Abraham Lincoln Character Analysis

Tennesseeans and Louisianians who saw large parts of their states including the principal cities fall to the "insolent invader" in the spring of 1862 felt a redoubled commitment to the Cause. A captain in the l6th Tennessee wrote after the surrender of Fort Donelson that his men were “now more fully determined than ever before to sacrifice their lives, if need be, for the invaded soil of their bleeding Country….The chivalrous Volunteer State will not be allowed to pass under Lincoln rule without…the fall of a far greater number of his hireling horde than have yet been slain at the hands of those who are striking for their liberties, homes, firesides, wives and children.” Rather grandiloquent prose, but it was echoed in plainer terms by a private in the 9th Tennessee who was incensed to think of his mother “being left there and Exposed to there insults […] I feel a stronger Determination never to [quit] the field untill they are driven from that beautiful land.”

The patriotism of Civil War soldiers existed in a specific historical context. Americans of the Civil War generation revered their Revolutionary forebears. Every schoolboy and schoolgirl knew how they had fought against the odds to forge a new republic conceived in liberty. Northerners and Southerners alike believed themselves custodians of the legacy of 1776. The crisis of 1861 was the great test of their worthiness of that heritage. […] That is why Lincoln began his great evocation of Union war aims with the words: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth…a new government, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Likewise, [Jefferson] Davis urged his people to “renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional liberty.”

“Slavery and Aristocracy go hand in hand,” [a Minnesota lieutenant] told his fiancée, who did not agree with his new opinions. “An aristocracy brought on this war—that Aristocracy must be broken up…it is rotten and corrupt. God intends that it and slavery[,] its reliance & support[,] must go down together….We did not think so one year ago & you will think differently too a year hence.” […] A Kentucky lieutenant who had once threatened to resign his commission if Lincoln moved against slavery had executed an about-face by the summer of 1863. “The ‘inexorable logic of events’ is rapidly making practical abolitionists of every soldier,” he informed his sister. “I am afraid that [even] I am getting to be an Abolitionist. All right! better that than a Secessionist.”

Tennesseeans and Louisianians who saw large parts of their states including the principal cities fall to the "insolent invader" in the spring of 1862 felt a redoubled commitment to the Cause. A captain in the l6th Tennessee wrote after the surrender of Fort Donelson that his men were “now more fully determined than ever before to sacrifice their lives, if need be, for the invaded soil of their bleeding Country….The chivalrous Volunteer State will not be allowed to pass under Lincoln rule without…the fall of a far greater number of his hireling horde than have yet been slain at the hands of those who are striking for their liberties, homes, firesides, wives and children.” Rather grandiloquent prose, but it was echoed in plainer terms by a private in the 9th Tennessee who was incensed to think of his mother “being left there and Exposed to there insults […] I feel a stronger Determination never to [quit] the field untill they are driven from that beautiful land.”

The patriotism of Civil War soldiers existed in a specific historical context. Americans of the Civil War generation revered their Revolutionary forebears. Every schoolboy and schoolgirl knew how they had fought against the odds to forge a new republic conceived in liberty. Northerners and Southerners alike believed themselves custodians of the legacy of 1776. The crisis of 1861 was the great test of their worthiness of that heritage. […] That is why Lincoln began his great evocation of Union war aims with the words: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth…a new government, conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Likewise, [Jefferson] Davis urged his people to “renew such sacrifices as our fathers made to the holy cause of constitutional liberty.”

“Slavery and Aristocracy go hand in hand,” [a Minnesota lieutenant] told his fiancée, who did not agree with his new opinions. “An aristocracy brought on this war—that Aristocracy must be broken up…it is rotten and corrupt. God intends that it and slavery[,] its reliance & support[,] must go down together….We did not think so one year ago & you will think differently too a year hence.” […] A Kentucky lieutenant who had once threatened to resign his commission if Lincoln moved against slavery had executed an about-face by the summer of 1863. “The ‘inexorable logic of events’ is rapidly making practical abolitionists of every soldier,” he informed his sister. “I am afraid that [even] I am getting to be an Abolitionist. All right! better that than a Secessionist.”