Why Were Northern Soldiers Eager to Fight to Preserve the Union?

Why Were Northern Soldiers Willing to Fight to Preserve the Union?
Wondrium had sponsored an online discussion featuring Professor Gary
Gallagher and his Civil War lectures, and I was able to ask the good
professor two questions.
My first question was whether many Northerners suspected that if the
North sued for peace rather than calling up troops after South Carolina
shelled Fort Sumter, that this would only delay the inevitable Civil War.
The reason war would be inevitable is that the two nations would
eventually come to blows over whether newly settled states in the
western territories would be admitted to the Confederacy as slave
states, or be admitted to the Union as free labor states. Gallagher
answered that indeed, this was the fear of many informed citizens
before the Civil War.

Tragic Prelude,
John Brown,
depicting the
Kansas-Nebraska
confict, by John
Stuart Curry,
painted 1938

My second question was, Why Were Northern Soldiers Eager to
Fight to Preserve the Union? Which seems to be a rather abstract
cause to give the ultimate sacrifice of your life.
We know from our prior reflections that while the Confederate
Southern states definitely seceded to preserve the institution of
slavery, and while many liberal Northerners were abolitionists,
fighting to abolish slavery, the average Northern citizen was not
eager to end slavery, and many Northerners shared the racism of
their Confederate cousins. Professor Gallagher said he answered
this question in his book, The Union War, we will reflect on this
book in this lecture.

https://youtu.be/89ulb20cy8Q
https://youtu.be/UciDV5laOLg
https://youtu.be/JeRCM4PAqPk https://youtu.be/CK4V3e-TPFU

At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for
this video. Feel free to follow along in the PowerPoint
script we uploaded to SlideShare. Please, we welcome
interesting questions in the comments. Let us learn and
reflect together!

YouTube Channel (please subscribe):
Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History:
https://www.patreon.com/seekingvirtueandwisdom
Why Were Union Soldiers Eager to
Fight to Preserve the Union?
https://youtu.be/0aak9Mtt0eI
https://amzn.to/3KRgTc1
https://amzn.to/3F5cwYD
https://amzn.to/3jvz9L9
https://www.youtube.com/@ReflectionsMPH
© Copyright 2022 Become a patron:

Professor Gallagher opens his book
on the Union War, “The loyal
American citizenry fought a war that
also killed slavery. In a conflict that
stretched across four years and
claimed more than 800,000 US
casualties, the nation experienced
huge swings of civilian and military
morale before crushing Confederate
resistance. Union always remained
the paramount goal, a fact clearly
expressed by Abraham Lincoln in
speeches and other statements
designed to garner the widest
popular support for the war effort.” Civil War Battle Scene, by William T Trego, 1887

Soon after the Civil War began, when there was still slim
hope the South would reconsider,

Lincoln famously said that “my paramount
object in this struggle is to save the Union
and is not either to save or to destroy
slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I
could save it by freeing all the slaves I
would do it; and if I could save it by
freeing some and leaving others alone, I
would also do that. What I do about
slavery and the colored race, I do because
I believe it helps to save the Union; and
what I forbear, I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union.”
Portrait of Abraham Lincoln, by George Peter
Alexander Healy, 1869

Lincoln definitely showed that he would indeed consider freeing some slaves and
not others later in the war, when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation as an
executive war decree.
South Carolina would be the first state to secede from the Union and her soldiers
fired the first shots at Fort Sumter, but that was not the first time she rebelled
against the federal government. She had previously called a state convention that
passed the Ordinance of Nullification in 1832 declaring that some unpopular steep
federal tariffs were unconstitutional and unenforceable in South Carolina, then the
Congress passed the Force Bill authorizing the vigorous President Andrew Jackson to
use military force against South Carolina, while also lowering the tariff. Everyone
knew that Jackson would not hesitate, but South Carolina repealed the Ordinance of
Nullification, the crisis passed, but a dangerous precedent had been set.

Bombardment of Fort Sumter, Currier & Ives, 1861

Political Cartoon on Nullification Crisis, Endicott & Swett, Lithographers, 1833

During this crisis, famous speeches by Senator Daniel Webster
rejected the compact theory advanced by John C Calhoun of
South Carolina. Webster claimed that the Constitution was the
product of the people and was not a compact of the various
states, who could nullify the compact at will, that only the
Supreme Court could rule on the constitutionality of federal laws,
not the individual states. Webster’s speech was burned into the
consciousness of Americans and recited by many school children,
and 150,000 copies of Webster’s speech were distributed, that
proclaimed: “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable.”

Andrew Jackson ; Daniel Webster ; Henry Clay

A large majority of Northerners
shared Websters deep commitment
to the Union cause. Walt Whitman
expressed how deeply many in the
North felt, “UNIONISM, in its truest
and amplest sense, formed the hard-
pan of the Northerner’s character, a
new virtue, unknown to other lands,
and hardly yet really known here, but
the foundation of all, as the future
will grandly develop.”

The state of mind of Americans before the Civil War was also affected by
events in Europe. The Revolutions of 1848 were widespread political
upheavals in many countries in Europe seeking to overthrow the
monarchies that were put back in place after the French Revolution and
the Napoleonic Wars that followed. These were spontaneous
uncoordinated revolutions that were mostly suppressed by reactionary
forces sympathetic to the monarchies some years later. Some
democratic reforms were permanent, the revolutions played out
differently in many countries. In France, the Second Republic was
established, but was overthrown when Napoleon III gained dictatorial
powers through a coup. There was little actual change in most countries,
though the monarchies were reminded that running roughshod over the
middle and lower classes posed political risks.

The revolutionary barricades in Vienna in May 1848
Barricades in Paris in 1848, by Horace Vernet

Revolution of 1848 in Paris, by Félix Henri Emmanuel Philippoteaux

Another famous speech by Daniel Webster in 1850
proclaimed that though sectional tensions were
tested by slavery, that the American model of
government excelled when compared to the
monarchies of Europe.

Webster continues, “We have a great,
popular, constitutional government
guarded by law” “and defended by the
affection of the whole people. No
monarchial throne presses these states
together, no iron chain of military
power encircles them; they live and
stand under a government popular in
its form, representative in its charter,
founded upon principles of equality,
and so constructed, we hope, as to last
forever.”

Whigs, Free Soil, then the Republican Party
Free Soil Party President Running Mates

To understand Northern sentiment, we also need to know how
the political parties formed and broke apart as Northern
attitudes toward slavery changed. Although the Democratic-
Republican Party has been in existence since the founding of our
Republic, there have been several opposition parties.
The Federalist Party, strongest in the Northeastern states, was
the first opposition party, George Washington and Alexander
Hamilton were prominent Federalists. Many Federalists favored
Great Britain before the War of 1812, which was fought against
Great Britain.

The Apotheosis of Washington, US Capitol rotunda / George Washington with Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hami

Due to these sentiments, after the war the Federalist
Party collapsed, and eventually the opposition
coalesced into a new Whig Party, which the young
Lincoln joined. The Whig Party was truly a national
party, but it collapsed as its Southern and Northern
wings clashed over slavery.

Whig Party Presidential Candidates, 1844, 1848, and 1856

Many Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln, joined the Free-Soil
Party, which lasted from 1848 to 1854, when it merged into
the newly formed Republican Party. The Free-Soil Party did not
oppose slavery everywhere but focused on the single issue of
opposing the expansion of slavery into the western territories
of the United States. Former President Martin Van Buren ran
for reelection in 1848 with the campaign slogan, Free Soil, Free
Labor, Free Speech. What many outside the South feared was
that slaves would undercut the small white yeoman farmers
and other free laborers with cheap slave labor.

Free Soil party
nominated
former
President
Martin Van
Buren in the
1848
Presidential
election

There was never overwhelming popular support among
Northerners to abolish slavery, let alone popular support
for black civil rights and black suffrage. The three
Reconstruction Amendments guaranteeing blacks these
rights and citizenship would have never passed if the
Southern states had not been compelled to adopt them as
a condition for readmittance into the Union after the war.

For the 1860 Presidential election, the Democratic Party split
into a northern wing, nominating Stephen Douglas of Illinois,
who only won Missouri, and the Southern wing, nominating
John Breckinridge of Kentucky, who won in eleven Southern
states. The newly formed Constitutional Union Party
nominated John Bell of Tennessee, who won three border
states. Abraham Lincoln carried eighteen states running as the
Republican nominee, winning a majority in the Electoral
College, although he won only about forty percent of the
popular vote.

After the election, but before Lincoln was sworn into office
in March 1861, seven states seceded from the Union to
form the Confederate States of America. After Lincoln was
sworn in as President, the South Carolina fired the first
shots of the Civil War at the federal garrison at Fort Sumter
in Charleston Harbor. After President Lincoln called for
federal troops to put down the rebellion, four more
Southern states seceded from the Union. The Civil War had
begun.

Evening Gun, Fort
Sumter, Conrad
Wise Chapman &
John Gadsby
Chapman, 1864

Fighting Only to Preserve the Union
Battle of Spotsylvania, Kurz & Allison Art Publishers, 1888

FIGHTING TO PRESERVE THE UNION, NOT TO END SLAVERY
After he was reelected President in 1864, when the
Republican majority in Congress increased, Abraham
Lincoln appealed to Congress to reconsider passing the
Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. Each house of
Congress needed to pass the Amendment by a two-thirds
majority before sending it to the states, but in an earlier
vote before the election, the House of Representatives
failed to approve this amendment.

Lincoln appealed to Congress to now pass the
Thirteenth Amendment by appealing to the
Union cause: “In a great national crisis, like ours,
unanimity of action among those seeking a
common end is very desirable, almost
indispensable. In this case, the common end is
the maintenance of the Union,” and the
amendment stood “among the means to secure
that end.” At this point of the war, preservation
of the Union could be accomplished by the
abolition of slavery, as slavery was an internal
threat to maintaining the Union, as slaveholders
were seen as violating the rule of law in
seceding to preserve slavery.

One practical reason why Northerners fought to preserve the
Union rather than to guarantee civil rights for blacks is that very
few blacks lived in Northern states before and during the Civil
War. The North was a white republic. We see this in WEB Du Bois
autobiography, he was born in Massachusetts after the Civil War,
he was the only black in his class, and one of the few blacks in
his neighborhood. There was no thought of banning him from
attending public schools, and he was granted scholarships to
attend college, but he did suffer social discrimination that
worsened as he neared adulthood.

Other histories discuss how many Northerners were offended by
how quickly the Southern states seceded after Abraham
Lincoln’s election. Professor Gallagher discusses this in his
Wondrium Civil War lectures, which we reference in our
summary of the Yale University undergraduate YouTube courses
on the Civil War. Secession was hotly debated in the state
conventions that were called, many political leaders and
informed citizens in the South were not eager to secede, and
many elected Southern congressmen had traveled to
Washington to take their seats when elected.

But the base was fired up by newspaper editorials and the extremists in
the South, and there was a groundswell of popular opinion to secede in
the South, just as there are many MAGA Republicans who side with
Trump in declaring that the 2020 election had been stolen, and that the
January 6th Insurrection was merely a peaceful protest by some very fine
patriots.
Likewise, there was widespread resentment in the North that the
Southerners were sore losers, that Lincoln was elected fairly, and that by
ignoring the results of the election the Southerners were trying to
sabotage our democracy, setting a bad example for Europeans, which is
exactly how Democrats view Trump today.

Lincoln Wins Presidential Election of 1864

During the difficult 1863 war year, when Union victories
were few in the Eastern theater centered in Virginia,
Lincoln expected to lose the next Presidential election in
1864. The party abandoned the label Republican, Lincoln
was running as the nominee of the Union Party, with the
Democrat Andrew Johnson from Tennessee as his Vice-
Presidential candidate. Then as now, the Vice President is
chosen to win the next election, without considering
whether he would be a good President.

Gallagher writes, “More than three years
into the conflict, freedom for the mass of
African Americans remained a fragile
proposition.” “In early December 1863,
Lincoln had announced as part of his plan
for reunion a requirement that former
Rebels take an oath of allegiance and
accept all proclamations and legislation
then in force regarding slavery. George B
McClellan, the Democratic presidential
candidate in 1864, specifically omitted any
mention of emancipation in his letter
accepting the nomination.”

McClellan states,
“The reestablishment
of the Union in all its
integrity is, and must
continue to be, the
indispensable
condition in any
settlement.” “The
Union is the one
condition of peace.
We ask no more.”
Lincoln in McClellan's tent after the Battle of Antietam

Gallagher writes, “Military
contingency intervened again when
Sherman captured Atlanta” “and
General Sheridan won three smashing
victories in the Shenandoah Valley” in
late 1864, before the presidential
election. “News from these
battlefields electrified the loyal home
front and sent ripples of despair
across much of the Confederacy. They
also secured a second term for
Lincoln and fueled a Republican
landslide in Congress, political
outcomes that kept emancipation in
place as an official war aim.”

Emancipation Proclamation, January 1864
Emancipation Proclamation, AA Lamb, painted 1864

In early 1862, some Radical Republicans called for emancipating
the slaves to ruin the Southern economy. Ever since the
beginning of the war, slaves had been escaping behind the lines
of battle when the Union Army approached. At first, they were
treated as contraband property seized under the rules of war.
Lincoln penned the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 but
pocketed it until General McClellan halted Robert E Lee’s
invasion of the North, resulting in a Union victory in the Battle of
Antietam. In September 1862, Lincoln announced that if the
South did not lay down its arms and surrender, he would issue
the Emancipation Proclamation the following year.

Contrabands—fugitive
slaves—cooks,
laundresses, laborers,
teamsters, railroad
repair crews—fled to
the Union Army, but
were not officially
freed until 1863 by the
Emancipation
Proclamation.

President Lincoln, writing the Proclamation of Freedom, by David Gilmour Blythe, 1863

The Emancipation Proclamation issued in January 1863
did not free any slaves immediately. In this decree Lincoln
sought to save the Union by freeing some slaves but not
others. Only those slaves behind enemy lines were
declared to be free, but practically they were not free
until they either fled to behind Union lines or until the
Union Army conquered their lands. Slaves in border states
were not freed, and slaves in territory already occupied by
Union forces were technically property of the federal
government, although practically, they really were free.

Emancipation
from
Freedmen's
viewpoint,
illustration
from Harper's
Weekly 1865

Gallagher states, “Newspapers,
letters, diaries, early regimentals, and
other sources reveal key themes.
Most important, white soldiers and
civilians overwhelmingly supported
emancipation as a tool to help restore
the Union and protect it against
future slavery-related threats rather
than as a grand moral imperative.”
But opinions were mixed on the
wisdom of blacks serving in the Union
army, or granting black veterans, or
all black citizens, the right to vote.
Black man reading Emancipation Proclamation by
candlelight, by Henry Louis Stephens, 1863

Gallagher continues, “Genuine concern for African Americans
seldom preoccupied a population that remained profoundly
prejudiced, though a minority in the North consistently
argued that any Union true to the founding documents
would extend basic human rights to all black people.”
First Reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, by Francis Bicknell Carpenter, 1864

Gallagher continues, “Some Democrats”
“recoiled from both forced emancipation and
any semblance of basic rights for black
people. They favored ‘the Union as it was’
and, in some cases, veered close to
supporting the Confederacy. Most soldiers
hated these ‘peace Democrats’ or
Copperheads, equating their statements and
actions with treason and demanding they be
punished. Other Democrats reluctantly
accepted emancipation and the enrollment
of black soldiers as necessary to save the
Union, while voicing vicious opinions about
African Americans as people.”

Professor Gallagher discusses the Gettysburg Address, delivered
in November 1863, when the North had few victories in the
Eastern Theater of war centered in Virginia. Lincoln delivered the
famous speech dedicating the Union war cemetery at
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Several scholars have compared the
Gettysburg Address to Pericles Funeral Oration, we also compare
it to Winston Churchill’s oration commemorating the brave RAF
pilots that saved Britain from the Luftwaffe bombers after
Germany’s blitzkrieg through France at the start of World War II.

Pickett’s Charge, Battle of Gettysburg cyclorama, by Paul Philippoteaux, painted 1883

Professor Gallagher writes, “On a late
autumn day in Gettysburg, Lincoln
transformed the war, reshaping all the
inherited baggage from the founding
generation.” “Lincoln had
revolutionized the Revolution, giving
people a new past to live with that
would change their future indefinitely.
Without using the word ‘slavery,’
Lincoln had promised a ‘new birth of
freedom’ guaranteed by a
‘government of the people, by the
people, for the people.’”

Most of the newspaper coverage of the day centered on the
two-hour oration that day by William Everett, but the succinct
lines of Lincoln’s address were short enough for schoolchildren
to memorize, and many have memorized his speech up to the
current day. Neither slavery nor emancipation were explicitly
referenced in the Gettysburg Address, but every line reminds us
that those brave soldiers fought for Union and liberty, a “new
birth of freedom,” freedom impossible where slavery is
tolerated. But Gallagher also reminds us that “neither this
speech, nor any other factor, led most loyal citizens to place
emancipation alongside Union as a principal goal in the conflict.”

Battle of Gettysburg cyclorama, by Paul Philippoteaux, painted 1883

Affirmation
The surrender at Appomattox, by Louis Guillaume, 1892

General Grant remembered
the day Robert E Lee
surrendered to the Union
forces at Appomattox,
Virginia, “I felt like anything
rather than rejoicing at the
downfall of a foe who had
fought so long and valiantly,
and had suffered so much for
a cause, though that cause
was, I believe, one of the
worst for which a people ever
fought, and one for which
there was the least excuse.”
The surrender at Appomattox, by Louis Guillaume, 1892

Gallagher writes, “Grant
offered a perceptive discussion
of how attitudes changed in
the loyal states. At the end of
the war, he observed in his
memoirs, most of the citizenry
favored a quick reintegration
of the Rebels into the nation.
Most also opposed black
suffrage, believing it would
come after ‘a time of
probation, in which the ex-
slaves could prepare
themselves for the privileges
of citizenship.’”
The surrender at Appomattox, by Thomas Nast, 1865

But as the years made the memories of the Civil War
recede, more and more newspapers and orators
“emphasized commonalities of valor and steadfastness
among Union and Confederate soldiers.” We told the story
of how the Northern electorate tired of stationing federal
troops to enforce the Reconstruction Amendments and
civil rights in the recalcitrant South, and how in the
disputed election of 1876 the North pulled out federal
troops, leaving the black citizens of the Deep South to
their fate under the Jim Crow Race laws.

The surrender at Appomattox, by Thomas Nast, 1865

DISCUSSION OF THE SOURCES
Who was the intended audience for Gary Gallagher’s book, The Union
War? We suspect the primary audience is other professors with whom he
debates at Civil War conferences, as he discusses much of the current
research in this book. He also assumes the reader is acquainted with the
history preceding the Civil War, which is why Dr Wikipedia was asked to
assist in our reflections.
In this book, Professor Gallagher consults many diaries, soldiers’ letters to
home, and public statements to gauge popular opinion during the war.
No matter how unbiased he tries to be, his selection of materials will
always be his personal selection.

For example, in the first chapter of his book, Professor Gallagher
discusses why no colored troops were included in the two-day military
Grand Review celebration in late May 1865, while there were still some
Confederate troops fighting in remote theaters. He painstakingly assesses
the evidence that the colored troops were indeed dispatched on
meaningful assignments to preserve the peace against renegade
Confederates. However, this does not disprove the suspicion that the
Union generals wanted to avoid the parading of even a token number of
colored troops in the nation’s capital during the Grand Review, as motives
would be impossible to discern absent some private high-level
correspondence, and it is unlikely such correspondence would exist. We
cannot wonder why the Union generals could not even find a token
number of black soldiers to participate in the review.

Grand Review of the Union Troops

In the end, we realized that we need to learn more about the events and
personalities leading up to the Civil War to truly understand why Union
soldiers were willing to fight and die to preserve the Union, and why they
did not consider this to be an abstract objective. In particular, we need to
reflect on biographies of the orator Daniel Webster, and the Great
Compromiser Henry Clay, whom Lincoln admired so much. We can also
reflect on the biographies of Lincoln and the history of the Free-Soil Party
by Doris Kearns Goodwin, Eric Foner, and other biographers and
historians. Look for these videos in 2023 and let us know in the
comments if you are particularly interested in any of these topics.

We were not originally planning on cutting a video on the Civil War
battles and campaigns, but then we realized how many paintings and
color lithographs exist of these Civil War battles. Photography had just
been invented, but since exposure times had to be long, during the Civil
War photographers usually only took pictures of the dead bodies on the
battlefields after the battles were fought. Many painters realized their
days were numbered, so they needed to paint as much as they could, or
maybe there was more of a market for paintings reproduced in the
newspapers. We used Professor Gallaghers’ Wondrium lectures on the
Civil War as our main source for this video.

https://www.wondrium.com/the-american-civil-war
https://amzn.to/3KRgTc1

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
YouTube Description has links for:
• Script PDF file
• Blog
• Amazon Bookstore
© Copyright 2021
Blog and YouTube Description
include links for Amazon books
and lectures mentioned, please
support our channel with these
affiliate commissions.
Link to blog: https://wp.me/pachSU-KX

https://www.meetup.com/Reflections/

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLqDkfFbWhXOnzdjp__YZtg/

Why Were Northern Soldiers Eager to Fight to Preserve the Union?

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

More from Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History

More from Reflections on Morality, Philosophy, and History (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Why Were Northern Soldiers Eager to Fight to Preserve the Union?