For Cause and Comrades
Introduction
For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War is a book by James M. McPherson about the civil war. The book draws heavily from 250 diaries and 2500 letters from 1000 Rebel and Yankee soldiers. In the book, McPherson explores the factors that kept the soldiers motivated and engaged in the horribly bloody and gruesome war. Using the letters and diaries, McPherson provides a comprehensive set of ideals that he believes were some of the key reasons why the individuals kept fighting in this war.
In For Causes and Comrades, the author’s thesis is that contrary to the belief of many scholars, the men involved in the Civil war retained powerful belief and conviction in the ideals that they were fighting for throughout the war and did not at any instance become disillusioned as the war progressed.
McPherson backs up his argument with a solid set of elaborations. First, he states that the men involved in the war were deeply motivated by honor and duty to their country. In addition to this, the men were also motivated by their religious faith. Religion was actually very prevalent during that period and played a huge role in the lives of people. Using some of the letters and diaries assembled from the fighters of the Civil war, McPherson provides quotations in which the soldiers frequently wrote about their firm conviction and belief in the cause of their fighting. The quotations show that some of the causes that the soldiers believed they were fighting for included freedom, justice and liberty. It did not matter which side one was fighting for, both set of soldiers were deeply motivated by the ideals of the American Founding Fathers and the American Revolution.
McPherson writes that the men also fought to defend their manhood and honor. For example, he quotes a letter from a Union soldier who wrote that “I would not like to go home with the name of a coward.”
Even after three gruesome years of battle, Union soldiers continued to reenlist voluntarily. McPherson quotes another soldier who wrote to his protesting parents that “While duty calls me here and my country demands my services, I should be willing to make the sacrifice”.
McPherson challenges some of the modernist arguments brought forward by contemporary scholars, like Gerald Linderman and Bell Irving Wiley who argue that the Civil war soldier’s experiences paralleled the war weariness and disillusionment of the 20th Century soldiers. McPherson revisionist views in fact directly challenge the sentiments brought forward by these modern scholars about the mentalite and motives of the soldiers of the Civil war. While he agrees with the notion that part of the soldier’s motivation emanated from fighting for their fellow comrades, he however disagrees vehemently with the notion by Wiley that the Civil War soldiers enlisted in the battle for pure social and economic reasons. McPherson explains that the “soldiers did not fight for the money because in the first place, they were often paid poorly and unreliably”. He adds that the soldiers in fact made economic sacrifices when they decided to enlist.
McPherson further supports his argument by challenging the notion that at the end of the war, most of the soldiers had been stripped of the ideological and patriotic motives that may have had during the initial years of the war. Although he agrees that the war may have temporarily shocked the soldiers, most of them however remained in the combat zone throughout the war motivated by their cause and their fellow soldiers and comrades. He further argues that not only did their ideological convictions not wither away or diminish, but they actually grew stronger as the war progressed. He states that the men were determined to see their cause to the bitter end. He maintains that the Civil War principles of patriotism and ideology did not act as a last refuge for the soldiers, but they were actually the credo of the soldiers fighting.
Through his division of the Civil war soldier’s motivations into three distinct categories, that is the enlistment motivation, the sustaining motivation and finally the combat motivation, McPherson brings forward an argument that there is indeed a very close relationship between the motivation ideals for enlistment in the army, staying in the army and actually fighting in the army.
In conclusion, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War is a readable and a quite enjoyable book that offers the reader a balanced and a revisionist interpretation of the Civil War and gives reasons as to why so many individuals fought the country’s most destructive and bloodiest war to the bitter end. By using candid writings of some of the Civil war soldiers, McPherson is able to comprehensively able to argue his thesis the soldiers of the Civil war kept their belief and conviction about their fighting cause intact throughout the war and that they were willing to make extraordinary sacrifices, even their own lives, for the principles that they believed to be stake in this war. It is my belief that anyone who perceives to be an avid follower of the American history would thoroughly enjoy reading the book just like I did.
References
McPherson, James M. For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
