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James M. Mcpherson's What They Fought For: 1861-1865

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The United States Civil War is possible one of the most meaningful, bloodstained and controversial war fought in American history. Northern Americans against Southern Americans fought against one another for a variety of motives. These motives aroused from a wide range of ideologies that stirred around the states. In James M. McPherson’s What they fought for: 1861-1865, he analyzes the Union and Confederate soldier’s morale and ideological components through the letters they wrote to love ones while at war. While, John WhiteClay Chambers and G. Kurt Piehler depict Civil War soldiers through their letters detailing the agonizing battles of war in Major Problems in American Military History. In both books, readers are able to understand the motives of the war, attitudes of Americans and the hostility of battles through the letters of soldiers. …show more content…

Southern soldiers viewed the confederacy as their country and were compelled to fight for the safety of it. Confederate soldiers enlisted to protecting their native lands from what they understood as invaders. The Confederacy sentiments of the Union was they were imposing upon the southern way of life. For instance, a young soldier from Kentucky wrote “sink or swim, survive or perish” (McPherson 11). The average Confederate soldier felt that they the Union was trying to destroy the legacy of the founder fathers by enslaving them and reversing the actions of the American Revolution. McPherson discusses how he found countless of confederate soldier’s letters filled with phrases like “the holy cause of southern freedom, duty to one’s country and death before Yankee

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Taylor Headrick Review of: McPherson, James M. For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War. New York, Oxford University Press, 1997. In James M. McPherson’s book, For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War, he investigates Civil War soldiers’ diaries to discover why men from both sides chose to fight in the Civil War while also examining the different motives for each side. McPherson challenges traditional knowledge about the motives and mentalities of Civil War soldiers, offers new insight that differs from typical historians, and provides readers with specific details from soldiers’ journals and letters.

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The Civil War is seen as disastrous, upsetting, and a new start for America. In Across Five Aprils, written by Irene Hunt, she shows all of those feelings. The Civil War was a hard time for many families. Their son’s are going to war, they still have to work, and they need someone to protect the family. You worry for your safety, and your children’s.

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Prior to the civil war american s had illusions of innocence and isolation from the forces of history. After studying literature from the period known as realism, we know that these writers used their words to portray realistically america’s various social issues and struggles such as states rights, slavery, and death. These writers portrayed social issues and the struggles of ordinary people. No longer did the literature contain the supernatural of the romantic period. On the contrary, works such as “Follow the Drinking Gourd”, “War is Kind” and “ Letter to Son” changed america’s idea of innocence and isolation from the horrors of history because the civil war was the only war where every death was American.

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McPherson is an exceptionally well-written article which explains in great profundity the motives for men joining the Army and keeping up a high level of Honor. The article can be directly correlated to the understanding of the Civil War, and the background information that the readers weren't aware of in the war, such as the Soldiers motives to fight. The first main strong point present in the article is that the article articulates the main points of the essay very well, and uses countless quotes from Generals that were not in the AP United States History Textbook, which give a much more individual explanation to the personal reasons the men were fighting in the first place. This helped make the information not only easy to understand but much more interesting than just stating facts about the war.

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On September 2nd, 1862, Abraham Lincoln famously signed the Emancipation Proclamation. After that, there’s been much debate on whether Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation truly played a role in freeing the slaves with many arguments opposing or favoring this issue. In Vincent Harding’s essay, The Blood-red Ironies of God, Harding argues in his thesis that Lincoln did not help to emancipate the slaves but that rather the slaves “self-emancipated” themselves through the war. On the opposition, Allen C Guelzo ’s essay, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America, argues in favor of the Emancipation Proclamation and Guelzo acknowledges Lincoln for the abolishment of slavery through the Emancipation Proclamation.

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McPherson addresses an issue/problem people have had when we talk/write about the Civil War. That problem is what was both sides truly fighting for. This war broke up the Union into two parts, North and South. Without the war happening, America would not be same America as today. We as Americans need to know the real reason why in 1861, the North and South went against each other and that was because of slavery.

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The living legacy of the United States Civil War is a complicated time in American history one finds difficult to describe. The ramification of the war prior, during and after still haunt the current citizens who call The States their home. Tony Horwitz’s book Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War looks at the wide gap of discontent that still looms in the late 1990s. For some southerners, the Confederacy still lives on through reenactments, stories and beliefs. For others in the South, reminders the land was dedicated to the Confederacy spark hatred and spite.

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It has been one and a half centuries since the end of the American Civil War, and in the past couple generations, many historians and author’s have published letters, diaries, newspapers, etc. written by soldiers and civilians from that era. From housewives, and generals, to African-American and women soldiers, all of whom have documented they 're experiences through written text. Both the Union and South have significant figures who will be forever remembered because of they’re personal testament. The goal here is to explore the lives of casualties, soldiers, and noncombatants in the Civil War. These written works have served as the voices for the voiceless, and help to shed light to the horrors and triumphs that were in many cases were kept

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The Battle of Gettysburg, like the rest of the war, was between two armies with their own social structure, including their own values, needs, history, religion, customs, and culture. Each army had their own values. One side believed in succession and becoming its own sovereign state while the other believed in remaining whole. The Confederate Army believed slavery was justifiable while the Union Army believed it to be inhumane. During the battle, the people’s needs and both armies’ needs became apparent.

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In conclusion, the book, The Slopes of War by N. A Perez, portrays multiple conflicts faced in the Civil War. Perez uses excerpts from passages of the novel to demonstrate various difficulties faced by both armies and Bekah, both a civilian and Union soldier’s

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McPherson regards the Civil war as a much more ideological struggle and he discusses the ideological factors that motivated men to enlist, stay enlisted, fight and risk death in battle. He argued that the powerful motivating sources for soldiers to join the army were duty, honor, and patriotism (McPherson, 5). According to a book review by George Rable, he stated that its true that duty and honor were dominant values for those soldiers in the nineteenth century, however this posed a jaded view from the twentieth-century readers. McPherson stresses the importance of slavery as one of the principal ideological considerations as to why men fought.

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Civil War The year was 1861 and the first battle had already begun. The country was now divided as two teams, the confederates and the unions. I wasn’t looking forward to the upcoming battle that was about to happen. I sat in my tent in silence, thinking about what might happen.

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Over the course of the semester we have discussed the absence of great literature coming from the Civil War period. During, the discussion at the beginning of the course I agreed with the sentiment that there was very little in long-lasting literature produced in the war period. I thought that this was likely, because the war was too difficult to talk about in a comprehensive way for those that experienced it firsthand. In the time since we have seen great documentation of the Civil War by historians, authors, and filmmakers. For example, the movie Lincoln was nominated for twelve Academy Awards.

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