Summary Of For Cause & Comrades

James M. McPherson’s For Cause & Comrades analyzes and discusses the different reasons why men fought and died in the Civil War. McPherson uses the journals and letters of 1076 soldiers, 647 from the Union army and 429 from the Confederacy. Using these first-hand accounts of the war, McPherson aims to answer the question of how and why soldiers participated in the war. McPherson’s thesis contends that “Duty and honor were indeed powerful motivating forces. They had to be, for some other traditional reasons that have caused men to fight in organized armies had little relevance in the Civil War” (5-6). McPherson then supplements his thesis by borrowing three major themes from historian John A. Lynn: “initial motivation” or why men choose to

McPherson refers to this increase in patriotism as rage militaire. The text suggests that this had a profound impact upon the population of the north, as “men, women, and children seem to be in the streets with Union favors and flags” (16). The south saw a similar sort of rise in patriotism, and describes the population in many southern states as “an exciting mob with flushed faces, wild eyes, screaming mouths, hurrahing for Jeff Davis and the Southern Confederacy”(17). McPherson tributes the severe rise in enlistment to the rage militaire movement, and also argues that enlistment numbers rose and fell as the war lingered

This seems to be a key motivator to not only fight, but to value one’s honor over their own life. Evidence for this philosophy is provided by the phrase “Death before dishonor”, stated in several accounts according to McPherson (77). McPherson also explores the idea that soldiers feared showing any sort of cowardice or fear, going as far as to participate in combat when they were in desperate need of medical attention. This motivation, McPherson argues, increased as the war went on, peaking in 1864. An account from a Yankee veteran aids in confirming this stance, as it states that “I would rather go into fifty battles and run the risk of getting killed than as to be a coward in time of