Soldiers Poltical or Moral affiliations

[fedcampaigner]

Re: Soldiers Poltical or Moral affiliations

Mr. Sprakes,

I wasn't suggesting you were making generalizations. What I was trying to say is that no two individuals would have the same reasons for fighting. My apologies. Cheers!!

[Pennvolunteer]

Re: Soldiers Poltical or Moral affiliations

There has been some great discussion on here. If I may recommend a couple of other sources on soldiers' political views for Federals, Elisha Hunt Rhodes, "All for the Union" is a great little book. This is a man who enlisted to fight for the preservation of the Union, and who evolved in to an officer who supported abolition. Another good book is William Davis "Lincoln's Men". While Davis does a lot of "coffee table" history, in this case he actually does a good job of primary source research through letters and diaries and covers every aspect of Federal soldiers from abolitionists, Unionists, and War Democrats, to strongly Pro-McClellan Democrats who abhor Lincoln, but fight for the Union. Like Rhodes though, remember many men changed, both Grant and Sherman began the war as War Democrats and became pro-Lincoln Republicans.
One other comment in here though is the comment that Republicans were all Free-Soilers. That is a generalization, the Republicans were much more of a big tent party then, with Free-Soilers, former Whigs (like Lincoln), Wide-Awakes, and many other groups like some who still held old Federalist views, drawn in opposition to the Democrats and especially the more States' Rights plank of their platforms, especially after 1860. The Copperhead Democrats also drove many un-decided folks to the Republicans after the start of the war.

[Curt Schmidt]

Re: Soldiers Poltical or Moral affiliations

Hallo!

I would also possibly suggest:

The Private Civil War: Popular Thought During the Sectional Conflict by Randall Jimerson

and

The Brothers' War: Civil War Letters To Their Loved Ones From the BLue and Gray by Annette Tapert

Curt

[hiplainsyank]

Re: Soldiers Poltical or Moral affiliations

I would also highly recommend Chandra Manning's What This Cruel War Was Over which is the most recent work that I know of, and perhaps the most comprehensive. She writes solely using well over 1000 primary sources of Union and Confederates, and no post-war writing either, in which so often memories softened or were colored by intervening events. If you want a quick summation of her work on Union soldiers and slavery, she published an article in the March 2008 issue of North and South Magazine.

Oh, and for what I know is a more provocative assertion, it seems many Confederate soldiers who didn't own slaves (most of them, of course) wrote that they were fighting to preserve slavery. In fact, I recall from another article she wrote a few years ago (also in N&S) that she never was able to find the phrase "states' rights" in her examination of Confederate sources.