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Pastimes : Civil War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth Kirk who wrote (14)	1/27/2003 4:07:34 PM
From: KonKilo	Respond to of 341

And how often did they mention slavery as their reason for fighting? Hardly ever. I noticed a similar tone in the hundreds of Confederate diaries I've read. They rarely mention slavery at all, but instead talk about being hungry, or cold, or hot, or homesick. Mostly they talked in general terms about "preserving the union". They didn't seem to think very often about why it was important, it was just sort of repeated like a mantra. Government brainwashing in action? I also got the impression that a lot of them joined for the adventure, and maybe the political reason was just an excuse. A Civil War scholar friend of mine here in Chattanooga is fond of saying that rural life in the mid 1800s was hardly a hotbed of excitement. <g> In other words, they couldn't just say they joined to fight and win personal glory, so they needed to repeat something that would justify it. This validates the saying,"There are two reasons a man does a thing; a good reason and the real reason." On the other hand, sometimes the right things happen for the wrong reasons. Slavery was a horrible institution, and worth the fight to get rid of, no? No question. And sometimes, even though one has the right to do something, it can be done for the wrong reasons.(Secession).