For Cause and Comrade

James McPherson, the dean of Civil War scholars, is known to most readers as the author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era, far and away the best single-volume history of the conflict. But this volume, which came out roughly a decade later in 1997, was one of the first military histories to move beyond generals and commanders and examine why common soldiers enlisted and remained loyal to their fellows even as the bloody conflict dragged on.

After reading tens of thousands of letters and diaries of more than one thousand U.S. and C.S.A. soldiers, McPherson opens… show more.

Men enlisted to fight in the Civil War for many reasons: impulsive patriotism, peer pressure, politics – abolitionism, the salvation of the Union, the defense of slavery – or, at least for some, an enlistment bonus or just the need of a job. But what kept them fighting year after year once the initial excitement wore off, in the industrial killing fields of Shiloh, Antietam, Gettysburg and Cold Harbor? McPherson offers the most insightful answer I know to this knotty question in this surprising, often inspiring, and poignant book based heavily on the words of soldiers themselves in letters written… show more.