Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in For Cause and Comrades, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Duty, Honor, and Masculinity
Northern vs. Southern Ideology
Slavery, Equality, and Abolition
Morale and Endurance
Summary
Analysis
At the beginning of the Civil War, most soldiers, on both sides, seem to have been “spoiling for a fight,” eager to “see the elephant”—a phrase from the period which denoted an exciting new experience. This eagerness derived partly from the desire to demonstrate one’s manliness to others.
At first, enlistees genuinely wanted to experience the novelty of warfare and to learn if they were capable of behaving in “manly” fashion. Initial excitement, in other words, hadn’t yet given way to the need for sustained motivation.
Themes
After one’s first battle, however, men tended to be quickly disillusioned. For instance, an Ohio soldier wrote to his wife that although he began fighting with high spirits, after the battles was over he never wanted to participate in another. Similarly, a Virginia private wrote that he’d “seen enough of the glory of war”—he was tired of seeing men maimed or killed. Once a man had “seen the elephant”—regardless of whether he had met his personal standards for manliness—he generally wasn’t eager to see it again.
Simply experiencing warfare radically changed one’s attitudes about it. Even if a soldier enlisted with genuine intentions and acquitted oneself “honorably” on the battlefield, he encountered things he had never been forced to endure before. The question then became how to cope with what he’d experienced—and how to prepare himself to face it again.
Themes
Once soldiers’ boyish eagerness was replaced with a more realistic view, the men nevertheless expressed willingness to fight for duty’s sake. A soldier weary of war nevertheless did “not wish to be elsewhere […] for it is for my Countries Flag I am fighting.” This being the case, all soldiers still had to contend with fear. Openly admitting fear was seen as “unmanly,” so some either denied that they felt it or they only referred to the gallows humor in which men indulged on the brink of battle.
In a sense, real shame for a soldier was not feeling fear, but admitting to fear. Even while feeling fear, devotedness to duty remained a sustaining motivation for many—even if the man had to deny his feelings or make jokes about them in order to save face. Soldiers on both sides frequently cited the “flag” as a symbol of the land and principles for which they fought, suggesting that patriotism was a significant ideological factor driving both sides.
Themes
Over time, though, men seemed to admit more readily to the fear they felt before battle—especially the unbearable tension right before a fight, which was sometimes relieved through cries like the infamous Confederate “Rebel Yell.” Once in battle, many experienced an unexpected calmness. A Massachusetts captain explained that, in the thick of the action, he was entirely focused on commanding his men, and that the horror of the scene only hit him in the aftermath. Another acknowledged that “courage” seems to be a “nonrealization of the danger one is in” owing to adrenaline-fueled absorption in the task at hand. An Iowan remarked after a horrible battle that he felt disoriented and numb, as if he were two different people on and off the battlefield. Shock or collapse did occur, however, after battle or sometimes even in the midst (which helps explain why an advance could deteriorate quickly into a retreat or a total rout).
Though soldiers at this time wouldn’t have had the medical knowledge to describe the effects of adrenaline or the “fight or flight” response, such experiences were commonly described. Even sick or injured soldiers occasionally found themselves propelled into battle by a sudden physical strength they couldn’t explain. While in battle, a hyper-focused detachment held fear at arm’s length for many—but this didn’t always work, and giving way to fear could have a catastrophic domino effect for entire units.
Themes
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After battle, the letdown often allowed fears to come rushing back. A New York officer who survived Gettysburg remarked that he’d been buoyed by a “glorious excitement” for a few days, but then the suffering of fallen comrades devastated him. Sometimes combat revisited soldiers vividly in their dreams.
Though the many of the soldiers McPherson quotes continued to function on the battlefield, some of the effects they describe would later be described as symptoms of shell shock (in World War I), battle fatigue (in World War II), and more recently as post-traumatic stress disorder.
Themes
Even after these men had “seen the elephant” and been disillusioned regarding the so-called glories of war, they became better acquainted with the perils of battle. Rather than decreasing anxiety, experience only tended to make survivors dread the likelihood of their own death in later conflict. Yet it’s apparent that these same men managed to steel themselves to continue facing battle. What kinds of external and internal motivations, wonders McPherson, enabled the soldiers to do so?
McPherson cites modern studies of combat effectiveness which have found that soldiers’ fighting ability tends to improve over the first few battles—but after a short period of continuous combat or a longer stretch of intermittent combat, their effectiveness begins to decline as their energy and eagerness wane.
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