For Cause and Comrades: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

While anti-slavery sentiments weren’t unheard of at the beginning of the war, very few Union soldiers would have said that they were fighting for racial equality, or even primarily for abolition of slavery. However, abolishing slavery for the sake of the union was a cause that took hold within the war’s first year and a half. For instance, an Ohio corporal saw “slavery and the slave power” as the cause of the “dangerous disease” of secession.

Soldiers who already held antislavery views often had these intensified upon visiting the South during the war. After talking with a slave woman, a Pennsylvania private wrote, “I am more than ever convinced of the cruelty and inhumanity of the system.” However, when soldiers spoke of slavery as a “blight,” they weren’t necessarily speaking from humanitarian concerns. Plenty saw “free-labor ideology” as something which promoted societal backwardness in general, stifling enterprise, ingenuity, prosperity, and even literacy throughout the rural South.

Runaway slaves often found shelter among the Union lines. Often, soldiers’ attitudes about this “were more pragmatic than altruistic,” as they saw fugitive labor as useful for freeing up more Union soldiers for the front lines. By the middle of 1862, though, “pragmatism and principle” began to form “a growing commitment to emancipation as both a means and goal of Union victory.”

In July, 1862, Congress passed a confiscation act, and Lincoln decided that he would pass his Emancipation Proclamation. At this time, plenty of Union soldiers opposed freeing the slaves. Racism was a factor, and the rumors of emancipation led to arguments and rumblings of dissatisfaction among soldiers, who complained, as one soldier did, that if Lincoln turned this into “an abolition war […] I for one shall be sorry that I ever lent a hand to it.” While some were grateful that the proclamation made the war a clear conflict “between slavery and freedom,” others felt betrayed and expressed hostility and disgust toward African Americans and abolitionists.

In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation caused a “morale crisis” in the Union armies in the winter of 1862–1863. However, much of this could be attributed to defeatism in light of recent Union leadership failures. Ultimately, around half of the Union armies did seem to favor the Proclamation. And anti-emancipation soldiers began to change their minds over the course of 1863, both because of Copperheadism and the growing conviction that emancipation really would weaken the enemy and strengthen the Union.

Another factor was that the Union began to recruit black regiments. At first, this met with much opposition, often on racist grounds. But here, too—even among soldiers who otherwise didn’t favor abolition—a pragmatic shift began. After all, many reasoned that black soldiers could shoot rebels just as well. And the more black soldiers entered the action, the more their success changed minds. An Illinois private wrote admiringly of black soldiers’ efforts at the battle of Nashville and reasoned that anyone fighting on behalf of the country should be free.

Evidence of black soldiers’ thoughts is difficult to come by. Some letters were published in Northern black newspapers, but few personal letters or diaries have survived and even fewer of these documents were written by freed slaves. Many freed slaves couldn’t read or write. However, black soldiers certainly fought for their own and others’ freedom, and increasingly for the cause of equality in general.

By 1864, resistance to black regiments was a minority position. When Lincoln ran for reelection on an abolitionism platform, he received 80 percent of the solider vote. By this time, too, fervor for emancipation was much increased. An Illinois lieutenant wrote that he was surprised at how abolition had gained traction over the course of the war—now, he reasoned, he was fighting for the noble cause of liberty for all.