History Essay

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What They Fought For: 1861-1865

James McPherson focused on figuring out what motivated the North and the South in the war through reading the soldiers’ personal writings in letters and diaries. He offered a captivating, brief account of the crucial war between America and concentrates on what drove each fighter to combat in a damaging and devastating battle. McPherson describes the situations of both the north and the south at the time, what they were going through and why they were jeopardizing their lives in the Civil War, which is completely agreeable. Both assemblies had entirely distinct motivations and intentions, but each side was proportionately driven to put their own life in danger fighting for what they believe in. McPherson’s writing emphasizes on the beliefs and the reasons of the north and the south in the war. Starting in April of 1861, the Civil War lasted four years, ending in April of 1865. Throughout the United States, 365,000 Union soldiers and 260,000 Confederate soldiers died. This made the Civil War the bloodiest war in the history of America. One of the main reasons of the war started with the issue of slavery. The anti-slavery movement in the north threatened the society in the south. And the north viewed the South’s demand of slavery as corrupt, brutal, and unethical in the standards and morals of the American society in their newly independent nation.

The Confederate soldiers combatted for their autonomy, rights, sovereignty, but they were also fighting for vengeance. Southerners, slaveholders and the southern society as a whole, were affected by the Union’s outlook and therefore had to defend their land for the outbreak on their society, which caused their frugality and civilization. The Confederate soldiers had to fight to defend their land, which was a higher motivation to win the war than the Union held. Confederate John Jones wrote, “ Our men must prevail in combat, or lose their property, country, freedom, everything… On the other hand the enemy, in yielding the contest, may retire into their own country, and possess everything they enjoyed before the war began” (McPherson, 27). After the Union’s successful win of the election of 1860 and newly elected President Abraham Lincoln, the south was rid of political power in the federal government. They felt that losing political power foreshadowed an ensuing cost of regulating slavery and slaveholders. After the threat of losing the institution of slavery, the south separated from the United States to create an sovereign nation of Confederate states, each of them being slaveholding states. The south was stressing the need for their independence of what they would name the Confederate States of America, which would consist of eleven slave states. They heeded back to the ideal of the American Revolution. The Confederates were demanding for the emancipation and independence of the south. As the Union raided the slave states, the south were progressively driven by the impulse of retaliation, of protecting their home from the Union as they were overrunning and abolishing the Confederate’s supplies and slave captivity. “Confederates fought for independence, for their property and way of life, for their very survival as a nation” (McPherson, 27).

The soldiers from the Union were fighting to save the independent nation from annihilation and ruin. The Union soldiers did not have to protect their land in the war against the Confederates, so the purpose of the southern soldiers fighting did not hold the same meaning for the northern soldiers. The Confederate soldiers’ perseverance was not to attack or inhabit the Union states, or to overthrow the land. It was simply to protect and secure their own ground alongside the Union’s incursion and overthrow. A union soldier wrote to his wife, the confederates were “fighting to keep an enemy out of [their] own neighborhood and protect [their] property” (McPherson, 19). The Union was purely fighting to save and defend the nation that was created in 1776. They were fighting to preserve the nation from demolition and mutilation. The soldiers from the north were concerned with loosing the united nation they have once fought for. They were forced into a battle to aid their nation in survival. Therefore, the two sides were divided around the topic of slavery and the separation of the Confederates from the United States of America.

McPherson’s determination in creating What They Fought For was to provide a precise and defined explanation of the Civil War. He is attempting to display the inspiration that pushed Americans to battle in a war against one another. In this book, he is bidding to seize the motives and incentives that pressed men to sacrifice their own life to fight for their values and ideologies. McPherson went through numerous letters and diaries of soldiers fighting in the war to show standpoints of what each side was fighting for and to clarify and describe why they were encouraged to lose their own life for what they assumed was true. He thought the greatest way to figure out what they were fighting for is to go to personal inscriptions to family and friends who were keen to receive understanding about their involvement in the war.

“Most Confederate soldiers believed that they were fighting for liberty and slavery” (McPherson, 51), while the soldiers in the Union felt that “they were upholding the legacy of the American Revolution” (McPherson, 27). The primary notions of responsibility, integrity and courage, difficulties in determination and restraint, and the significance of aid encouraged the soldiers to fight what they believed were right. The letters and diary inscriptions show the perceptions of how profoundly they were affected and exposed a more cautious held conscience on the ethical concerns and disputes in the war. The author takes individual thoughts, beliefs, and concerns from men in the war and puts them into context of what the actual war was about. The outcome is a comprehensible and understandable explanation of the feelings and opinions of the Union and Confederate soldiers throughout the Civil War upset.