For Cause and Comrades: Why Men
Fought in the Civil War by James M.
McPherson
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Consider a war in which 25,000 soldiers are killed or wounded in a single
battle, as they were at Gettysburg, or 16,000 in a single day, as at
Antietam. The degree of suffering and hardship during the American Civil
War has been well documented and analyzed in books and films from
Margaret Mitchells fictional Gone with the Wind to Bell Irvin Wileys classic
studies of Civil War soldiers, The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy
Yank. All these sources agree on the brutality of the combat, but what
motivated soldiers to continue fighting under such bitter conditions is the
cause of some controversy. Until recently, the common stance has been
that soldiers enlisted out of economic need and stayed out of loyalty to
their comrades. The respected Civil War historian James M. McPherson
weighs in with a different point of view in For Cause and Comrades.
Professor McPherson posits that the common rank-and-file soldiers did

indeed hold political and ideological beliefs that prodded them to enlist
and to fight. His research is based on letters and diaries from 1,076 Union
and Confederate soldiers. These reveal many motivations, but always
they lead back to duty, honor, and a cause worth dying for. For Cause and
Comrades is a fascinating exploration of the 19th-century mind--a mind, it
seems, that differs profoundly from our own.
Personal Review: For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in
the Civil War by James M. McPherson
...well almost. In 'For Cause & Comrades' James McPherson has set out to
explain exactly why the average soldier sacrificed so much for his
respective cause in the American Civil War. He has succeeded in
convincing me. As the backbone of his thesis, McPherson has used
hundreds of letters and diary entries from both Confederate and Union
soldiers that offer some glaring insight into their motivations and beliefs.
He first touches on the more universal motivations of warriors such as
honor, duty, comradery, religion, vengeance and so on. And while these all
played a significant part in the Civil War, McPherson argues that what
ultimately separated Civil war soldiers from those of most other wars was a
fervent belief in the righteousness of their cause. In other words, this was a
truly ideological war and these convictions of righteousness, on both sides,
was what carried these men through such horrific fighting to the bitter end.
While I can't say there were any shocking revelations here, I was slightly
surprised, for instance, at how many Union soldiers were fervently
dedicated to their cause. It usually goes without saying that the
Confederate side was truly motivated to defend their cause, but I had
always assumed that most Union men served out of a grudging sense of
duty. It turns out that many truly felt that they were defending the American
experiment as a whole from the despised "traitors and rebels." In fact, this
seems to have been a bigger factor than slavery for most, as a large
portion of Union men were just as racist as their Southern adversaries.
Which makes it somewhat ironic that they felt they represented the cause
of the entire free world against tyranny and oppression. It should be noted
though that many Union soldiers did passionately oppose slavery and this
was an equally compelling cause for them. The Union side seems to be
very complex. On the other hand, the Confederate cause seemed to be
much less complicated. They were fighting not only for the right to continue
slavery, but also for their independence from the hated Yankee. As much
as white supremacy was a chief motivator (even poor, non-slaveholders
resented the notion of black equality), most Southerners truly believed they
were fighting for their own liberty and way of life.
Of course McPherson concedes that not every soldier fit this description.
There are skulkers, dodgers, draftees, and otherwise reluctant soldiers in
every army, but as McPherson shows, there was a significant core of truly
ideological fighters on both sides who refused to accept anything less than
total victory. While those well versed in Civil War history might not find

anything new here, I found it to be a concise and convincing survey on
Civil War motivations and I would highly recommend it.
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