To ask why individual soldiers chose to fight, as opposed to why republican polities chose to take their citizens to war, is to pose two distinct questions. We should take care not to confuse the one with the other.
Confederate soldier's correspondence does support the commonly heard assertion (as here represented by Mr. Southmayd's comment) that many Confederate soldiers signed up primarily to defend their homes and families. Such an assertion, of course, by no means rebuts the argument that many of them *also* fought to defend slavery.
But even if it was the case that EVERY Confederate soldier fought for the sole and only purpose of defending hearth and home from "Northern Aggression," that is irrelevant to the argument advanced by Paul Finkelman, Henry Wiencek, and others in this thread. When it comes to the question of why the South chose to secede, elected representatvies from every single one of the Southern States, in written proclamations on behalf of the State governments, made it quite clear that their primary purpose in doing so was to protect the institution of slavery. Unless we have strong reason not to do so, we should assume that they meant what they said. Southern politicians chose to break the Union--a Union that earlier generations of American statesmen had proclaimed to be inviolable and perpetual--because they perceived such radical action to be necessary in order to preserve slavery.
___________________________
Kevin R. Hardwick
Associate Professor
Department of History, MSC 8001
James Madison University
Harrisonburg, Virginia 22807
________________________________________
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Jeff Southmayd [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 12:29 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
"We often ask why so many southern white men, who did not own slaves and whose economic picture was negatively impacted by the competition from slavery, fought in 1861 to uphold an institution that did not evidently benefit them..."Pretty obvious they fought largely because their homes were being invaded by an enemy army. Or as one Southern soldier in Virginia reportedly responded to a Northern soldier's question "Reb, why are you fighting" with "I reckon because your here."
SOUTHMAYD & MILLER4 OCEAN RIDGE BOULEVARD SOUTH
PALM COAST, FLORIDA 32137
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