The American Civil War - This Mighty Scourge of War

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Common soldiers


Black soldiers and POWs


'For a man to enjoy the service, he must not
be averse to much strong drink, must not be
encumbered with morals & must possess an
insatiable appetite for confusion,' quipped a
Minnesotan. The soldier was one among
some three million who responded to the
call of their governments. Almost all of them
volunteers, they entered military service
wide-eyed, anticipating glory and rapid
success. Instead, they experienced a world of
hardship, heartache, and frustration.
Like the America from which they came,
most Civil War soldiers were from farming or
rural backgrounds. These men were an
industrious, self-reliant lot, an unusual blend
of idealism, individualism, and practicality.

They depended on their own labor and
judgment for survival, which fostered
confidence in their decision-making ability.


Accustomed to forming their own opinion
about matters, and resistant to regimentation
from the outside, their sense of
independence proved both the boon and
bane of their military existence.
While all sorts of pressures - family,
friends, community, perceptions of
manhood, quests for glory - worked on
them, in the end it was that ability to decide
for themselves that led most to enlist.
Southerners entered military service to
protect hearth and home and to defend their
'rights' - to own slaves, to take those slaves
wherever they saw fit, and to live without
fear of others encouraging servile
insurrection. Since the US government
seemed opposed to protecting those rights,
they seceded and formed a new government,
one that would protect them. Yankees, by
contrast, believed in the permanence of the
Union. Barely 80 years old, the United States
was the great experiment in a democratic
republic. 'It was,' so argued an Indiana
sergeant, 'the beacon of light of liberty &


freedom to the human race.' Secession
trampled on an inherent principle of any
democratic government that all would abide
by the outcome of a fair election. They went
off to war to sustain that government and
the underlying concept because, one Yankee
reasoned, 'constitutional liberty cannot
survive the loss of unity in the government.'
Only a minority early in the war fought for
abolitionism. Although many Northerners
disliked slavery, most also believed that
African-Americans were inferior beings.
In 1861, soldiers rushed off to war amid
celebrations and cheers. Believing the war
would be short, most had the misplaced fear
that the fighting would end before they saw
any action. Few of them anticipated just
how difficult prolonged military service would
be, and how demanding life in uniform could
be. Most soldiers did not know how to cook or
care for themselves in camp and on the march.
They loaded themselves down with excess
baggage, never realizing how burdensome it
was on a 15 or 20 mile (24-32km) hike. Then,
when winter rolled around, they shivered
through cold days and nights, cursing that
Indian summer day when they had discarded
their overcoats. Rather than enemy bullets,
they succumbed to diseases in staggering
numbers. Childhood illnesses had seldom
afflicted people in rural communities, but once
they gathered in large armies, these pathogens
spread throughout camps, and farm boys had
no resistance to them. Failure to enforce proper
sanitary practices took unanticipated tolls, as
camps bred pestilence and promoted the
transmission of diseases at epidemic rates. As
one Iowan wryly concluded, 'There is more
reality than poetry in a life on the Tented held.'
Nor did they correctly anticipate the scale
and scope of combat. Entering battle with
severe misperceptions, the killing, the
maiming, and the destruction caught men on
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