For Cause and Comrades: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

What did urge soldiers into combat? McPherson observes that soldiers wrote a great deal about qualities like “courage,” “bravery,” and “valor”—but they wrote even more about cowardice. Wanting to avoid being seen as a coward is what gave them courage to go into combat. Often, this sentiment was expressed by the phrase “death before dishonor.”

Many soldiers wrote that their pride in their manhood would be disgraced if they showed any cowardice, and they were confident that their wives and families, too, “would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace,” as one soldier wrote. Often, on the eve of a first battle, they claimed that their biggest dread was discovering themselves to be cowards. Skulking, or feigning sickness or lameness (sometimes jokingly called “cannon fever”) was common in the war and the object of others’ contempt. This meant that even truly sick soldiers sometimes went into battle, for fear of “being called a sneak and a coward.”

Many men in a volunteer company came from the same community, or at least the same county. Through letters, newspapers, and even occasional family visits, connections to hometowns were maintained during the war. Thus one’s community exerted peer pressure against cowardice. For instance, a Wisconsin private wrote home to report that “Norman Hart is a D—n coward,” and others didn’t hesitate to name “skedaddlers,” with the expectation that these would face shame and ridicule. Sometimes, soldiers assigned to behind-the-lines duties would find ways to rejoin their frontline regiments to avoid accusations of cowardice.

Combat motivation is a much-studied subject, and often studies have concluded that soldiers feel the strongest need to prove themselves within the first couple of battles. After this, fear of wounding or death tends to become stronger than a soldier’s “fear of showing fear.” Some studies have concluded the same thing about the Civil War—that the Victorian obsession with manhood and duty eventually gave way to fear as the war became longer and bloodier. Some evidence in letters seems to bear this out. Especially as Union short-timers’ enlistments wound down, men sometimes showed a growing fear of dying with just days left to go in their service.

However, McPherson concludes, half of the early Union enlistees re-enlisted, and among most of these, men—as well as most of the Confederate soldiers—initial values of honor and courage held true. If anything, in fact, these values seemed to grow stronger even through 1864, regarded as the most terrible year of the war. That year, an Ohio veteran wrote that he’d “rather go into fifty battles and run the risk of getting killed than as to be […] a coward in time of battle.”

An individual soldier’s honor was bound up with that of his regiment, state, and nation. Such honor and pride were symbolized by regimental and national flags. Even soldiers whose personal courage was renowned would share in their company’s, regiment’s, or state’s humiliations. A New York lieutenant, wring of his feeling of disgrace when his regiment broke and ran at Third Winchester, declared that he’d never felt worse and that he didn’t care if he was shot. When something like this happened, a regiment would often feel spurred to redeem themselves in the next battle.

Such pride in one’s unit propelled even three-year Union veterans to reenlist. Writing to his parents, a sergeant in the 12th Iowa rationalized his decision to reenlist on this basis, explaining that he couldn’t force the very men he’d fought with to “bear my burden” while he was safe at home.

Regimental or national flags, or “the colors,” were a symbol of men’s shared loyalty to their unit, state, and nation and thus of their bond to one another. Being a color bearer was a risky but much-sought-after position because of this “special mystique.” Capturing the enemy’s colors was considered to be an especially honorable feat, while losing one’s own colors was a source of great shame. Soldiers were willing to die to “rescue” the flag from enemies, and planting the flag on a captured enemy position was perhaps the pinnacle of a soldier’s pride, as a New York officer summed up his feelings after one such event: “God, Country, Love, Home […] [I felt] proud as a man can feel.”

This sort of identification with one’s fighting unit or flag is similar to what’s described as “primary group cohesion,” a much-studied phenomenon since World War II. A soldier’s “primary group” would consist of who he interacted with every day in camp, while marching, or during battle. Such a group was even smaller than one’s company, such as the men with whom he camped and ate meals and the sergeant who commanded his squad, all of whom probably came from his hometown or close to it. Such a group became a mutually dependent and supportive “band of brothers.”

The survival of each member of the “band of brothers” depended on each other member doing his job; in turn, group survival depended on individual steadiness. It’s this group that “enforces peer pressure against cowardice.” Thus, succumbing to “cannon fever” or skulking during battle endangers one’s “brothers’” lives and also invites their contempt, even to the point of being shut out of the group. This was a powerful incentive for most men to fight courageously.

Brotherhood in battle could also cause bickering, rivalries, and factionalism to dissolve as men fought side by side and also shared common sorrows. Teetotaling, pious men befriended hard-drinking, profane comrades. Men also refused “softer” assignments or promotions if it meant transferring away from their friends.

However, McPherson points out, it was very difficult for group cohesion to last: disease, deaths, transfers, and promotions caused primary groups to whittle down to nearly nothing over the course of the war. When this happened, larger ideals provided sustaining motivation and also combat motivation, since often the best soldiers were those who were deeply committed to what they called “the Cause.”