’s instead of 1880’s (since the later is post-Civil War (to use the northern term)). Otherwise the sentence would make no sense.
That aside, I do agree with your sentiments.
Based on college classes taken and independent research I have done over the years, it is clear that nearly all of the rank and file soldiers (along with a smaller but still significant number of their officers) of the Confederate States were not slave owners. Whether or not they personally agreed with the institution of slavery was a moot point; at the time, the “peculiar institution” was legal and a part of the economy of the South. Rather, they were men who responded to a summons to colors issued by their elected state governments and they responded as good citizens are expected to do and usually do when the state calls them to service.
In discussing this subject, I often point out that if a reasonable person sat down and wrote out a list of the possible ways to bring slavery to an end in the South, fighting a devastating war that destroyed the economy of the South, killed hundreds of thousands of able bodied men on both sides, corrupted government processess in the North and the South, and created a century or more of spiteful bitterness in the South would surely have to rank toward the bottom (if not be at the very bottom) of such a list.
So how is it that the very worst choice is the one that happened?
(BTW, is it reasonable to assume that your male Georgia ancestors, if able, did serve in one of the Confederate armed Forces?)
“...is it reasonable to assume that your male Georgia ancestors, if able, did serve in one of the Confederate armed Forces?...”
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Yes, there were several, and other than their brief military service,
they were just plain old common folks trying to make a living.
I am from North Alabama and had family on both sides in the Civil War. My father’s great uncle was in first Alabama Union Army was captured and sent to Danville Virginia where he died in Late 1863. The brother, my dad’s GF, never went to war and hid out during the war. North Alabama was mixed in the decision of which side to support.