It is interesting to turn the question around and ask why the average
soldier in the Union Army was fighting--presumably to join friends,
neighbors, and community to defeat an attempt to dissolve the Union. That
Union still included several states with slavery, of course, and if the
southern "insurrection" had been defeated quickly and the former
Confederate states brought rapidly back into the Union, slavery would not
have been eliminated anywhere in the United States--at least not then. In
this sense, the Rebels were trying to save their way of life (the
"cornerstone" of which was slavery, said Stephens) by separating from the
Union, while the Yankees were trying to preserve the Union as they knew
it--a large portion of which sanctioned and depended on slave labor and
would continue to do so.

As we know, the war did not end quickly, and bringing an end to slavery
eventually became a war aim of the Union. But at every stage, we need to
allow for the possibility that official war aims and the ordinary
soldiers' motives for fighting were not identical to each other.



Douglas Deal
Professor of History (on leave 2002-2003)
State University of New York at Oswego
Oswego, NY 13126
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