What motivated Confederate soldiers to fight?

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[FONT=q_serif]As with any war, there are a multitude of motivations for those that fight: cause, defense of the home, peer pressure, family ties, economics, compulsion, etc.

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[FONT=q_serif]The cause of the war was secession. The cause of secession was slavery. One of the premier scholars about the Civil War, Pulitzer Prize winning Princeton historian and Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, James M. McPherson wrote:

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"The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries."


[FONT=q_serif]However, it is simplistic and naive to attribute the political cause for a war onto the people that fought the war. Soldiers often fight for different reasons than those of the people that send them to war.

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[FONT=q_serif]It's also simplistic and naive to view either the two-million Union soldiers or the one-million Confederate soldiers as a hive mind. [/FONT]

[FONT=q_serif]Was slavery an important issue for the soldiers that fought? There were, of course, idealists that signed up to fight on both sides, but they were not a majority. The average Union soldier was not risking his life to free slaves and the average Confederate soldier was not risking his life to keep slaves in chains.

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[FONT=q_serif]There were young men whose family fortunes depended on slavery and they enlisted to defend their family livelihood. But they were not a majority. The percentages vary greatly from state to state and depending on the definitions used, but most studies state that less than one-third of white southern families owned one or more slaves. As is still true today, the enlisted service men often come from the poorest populations. And, the Confederate draft actually excluded men that owned 20 or more slaves (rich man's loophole).


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[FONT=q_serif]Were there poor soldiers that aspired to one day become wealthy and own slaves and fought to preserve that dream? No doubt, but an army isn't built on those dreams.

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[FONT=q_serif]In 1860, the relationship between states and country was quite different than it is, today. The U.S. Army was composed of only 16,000 men. 90% of it (179 companies) was off in the west, securing the frontier and fighting Indians. The armies that fought for both Union and Confederacy were raised by the states. What we consider the National Army didn't exist until World War I. People did not travel as much. There was no television or radio. There was less education. It was quite normal for people to feel a greater loyalty for their home (state) than for an abstract concept of a country run by a distant government.

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[FONT=q_serif]So, for many soldiers - on both sides - their motivation was not about country or ideal but about home. This was especially true for people that lived in the path of invading armies. For example, parts of the south, particularly Texas, were heavily colonized by German immigrants. These immigrants found the concept of slavery repulsive. That doesn't mean they supported racial equality, but they had a conviction that owning people was wrong. And yet, many of these men joined the armies that fought for the Confederacy. Many of them did so because their homes were threatened. The safety and livlihood of their families trumped their rejections of the cause.

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[FONT=q_serif]Many enlisted because of peer pressure. It was the trendy thing to do. Men didn't want to be called cowards. Nor did they want to compete against "brave soldiers" for the affections of potential spouses.

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[FONT=q_serif]Although the armies were mostly volunteer, 21% of the Confederate armies were obtained via conscription.

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[FONT=q_serif]Some, on both sides, accepted enlistment as an alternative to sentencing for an unrelated criminal act. Some enlisted for adventure.[/FONT]
 

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Only between 10% to 15% of the soldiers in the various Confederate armies actually owned slaves. And in
point of fact, nearly none, all the way up to Robert E. Lee himself, would have told you they were fighting
to defend slavery. In fact, there was at least one Confederate general who was an admitted abolitionist.

The reason for secession was slavery, don’t get me wrong, but that was the business of the state governments
and the politicians, not the business of the workaday soldier. It also wasn’t about state’s rights to the rank and
file; again, that was another issue for the politicans.

No, for the common soldier, it was about standing up to an invader. They were defending what they saw
as their homelands. Most southerners were natives of their states, first, and the Federal union second.
Hence, to them, it was a matter of defending their homes.

In fact, there was a famous exchange after the battle of Chancelorsville, when Lieutenant Thomas D.
Chamberlain (younger brother of Brigadier General Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain) asked a young
Confederate officer who had been taken prisoner, “Just what in the hell are you people fighting us
for, anyway?” to which the Confederate replied, “We’re fighting you because you’re down here!”

The rank-and-file Confederate soldier saw the Union Army as invaders, so they fought back. To them,
it was never about the slaves until Lincoln made it about the slaves with the Emancipation Proclamation.
 

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