There’s a folk song from Scotland called “Twa Recruitin’ Sergeants”, which is about recruiters for the Black Watch (42nd Highland Regiment) trying to convince a hired farmhand that his economic prospects are dim and that he would do better as a soldier.
Also, read Robert Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” (Don’t watch the movie!)
The Union forever,
Hurrah, boys, Hurrah,
Down with the traitors.
Up with the star.
Or.
The first gun is fired!
may God protect the right!
Let the free-born sons of the North arise
in power’s avenging might
Shall the glorious Union our fathers made
by ruthless hands be sundered?
And we of freedom’s sacred right
by trait’rous foes be plundered?
What’s so complicated? Your homeland is attacked, those other folks are waging war on you, so you wage war on them. Remember, it was the South who fired the first shots. What difference that the other guys are traitors instead of foreigners?
Romantic notions of military glory, I’d imagine. Their fathers had fought the Mexican War and that was a piece of cake! They had no idea of the horrors they would witness.
don’t underestimate the power and pervasiveness of anti-southern propaganda done by “Christian”-affiliated abolitionists in some areas. If “battle hymn of the republic” with the body of the mass murderer terrorist John Brown as the main character ends up as your favorite marching song, that’s saying something about people’s ideological standpoint, doesn’t it? True mercenaries or people in search of adventure don’t sing this sort of BS.
A bit of a tangent, but the NYT ‘Disunion’ series had a piece today titled “Men at War” that discusses the motivations of Confederate enlistees.
It starts out with :
*“Most historians now argue — and contemporary documents bear them out — that the leaders of the Confederacy were, above all, motivated by a desire to protect their system of slavery.”
*
and goes on to say:
“Men go to war for all kinds of reasons — glory, money, peer pressure — and that was clearly true in the Civil War South. Yet the speeches, newspapers and writings from the time indicate that white masculine identity mattered a great deal, particularly for those Southerners who had little else that guaranteed their social status.”
If interested, you might be able to read it via this Google search.
Much of my thinking on this issue is distorted by my great, great, grandfather’s underground railroad work and his son riding with John Brown in bleeding Kansas. Note, my family had nothing to do with the attack on Harpers Ferry. Harriet Tubman was a family friend too. Also a historical novel based on the family. The book, family tradition, and the history of Pennsylvania all have much the same story.
From Wikipedia on the founding of the Republican party, ‘‘It was pro-business, supporting banks, the gold standard, railroads, and high tariffs to protect heavy industry and the industrial workers.’’ That doesn’t mention western land or the 800 pound guerrilla, slavery. Of all those issues, likely tariffs would have been second to the Southerners. They were paying through the nose for cotton clothing made out of their cotton in the North. Lincoln accomplished enough other than the war, the Homestead Act and the transcontinenal railroad to be remembered as a great president.
The abolitionists could never have elected a president. When the Republicans pulled all the factions together and elected a president both anti slavery and pro tariffs, it was too much.
Now you have to look at some other matters too. Earlier, Many Northern young men went out to Kansas partly to claim land and partly to shoot at Southerns there for the same purpose. There was also the Fugitive slave Law. When it passed, in his Irish accent, my great, great grandfather said ‘‘They can bate us in congress, but they can’t bate us in the West Branch.’’ What he meant was that congress can pass any dumb law they want, but enforcing it in central Pennsylvania would be tough. He built a new house with a secret room. Then he discovered the tenant in the old house next door was a Democrat. One that could collect big money turning him in. He built a 16’ high fence between the houses.
Yes in past wars the media printed anything to push people’s buttons. Not only the Battle Hymm of the Republic, but Barbara Fritche.
My great, great, grandfather was lucky. He never got caught. Many underground railroad conductors were and lost everything. A chance to shoot at Southerners?
Am I confusing wars or could you serve as their commander if you recruited enough solders?
John Brown was fighting to free people from slavery, arguing he was a terrorist and a mass murderer is akin to saying the same of French Resistance fighters during World War II.
By and large the North had been afraid of the South since the Revolution, afraid that they would leave the country and tear it apart. Because of this fear the North had by and large kow towed to virtually all meaningful Southern demands for generations. Only a few exceptions really come to mind (Andrew Jackson told the South to pound sand when they protested over his tariffs, for example.) There was a lot of anger that 1/3rd of the country had told the other 2/3rds how high to jump for 80 years. In Kansas it was essentially being repeated all over again. Pro-Slavery forces committed the worst atrocities with absolute impunity and were celebrated widely in the South for their actions. John Brown struck back at Pottawatomie.
My great grandfather joined Company K, 23rd New York Volunteer Regiment because his classmates at Alfred University were all joining. He was subsequently captured at 2nd Bull Run.
One person’s freedom fighter is another person’s terrorist. I’m sure the German occupiers considered the Risistance to be terrorists.
As far as states’ rightists, they seem to be in favor of them only as long as the states are doing things they approve of. Once a state does something they are against, they’re all for the Federal government suppressing them. I could cite recent examples, but they probably belong in GD.
You had an 80 year tradition about hearing how the fore fathers volunteered to fight for the American Revolution. Many could have had living relatives or neighbors who were veterans. Since they fought at Bunker Hill and froze at Valley Forge for freedom and to establish a democracy, that you should volunteer too. There were other reasons. Lots of peer pressure from towns to meet quotas. Of course if that unit happened to get in a serious battle, there were many families in that town who lost some one. Lots of other reasons. While I don’t think many Northerners cared for slavery, fighting to end it was low as reasons to enlist.
Others have pointed out that the Mexican war 15 years earlier was a relatively bloodless affair as wars go. I think in Ken Burns “Civil War” series Shelby Foote mentions that the Battle of Shiloh had more casualties than the entire the Revolution, War of 1812 and Mexican combined…and there were a dozen Shilohs in the Civil War.
You may have a lot more people willing to die…or officers willing to shed blood. Stephen Ambrose in a dual biography about George Custer and Crazy Horse mentions how if you read the reports of Civil War commanders (which Custer was in, something James McPherson says his students at Princeton are often surprised to find out), it’s amazing how they seem to brag about how many casualties they suffer. Many would toast each other “to a promotion or a coffin”.
I also think death at a young age was more common. Abraham and Mary Lincoln had four sons. Only one, Robert, lived to be an adult…and none died in battle. How many people even have four children, let alone have three die young? If you believe that you could die young because of mysterious reasons, you may be more inclined to fight and be remembered as a hero.
*We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil
Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil
And when our rights were threatened the cry rose near and far
“Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag that bears a single star!”
Hurrah, hurrah, for Southern rights hurrah!
Hurrah for the bonnie blue flag that bears a single star!*
It’s all propaganda, no matter which side it’s from.
Without quoting your own cite and just based on anecdata, patriotism for the new country is often very high among immigrants. Sometimes it takes ugly shapes (freshly-naturalized Americans ranting about immigrants “coming to steal our jobs”, high prevalence of virulent Basque nationalism among zero- and first-generation), sometimes it takes the form of working extra super hard because not only do you want your kids to live better than you have/do but you want to give something back to this land that took you in; sometimes it takes the form of risking life and limb for it.
Its mirror phenomenon is those eternal expats who may even have been born where they live but who feel more Irish or Basque or… than the people still living “back home”. Again, this can be something almost folkloric and anecdotic (“kiss me, I’m Irish”) or it can get pretty ugly.
What with all the patriotic fervor and the hordes of enlistees, why did the Federal Government find it necessary to resort to a draft in order to field adequate forces?
Why were there riots in several northern cities in protest of the draft law?
‘‘anecdata’’ Great word, maybe it should be in the dictionary.
I found the comment on John Brown being a terrorist doubtful. One mark of a terrorist is deliberate attacks on unarmed civilians. I don’t think there is any evidence of him doing that. Harper’s Ferry was guarded by armed solders.
The draft only applied to whites of the lower classes who couldn’t buy their way out or afford to purchase a commission. Blacks were not subject to the draft, and the whites turned on them as a scapegoat, killing many and lynching some. As far as I know, this was limited to New York City and only lasted a few months. It was put down by federal troops, who fired on their own citizens.
The initial enthusiasm faded as it became more and more apparent that the war would be protracted and much much bloodier than expected. However, the North didn’t pass conscription until July 1862, which applied to states which couldn’t meet their quotas from volunteers.
There were many issues, but one of the most important was that the draft was felt to be unfair, especially since the wealthy could buy their way out by paying a substitute. And labor issues were also important, since whites felt that blacks would take their jobs if they were drafted.
Irish, many of them immigrants, comprised about one-fourth of all Union troops during the war. Many of them did so just for the bounty money, which at $300 was a good sum for the era. It appears that about three-quarters of a million people emigrated to the North during the war, mostly young men. I can’t think of a parallel in history of voluntary migration of that magnitude to a country at total war. That meant, again apparently unprecedented, that the North had a larger stock of healthy young men to draw from at the end of the dying than at the beginning. Another in the million reasons why the South never could have won the war unless the Union abjectly surrendered.
By the end of the war, more than just poor whites were being drafted. You had two opposing forces at work. One was that people understood that the war was butchery of a high order and that entering it as a soldier meant almost certain death or wounding. The other was that war sentiment remained very high everywhere outside of those few places where southern sympathies predominated. (The Copperhead movement.) Shirkers in smaller communities had a real stigma placed on them as cowards.
In places where most were volunteering and immigrants were scarce, the opportunities to buy oneself out were rare. Having $300 in ready money was a problem as well, and most young men didn’t have it unless they could get their families to pitch in. I think that the draft got a good cross-section of class and wealth in most places. New York City was the exception.
And the reason war sentiment remained so high even through the carnage - though it certainly fell sharply from the first few months - was the age-old “they fired on us!” fear and anger. That can’t be emphasized enough. People went totally hysterical after 9/11 even though there was no real chance of any additional attacks. Now imagine the perpetrators living across a thousand-mile undefended border from you. The South could scream that they just wanted to be let alone but who believed them? The war was mostly fought in the South, to the Union’s great benefit, but the two major campaigns into the north, at Antietam and Gettysburg, repanicked the North. People grew hysterical, enlistments jumped, support for the war and Lincoln zoomed.
“We” were attacked by “them.” It’s a great explainer.
The riots themselves lasted only 4 days, when the Federal troops finally managed to take control.
Brown murdered unarmed civilians years earlier, in the Pottawatomie Massacre. The guy was no hero; he was a murdering delusional nutcase.