To a greater degree than in any other war, American Civil War soldiers’ letters and diaries provide ample evidence for their motivations to enlist in the war and to fight. Historian James McPherson has studied the writings of 1,076 soldiers, both Union and Confederate, in order to tell the story of why they fought—in their own words, whenever possible. McPherson’s sample included 25,000 letters and 249 diaries, all of them uncensored and unpublished. In examining these documents, he considered three categories: initial motivation (why men enlisted), sustaining motivation (why they kept fighting), and combat motivation (what gave them courage to face danger on the battlefield).
During the first two years of the Civil War (1861–1862), the overwhelming majority of soldiers volunteered for service. Beyond initial patriotic fervor, both Union and Confederate soldiers saw themselves as enlisting to fight for liberty; as such, both sides saw themselves as fighting to preserve the legacy of the Founding Fathers. Both sides were also strongly influenced by duty, an important concept in Victorian America which was linked to contemporary views of masculinity.
If soldiers were initially eager to fight, expecting glory and adventure, their first experiences of battle tended to disillusion them. Though admitting fear was regarded as shameful, all soldiers had to learn how to manage the dread and terror of combat. McPherson identifies both external and internal motivations that enabled soldiers to do this. Outward means included training, discipline, and leadership. Though democratically minded, Americans were reluctant to obediently accept discipline—instead, they tended to respect courageous officers who displayed a willingness to share their men’s burdens and dangers. Ultimately, however, McPherson finds internal motivations to have been more powerfully sustaining. Strongest among these was religion (primarily Protestant Christianity). Many soldiers wrote of a fatalistic sense of God controlling events on the battlefield, yet in its more optimistic expressions, this resignation—along with a pervasive belief in eternal life after death—seemed to embolden many soldiers to fight bravely. Both Union and Confederate soldiers also expressed an unwavering conviction that God was on their side of the conflict.
Christian teachings against killing proved difficult for many soldiers to reconcile with the brutality of war. At the same time, however, the cultural emphasis on honor, and the associated dread of cowardice and disgrace, propelled many into combat. Since many regiments were made up of men from the same community, lifelong relationships—and fear of becoming known as a coward back home—helped reinforce a sense of brotherhood, which in turn heightened combat motivation. This “band of brothers” atmosphere motivated many to reenlist, even after years of hard fighting.
Though what McPherson calls “primary group cohesion” was a significant factor, ideological commitments were also vital to sustaining motivation and combat motivation. McPherson holds that Civil War soldiers were often politically engaged when they enlisted and they remained so throughout the course of the war. While Confederates’ patriotism was sharpened by anger over Northern invasion of their home territories, Union soldiers also wrote passionately of what they saw as secessionists’ treasonous breakup of the Union.
For both sides, reverence for their revolutionary forebears was a major element of patriotism. Yet, in what McPherson calls a “profound irony,” Union and Confederate soldiers interpreted the legacy of 1776 in directly opposite ways: Union solders saw themselves as fighting for the preservation of the Union, whereas Confederates saw themselves as fighting for independence from President Lincoln’s “tyranny.” Confederates even spoke of resisting “enslavement” by the North while also explicitly citing the preservation of the institution of Southern slavery as a motivation. Even soldiers whose families did not own slaves sometimes spoke of fighting against the idea of racial equality.
While early Union enlistees rarely spoke of slavery—except insofar as abolishing slavery would weaken the Confederacy—meeting Southern slaves, observing economic stagnation, and sheltering runaway slaves contributed to a growing anti-slavery principle among Northerners. Unquestionably, racist attitudes were common among Union soldiers, and many initially resisted Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1862–1863, with some resenting a seeming shift in the war’s aims. However, more minds were changed by the formation and successes of black Union regiments. By 1864, resistance to black regiments was a minority position, and when Lincoln ran for reelection on a strongly abolitionist platform he won with 80 percent of the soldier vote. Overall, McPherson sees a decided shift among Union soldiers from pragmatism (or even outright reluctance) to principle regarding slavery over the course of the war.
For both Union and Confederate soldiers, letters from home provided a major morale boost for men who felt torn between obligation to family and patriotic duty. Other events at home—like an allowance that drafted men could hire substitutes to fight for them, and the emergence of “Copperheads,” or antiwar Peace Democrats—could be a significant drain on soldier morale. The Victorian code of honor supplied a grimmer motive of revenge for many soldiers, especially among Confederates who often spoke viciously of Yankees, and for Unions in border states where Confederate guerillas were active. McPherson describes revenge rhetoric as “the dark underside” of morale and motivation.
1864 was the most brutal year of fighting, and though soldier breakdown became more common, many—including early volunteers—remained ideologically committed or loyal to ideals of duty and honor, choosing to reenlist even during the war’s bloodiest phases. By early 1865, the battered Confederacy, desperate to fight on, even grudgingly admitted a limited number of black soldiers among their ranks. Boosted by Lincoln’s reelection, Union morale held strong through the end of the war. McPherson concludes his study by quoting an Ohio captain who, toward the war’s end, told his young son that he continued to fight “to secure for each and every American citizen of every race, the rights guaranteed […] in the Declaration of Independence.” He exhorted his young son to be worthy of that heritage, and McPherson says that contemporary Americans must constantly reexamine themselves, too, to ensure they are worthy of that same heritage.
