Chris Messner

History 130 Paper 2 Beginner

Why Fight the Civil War?

Who can truly determine what made an entire nation break out into war? When a
newly formed nation suddenly decides to turn against itself, there are a myriad of reasons
for doing so. According to James McPherson in For Cause and Comrades, a man from
either side had a long list of potential motives to join the fight. While the motives
remained basically the same, both sides of the war utilized them differently. Examples of
motives he discusses include: morality, patriotism, liberty, peer pressure, boredom, pride,
religion, companionship, personal political beliefs, racial beliefs, and vengeance to name
a few. Perman and Taylors Major Problems also analyzed why Civil War soldiers fought,
and they produced evidence of many similar factors for motivation. Based off of both
analyses, it is clear that there were two motives that seemed to have the greatest impact
upon the soldiers. Soldiers fought to fulfill their personal sense of patriotism, and to
uphold their sense of honor and pride. Though the impact of patriotism and honor is
different for the North and the South, patriotism was more influential in the North and
honor was more influential in the South.
Patriotism was very important to the soldiers on both sides at the start of the war, and
for the North it was just as important throughout the entire campaign. McPherson starts
out his book by talking about Patriotism in the second chapter, and makes a very
interesting point. In reference to the war, During its first year all of those who
enlisted chose to do so (McPherson, 15-16). Every single man who came into the war

in 1861 was there because he wanted to be, there was no draft forcing anyone into the
war, and there was no substantial pay (McPherson later mentions that the men who
enlisted willingly looked down upon those who signed up in the later years of the war for
a paycheck). These men joined for a reason; what was that reason and why did it make
them feel like better citizens? The reason was that they loved their country. Be it the
established land of the free that was the United States, or the newly formed
Confederacy. The men desired to be a part of something greater than themselves. They
fought to have a hand in shaping the nation (or nations as the South would have it).
McPherson called this flourish of patriotism rage militaire (16), the idea that
inexperienced men sporadically decided to become soldiers in defense of their struggling
nation. Those men wished to do something with their lives, and so they became
extremely patriotic and cried for war.
Although when it comes to patriotism, there is a stark contrast between the North and
the South. Patriotism was assuredly stronger in the North than it was in the South, and
this meant the men in the North were more devoted to fighting for their country above all
else. One common theme evident in McPhersons cited documents is that the North was
fighting for an idea, while the South fought for more concrete substances (their
possessions). The Union was something transcendent; it was an ideal, a perfect
government that needed to be maintained for the future well being of the human race.
Other republics were falling apart in France and in Haiti, so the Union fought to maintain
this republic, so as to prove to the world that it could be done, and that men could truly be
free (Trainor, 3 March 2015 lecture). The American government was formed as an
outcome of the Revolutionary War; it was a statement saying that there shall be a place

where people can be free and experience all the fundamental properties of liberty. When
half of their newly formed nation decided to break away, the men in the North rallied
under the American Flag and fought to maintain the nation their founding fathers had laid
out for them. McPherson provides numerous examples of Union men who think in such
a manner, and declares that Northerners truly were sacrificing their lives for their
country (McPherson, 100). But the South felt oppressed by the North. The South tried
to secede because it felt as though the North was trying to suppress their economic
growth through the expansion of slavery. This was even before Lincoln outlawed slavery
and its institutions as a whole.
The most glaringly obvious contrast McPherson makes to detail the differing desires
and commitments of Northern and Southern men to their respective nations is his analysis
of the Emancipation Proclamations impact upon the country. McPherson claims,
Confederate prospects for victory appeared brightest during the months after the
Emancipation Proclamation, partly because this measure divided the Northern people and
intensified a morale crisis in Union armies (108). It is in this statement that McPherson
differentiates the Norths views from the Souths. The North is split by the thought of
abolishing slavery, because the North was only trying to preserve the Union, and
abolishing slavery was not necessarily what Northerners cared about or agreed upon. But
the South whole-heartedly increased in military fervor, because the North wanted to take
away their possessions (or more precisely slaves), which would cause widespread
economic hardship and essentially end their way of life. The choice was obvious; ending
slavery would cause financial ruin for many Southerners, so they fought. It seems much
more likely that the Southern individual would care more about his impending financial

doom, than about a new Confederate nation that sprung up just a short while ago.
Perman and Taylor reinforce what McPherson is claiming with a graph comparing
Percentage of Households Owning Slaves to Mean Percent of Men Enlisted (Perman
and Taylor, 196). The graph shows a positive linear correlation between the two
variables, where having more homes in a Southern county that contained slaves,
correlated to having more men enlisted for that particular area. Where there were no
slaves, fighting did not matter as much, the economy was not as firmly rooted in the slave
market and to lose it would not have had as great an impact. As previously mentioned,
the South was fighting for their possessions, and when Southerners did not have as much
to lose they did not have as great a desire to fight. Perman and Taylor back this up with
evidence that 11 out of 148 counties in the Confederacy did not send any companies for
the Confederate militia. These 11 lay in the extreme northwest none had more than
5 percent slaveholding households, and they contained less wealth than average for the
northwest region (197). The Southern counties that did not care for the war were the
counties that were the poorest and were least influenced by slavery. Such counties had
hardly anything to lose, besides their nuclear family, so why should they leave their
homes and fight in a war for a government that had just been formed? Also, counties in
close proximity to the North were more involved in Northern economy, and so they did
not care as much if the Southern economy were to suffer. Patriotism was not as prevalent
among Southerners who were not afraid of losing possessions; in fact some of them may
have even felt patriotic towards the other side given their situation and relationship to the
North.

In addition McPherson gives statistics about Northern to Southern patriotic sentiment.

From the documents he analyzed, 52% of the Confederates versus 62% of the Union
enlisted men were patriotic in their letters (McPherson, 101). Based off of these
statistics it is evident that there was at least some patriotic love for the new Confederacy,
but it is possible that some of the patriotic sentiment could actually be attributed to
Southern affections towards their homelands. This affection can be called, Southern
Pride, and is one reason why the South fought with equal or better strength than the
North in multiple parts of the war.
While patriotism declined for the South as the war raged on, Confederate soldiers
stayed in the war for another reason, a reason that has been the source of simulated
bravado since the beginning of civilization; honor. This is not to say that the North did
not have the driving force of pride and honor behind them, it is simply insinuating that
the South had a different form of it, one that compelled them more fervently than the
North. This is the aforementioned Southern Pride. The South was a land that lived in
the past; subsistence living and farming existed in most of the nation. With the world
around them still dwelling in the past, the men of the Southern states were very
traditional. They were chivalrous strong-men who were very insistent on the strength
of familial bonds and other traditions. Southern men seemed to think of themselves as a
different breed, men of noble blood, as is implied in McPhersons documents. For
example, when one Southern man heard his brother was joining the Union, he inquired as
to how it was possible that, a Brother in whose veins flow the same blood, Southern
ever allow Northern principles to contaminate his pure soul (15). There is a lot of proud
arrogance surrounding this quotation, about the pure Southern soul. Southern men

were raised in hardship, taught to work, and to earn manhood via the sweat of the brow,
and along with this hardship came a sense of pride and honor like no other. Southern
men were the kings of their households, the main source of income and the strong father
figure that the children looked up to. The average Southern man would not allow for his
home to be infringed upon. This was the land he and his ancestors had worked hard for,
and it was the future for his descendants. The man who loves his family the best now, is
he who will risk the most and suffer the most to repel the invader (135). Perman and
Taylor expand upon this, with the inclusion of an essay by Aaron Sheehan-Dean, which
claims that Southern soldiers with, anxiety over proving ones manhood, tended to
reinforce one another by encouraging secession and enlistment (Perman and Taylor,
199). The Southern way of life was on the line, and so any person who dared call himself
a Southern man had better sign up to fight for their homelands.
The Northerners were proud men too, and they were affected by honor as well. The
society around them however was not one of antiquated chivalry, and so there was
certainly less pressure to fight for ones familial honor. But honor had an amazing ability
to will men from both sides into fighting when it was time for conflict. Many soldiers
lack confidence in their courage. But most of them wanted to avoid the shame of being
known as a coward and that is what gave them courage (McPherson, 77). No man
wanted to die, but no man wanted to be known as too cowardly to fight for his comrades
around him. There was nothing worse than a man who knowingly allows others to die
around him, because he does not have the fortitude to face danger. There was a saying
that went around, Death before dishonor (77) as McPherson put it. The phrase means
that to die in battle was to serve the country and to further the cause; there were no men

who were looked down upon for dying. But skulkers (6), cowardly men who faked
sickness or snuck away from fighting were the most hated members of the army. They
were shunned and mocked, and ultimately would return home a disgrace. Men were so
afraid of being labeled an honor-less skulker that they would actually fight even when
they were actually sick or injured (79). The main purpose of honor in the war appears to
be encouraging men to fight, and giving them a reason to fight even if they were afraid or
only partly supportive of the cause. Without honor, there is a good chance that the
Confederacy, the strange intangible and unfounded new government, would not have
gained nearly as much support as it did, and both sides would have had a much larger
amount of deserters.
Patriotism and honor were incredible motivating forces for troops during the Civil
War. Through McPherson, and Perman and Taylors analyses, an important conclusion is
revealed, and a distinction made between Northern and Southern motivation. Patriotism
was an influential driving force behind many men entering the war, but ultimately
patriotism was greatest in keeping Union soldiers in the war fighting for the American
republic they called home. Honor was important in keeping both Southerners and
Northerners in the war, however it was crucial in enlisting Southerners to fight for their
homeland, under the guise of fighting for the Confederacy and the Southern way of life.
The Civil War could perhaps be deemed a war between the ideologies of founding fathers
versus the labor and toil of familial fathers.