It is clear from Chandra Manning’s book What This Cruel War Was Over, slavery was a key cause of the Civil War.  However, slavery falls under the “umbrella” of liberty, which was attractive to Union soldiers and non-slaveholding Confederates.  Each side had its own definition of liberty; for Confederates it was the right to own slaves and for the Union is the right to freedom.  While the soldiers were fighting over slavery, the war was attractive to both sides because they were also fighting for what they believed to be morally right.

For white southerners, the right to own slaves was an inalienable right.  When the Federal government looked to be denying them that freedom, they chose to secede from the Union and establish a government that would defend white liberty.  They had an economic system that was based around slavery and its abolition was viewed as a threat against their way of life.  However, not many white southerners owned slaves so when secession led to war, why did so many of them take up arms to defend the right to something they did not own?  The first reason is because slavery created a caste system that made all whites equal on some level.  Even the poorest white southerners were not on the lowest rung of society as black slaves were the lowest caste.  Without slavery, there would be nothing saving these white men from being of the lowest in society.  The capturing of a black Union soldier even provided a means for social mobility.

Another reason that white southerners would fight for the Confederacy was a fear of freed black slaves.  On page 81, Manning mentions an Arkansas soldier who had a nightmare of blacks eating at the same table was his white wife.  The main fear was that freed blacks would react violently towards white southerners for the their mistreatment of slaves.  Many imagined violent uprisings and former slaves murdering the wives and children of Confederate soldiers.  While this did not occur that often, this was an intrinsic fear that existed in the minds of white southerners.  When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued on January 1, 1863, it was clear that the Union government had made the Civil War about slavery.   Therefore, a Confederate victory became key to the preservation of the southern right to slavery.

On the other hand, northern white soldiers fought because they believed slavery to be morally wrong and that everyone had the right to freedom.  While many felt that blacks were inferior to whites, no human being deserved to be enslaved.  In essence, the system of slavery conflicted with the democratic concept of liberty.  As no other society had a democratic, republican government, the need to preserve the Union for the sake of democracy was a key reason to fight.   By taking up arms against the Confederates, white northerners hoped to do away with a system that denied human beings their basic rights.  When the Emancipation Proclamation passed, white northerners were more likely to fight against the evils of slavery.  For Union soldiers, slavery was so wrong morally, they would fight to see its destruction.

While both sides appeared to fight for different rights, they fought for their own personal concept of liberty. Manning makes it clear that slavery was the key behind this clash of moral and social ideals.

It seems to me that the overall attitudes of many soldiers concerning the meaning and reason for the Civil War definitely changed throughout the course of events that took place. Whether or not there was a specific point in time that the attitude changed or a specific reason for their change is impossible to know completely, but it seems there are three distinctively different thoughts towards slavery specifically in the minds of the Union soldiers all at different points during the war. One of those points is the general understanding of the war and its meaning during the very beginning, when the war is primarily about equality and liberty, and attacking the primary feature of the south; that being slavery. As time passes, the understanding evolves, and starts to change some of its features to define the boundaries of African American Rights. However, there is also a point where the ideas seem to shift toward the main reason being atonement for the country’s sins of racism.
In the beginning of the war, Manning shows us that the main reason for the war against the South in the minds of the soldiers was for slavery. The idea of slavery was alien enough to the Northerner’s that it was relatively easy to support the abolition of forced labor, especially when they lived around paid labor for quite some time. Manning even tells us that, “…in the late summer and fall, a full year ahead of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union rank and file began to insist on the destruction of slavery…” (p. 218). The journals show us a sense of fighting for liberty and equality; the principles the country was founded on. In order to prevail and be taken seriously in the world, the Union had to last.
This idea changes as the war goes on, however. The idea of African American Rights starts to spread, to which the Union soldiers become evasive of such complicated issues at the time. Although it was okay to fight for the abolition of slavery, the rights were under debated or avoided, and became a complex issue. This idea is relatively present at the beginning, but becomes gradually more prevalent throughout the war until another change of significant notice happens.
After the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, Manning shows us that the battles were “…widely perceived in the Union ranks as God’s direct intervention on behalf of the Union and true freedom…” (p. 220). She goes on to state that the war became about the atonement of the country and its racism towards the slaves. This gives the fight against slavery a whole new meaning, and even starts to tie in the rights of the freed slaves. John Moore argues that the Union must now be “…based upon equality and freedom to all white, black or copper colored.” (p. 188).
These different attitudes towards the purpose of the Civil War have many similarities. The main theme is slavery, but the angles vary from relative indifference at the beginning to a divine purpose towards the end. This range of ideas throughout time shows the dynamic nature of the purpose for the Civil War and the attitude towards slavery and slaves themselves. In short, although the war might have been primarily about slaves, the angles at which the soldiers arrive at that theme vary drastically, especially throughout time.

In her book, What This Cruel War Was Over, Chandra Manning takes a unique sociological, historical, and psychological approach to try to identify why rank and file Confederate and Union soldiers took up arms against each other, and why they continued to fight after four trying years. Beyond identifying slavery as the root cause of the war, she demonstrates that slavery was, in fact, the epicenter for grander issues of manhood, society, liberty, and safety. To make this bold argument, Manning calls forth written accounts of soldiers letters home, records of straw polls, voting behavior of soldiers, public statements, newspaper articles and other anecdotal accounts. Although Manning offers some dissenting opinions of soldiers and politicians, her main purpose is to get the heart of the majority sentiments of soldiers from both sides. After pouring over mostly primary accounts of soldiers’ attitudes, Manning comes to two main conclusions: first, she argues that the mainstream, non-slaveholding, Confederate soldier fought to defend slavery mainly out of the fear that freed African Americans would disrupt the social hierarchy and would endanger the life and sanctity of white southern women. In contrast, she argues that the average Union soldier fought to end slavery as a means to end the war, prevent future conflict, and protect the virtues of republicanism to which they felt strongly attached. The chronological accounts and opinions that Manning brings to light in this book are used to support her theories on soldiers’ mentalities; however, as a quantitative survey of majority soldier opinion, her work does not close the book on why the soldiers fought the Civil War.

To explain why Confederates saw freed slaves as such a threat to society and “white liberty,” while Unionists saw slavery as a threat to republican principles and later as a threat to humanity, Manning provides evidence to support broad generalizations about the differences between southern and northern society. To her, Confederates placed a much higher value on preserving the existing social order, especially when it came to the place of women and blacks. Southerners viewed Union acts like “Butler’s Woman’s Order (Manning 62),” the emancipation proclamation, and the creation of black regiments, as direct attacks on southern society, a special kind of social hierarchy which they believed was ordained by God. To her, the defense of slavery in the Confederacy was motivated mostly by self interest in preserving one’s manhood, which most importantly included protecting one’s family from the aggression of freed slaves. Even though undesirable actions of the Richmond government, such as heavy taxation, possible enlistment of slaves, conscription, and the “twenty-slave law,” threatened non-slaveholders manhood in man ways, Confederate soldiers consistently acquiesced to the wrongdoings of the Confederacy because they believed emancipation would bring greater ills to their society and well being. Whereas Confederate soldiers “fought for the benefit of themselves, their families, and white southerners” (Manning 70), Union soldiers fought to destroy slavery because it was the issue that caused the dreaded war and later because they believed that “[slavery] was so evil that it destroyed the moral health of the nation and angered God” (Manning 119). Much of the reason why the Union fought through the harshness of war, Manning argues, was that northerners had a special interest in proving that their “representative government, founded on the ideals of liberty and equality, could work” (Manning 218).

Despite the numerous accounts of soldiers’ opinions that she cites, in the end, Manning does not make a convincing argument as to how the majority of the soldiers on either side felt. Her evidence relies mostly on a handful of primary accounts recorded by literate or outspoken soldiers, not on broad range survey data. She does invoke some use of survey data, like elections and straw polls; however, she admits that many soldiers were not able to vote and that higher ranking officials and newspapers often distorted or fabricated the results of these votes. For instance, when Confederate regiments voted on the question of using slave soldiers, many brigades who voted against the action were kept silent or had their results falsified. Manning provides evidence that argues that the Richmond government and the periodical The Examiner silenced or explicitly falsified the votes of the Wise Brigade and Private J.C. Wrights’ brigade (Manning 208).  It is difficult to make a solid argument about the majority thought of a group without having reliable survey data to draw on. In fact, Manning’s findings about the differences between northern and southern society seem to raise more questions than answers. For instance, why did fear mongering statements like Zebulon Vance’s assertion, that free slaves “will burn your homes and murder your families” (Manning 174), have more of an effect of creating fear in the south than the racist propaganda of the north? Why was manhood in southern society threatened so much more by emancipation than in northern society? To make a clearer argument about how and why the majority of Union and Confederate soldiers placed value and fear the way they did, Manning needs to use evidence that covers a greater portion of the soldier population.

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