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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