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For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
written by James M. McPherson
Studio : Oxford University Press, USA
by Oxford University Press, USA
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Released : 1998-11-05
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780195124996
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 37 reviews)
List Price : $18.95
Our Price : $10.50
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Product Description |
General John A. Wickham, commander of the famous 101st Airborne Division in the 1970s and subsequently Army Chief of Staff, once visited Antietam battlefield. Gazing at Bloody Lane where, in 1862, several Union assaults were brutally repulsed before they finally broke through, he marveled, "You couldn't get American soldiers today to make an attack like that." Why did those men risk certain death, over and over again, through countless bloody battles and four long, awful years ? Why did the conventional wisdom -- that soldiers become increasingly cynical and disillusioned as war progresses -- not hold true in the Civil War?
It is to this question--why did they fight--that James McPherson, America's preeminent Civil War historian, now turns his attention. He shows that, contrary to what many scholars believe, the soldiers of the Civil War remained powerfully convinced of the ideals for which they fought throughout the conflict. Motivated by duty and honor, and often by religious faith, these men wrote frequently of their firm belief in the cause for which they fought: the principles of liberty, freedom, justice, and patriotism. Soldiers on both sides harkened back to the Founding Fathers, and the ideals of the American Revolution. They fought to defend their country, either the Union--"the best Government ever made"--or the Confederate states, where their very homes and families were under siege. And they fought to defend their honor and manhood. "I should not lik to go home with the name of a couhard," one Massachusetts private wrote, and another private from Ohio said, "My wife would sooner hear of my death than my disgrace." Even after three years of bloody battles, more than half of the Union soldiers reenlisted voluntarily. "While duty calls me here and my country demands my services I should be willing to make the sacrifice," one man wrote to his protesting parents. And another soldier said simply, "I still love my country."
McPherson draws on more than 25,000 letters and nearly 250 private diaries from men on both sides. Civil War soldiers were among the most literate soldiers in history, and most of them wrote home frequently, as it was the only way for them to keep in touch with homes that many of them had left for the first time in their lives. Significantly, their letters were also uncensored by military authorities, and are uniquely frank in their criticism and detailed in their reports of marches and battles, relations between officers and men, political debates, and morale. For Cause and Comrades lets these soldiers tell their own stories in their own words to create an account that is both deeply moving and far truer than most books on war.
Battle Cry of Freedom, McPherson's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the Civil War, was a national bestseller that Hugh Brogan, in The New York Times, called "history writing of the highest order." For Cause and Comrades deserves similar accolades, as McPherson's masterful prose and the soldiers' own words combine to create both an important book on an often-overlooked aspect of our bloody Civil War, and a powerfully moving account of the men who fought it. |
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Americancivilwar.com |
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Consider a war in which 25,000 soldiers are killed or wounded in a single battle, as they were at Gettysburg, or 16,000 in a single day, as at Antietam. The degree of suffering and hardship during the American Civil War has been well documented and analyzed in books and films from Margaret Mitchell's fictional Gone with the Wind to Bell Irvin Wiley's classic studies of Civil War soldiers, The Life of Johnny Reb and The Life of Billy Yank. All these sources agree on the brutality of the combat, but what motivated soldiers to continue fighting under such bitter conditions is the cause of some controversy. Until recently, the common stance has been that soldiers enlisted out of economic need and stayed out of loyalty to their comrades. The respected Civil War historian James M. McPherson weighs in with a different point of view in For Cause and Comrades. Professor McPherson posits that the common rank-and-file soldiers did indeed hold political and ideological beliefs that prodded them to enlist and to fight. His research is based on letters and diaries from 1,076 Union and Confederate soldiers. These reveal many motivations, but always they lead back to duty, honor, and a cause worth dying for. For Cause and Comrades is a fascinating exploration of the 19th-century mind--a mind, it seems, that differs profoundly from our own. |
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I was very satisfied with the level of customer service that I recieved from Americancivilwar.com. I love the low prices and the customer service. |
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A thesis - driven book . . . |
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This book is mainly for academics and true historians. It's a short book, which makes it a quick read, but it's not as good as some of McPherson's other Civil War books. (like "Ordeal by Fire"). His thesis is that Civil War soldiers, both Union and Confederate, fought for three different reasons (or "motivations"). These are related to reasons why soldiers chose to enlist (enlistment motivation), to fight (combat motivation), and to stay in the service (sustaining motivation). The book seems pieced together to me and the chapters are not put in chronological order like most history books are. He uses so many excerpts from soldier's letters and diaries that it was hard for me to follow. Even though I understood his thesis, I did not like the book's style. I would give this one a pass unless you have nothing else to do!! |
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Another Time To Try Men's Souls |
This month marks the 147th Anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War and the fight to preserve the union and end slavery.
Any war, as a violent, organized explosion of human emotions, produces some very unnatural responses on the part of soldiers and civilians alike. James McPherson, undoubtedly now the preeminent American Civil War scholar has, in the words of his own introduction, tried to make sense of what was similar to other wars but also what was different about that experience for the soldiers on both sides of the divide in that war. Working from a plethora of soldiers' letters and other observations he has tried to explain why the citizen soldiers on both sides of that bloody conflict kept at it despite the grueling circumstances, including extremely high casualty rates.
I make no bones about my partisanship for the Northern, Union and anti-slavery side in that conflict. However in war, and civil war in particular, one can note the attributes of bravery, honor and heroism of the opposing side without giving an inch on the political questions. If one thinks about it if one does not recognize those characteristics in the soldiers of the other side one places oneself in a very hard place. The Geneva Conventions, weak as they are, codify that understanding.
McPherson goes into great detail about the phases of the war-the general bloodthirsty and energetic desire of both sides to get at it; the sobering effects of actual combat; the psychological traumas produced in men before, during and after battle. In short, the passion and anger that drive men to fight-and soldiers to reflect a bit afterward. He details the sense of patriotism, honor, manhood, shame and other virtues of mid-Victorian America that further drove these men. Probably his weakest part is an examination of the personal politics of the soldiers, although that may be, in part, a function of the fuzziness of their goals as they became overwhelmed by the other considerations previously listed.
However, overall, McPherson more than adequately makes his point that many considerations entered into the calculations of those who freely volunteered for the citizen armies on both sides, fought tremendous and bloody battles and slogged on through thick and thin. I will stop here with one comment that struck me from a Northern soldier about his reasons for fighting. Admittedly this soldier was a high abolitionist but here is what he said-" I want to be able to sing `John Brown' [John Brown's Body, the anti-slavery hymn and precursor for the Battle Hymn of The Republic] in the streets of Charleston [South Carolina]." Yes, I can, indeed, get behind that sentiment as a reason for fighting.
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Why did they fight? The title says it all...... |
...well almost. In 'For Cause & Comrades' James McPherson has set out to explain exactly why the average soldier sacrificed so much for his respective cause in the American Civil War. He has succeeded in convincing me. As the backbone of his thesis, McPherson has used hundreds of letters and diary entries from both Confederate and Union soldiers that offer some glaring insight into their motivations and beliefs. He first touches on the more universal motivations of warriors such as honor, duty, comradery, religion, vengeance and so on. And while these all played a significant part in the Civil War, McPherson argues that what ultimately separated Civil war soldiers from those of most other wars was a fervent belief in the righteousness of their cause. In other words, this was a truly ideological war and these convictions of righteousness, on both sides, was what carried these men through such horrific fighting to the bitter end.
While I can't say there were any shocking revelations here, I was slightly surprised, for instance, at how many Union soldiers were fervently dedicated to their cause. It usually goes without saying that the Confederate side was truly motivated to defend their cause, but I had always assumed that most Union men served out of a grudging sense of duty. It turns out that many truly felt that they were defending the American experiment as a whole from the despised "traitors and rebels." In fact, this seems to have been a bigger factor than slavery for most, as a large portion of Union men were just as racist as their Southern adversaries. Which makes it somewhat ironic that they felt they represented the cause of the entire free world against tyranny and oppression. It should be noted though that many Union soldiers did passionately oppose slavery and this was an equally compelling cause for them. The Union side seems to be very complex. On the other hand, the Confederate cause seemed to be much less complicated. They were fighting not only for the right to continue slavery, but also for their independence from the hated Yankee. As much as white supremacy was a chief motivator (even poor, non-slaveholders resented the notion of black equality), most Southerners truly believed they were fighting for their own liberty and way of life.
Of course McPherson concedes that not every soldier fit this description. There are skulkers, dodgers, draftees, and otherwise reluctant soldiers in every army, but as McPherson shows, there was a significant core of truly ideological fighters on both sides who refused to accept anything less than total victory. While those well versed in Civil War history might not find anything new here, I found it to be a concise and convincing survey on Civil War motivations and I would highly recommend it. |
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Duty, Honor, Patriotism, Ideals, and Religion are the Reasons Men Fight in Wars is not a Very New Idea |
James M. McPherson's For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War aims to answer the simple question of what motivated the men who became solders in the Civil War to fight and die in this conflict. The simple answer according to McPherson was duty, honor, patriotism, ideological beliefs such as liberty and freedom, and religious beliefs. These ideals or ideas are pretty much the same motivating factors soldiers from other wars in the 20th Century or those historians of ancient wars give to explain why they fought and died. McPherson certainly did his homework by reading twenty-five thousand letters and two hundred fifty diaries from soldiers to come to his conclusion that it was truly duty, honor, patriotism, ideological beliefs in liberty and freedom, and religious beliefs that motivated these men to fight and die in the Civil War cause. As a reader I was hoping for something more or different than the tired and tedious five reasons that every soldier indicates as motivating factors for them. There is not a dispute that these five factors are for the most part true. The excerpts from the letters indicate these five motivating factors over and over. Even though these were excerpts and pulling text out of the original context of a document can significantly change its meaning, for the most part the excerpts painted the picture that supported McPherson's argument that, "Yet for Civil War soldiers the group cohesion and peer pressure that were powerful factors in combat motivation were not unrelated to the complex mixture of patriotism, ideology, concepts of duty, honor, manhood, and community or peer pressure that prompted them to enlist in the first place." (p. 13)
The reading of For Cause and Comrades felt as though it was another book that put soldiers and war up on a pedestal of what a great sacrifice soldiers gave to their country by participating in the horrors of war and akin to a child's hero worship. For Cause and Comrades also seemed as though it was reiterating the tired and worn out American patriotic themes of liberty, freedom, duty, honor, and religion. The book generated visions from daily life on par with "The Few, the Proud, the Marines" commercials on television to recruit soldiers, or popular mass media inundating the masses with typical American ideology such as Superman standing for truth, justice, and the American way, or another person who feels a particular generation was the "Greatest Generation" above all others. Watch out Tom Brokaw, McPherson feels Civil War soldiers out does any other group of soldiers including your beloved World War Two soldiers in the area of duty, honor, patriotism, freedom and liberty loving, and devotion to a higher power. McPherson did mention through the words of the soldiers that war was a horrible affair, but then uses it to idolize these men in their accomplishment of overcoming adversity and "staying the course" instead of ever mentioning that war is lowest form and action of human existence and should be something to be avoided at all costs. A true hero is one that can solve problems without resorting to violence. A truly wise hero knows not only how to solve problems without violence but also knows that war that involves murder, gruesome mutilation, and destruction which result in unspeakable pain, misery, and suffering whether physical or the destructive psychological impact on soldiers and civilians of the society and is a course that should never be traveled.
McPherson's expertise in writing about this subject is not disputed nor is his findings. McPherson has been a professor at Princeton University since 1962 and his entire academic career has been focused on many aspects of the Civil War era. He has been nationally recognized numerous times for his work in this field including receiving the Lincoln Prize for For Cause and Comrades. For Cause and Comrades has made an important contribution in historical research by giving a voice to people who can no longer speak for themselves and illustrates their experience to give a more in depth well rounded picture of history. Futhermore, everyone is entitled to their own perspective and interpretation on any subject. Unfortunately, for this reader, it was filled with too much hero worship, idolization, and the standard tired historical interpretations of soldiers and war as being something someone does if they have a sense of duty, are honorable, patriotic, revere freedom and liberty, and are spiritual. These themes should stay in fiction such as stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. People in the real world should find other avenues besides war to achieve the admirable qualities of duty, honor, patriotism, believing in ideals, and spirituality and it should be the responsibility of learned people to point that out instead of seemingly making war and people who fight in wars the pillar and standard for achieving all those admirable qualities.
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