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For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War
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Chapter 11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 11 Summary: “Vengeance Will Be Our Motto”
Chapter 11 begins with the notion of the masculine code of honor, an essential part of which, McPherson claims, is revenge for insult and injury. This idea of vengeance, while present in both armies, is stronger in the South, partly because the masculine code has persisted longer there, and partly because the South suffers more death and destruction at the hands of invading Union armies: “Once large-scale invasions and fighting began in earnest, vengeance against ‘these fiends in human shape’ became almost an obsession with some Confederates” (149).
Soldiers from both sides claim the opposing army to be thieving hordes, and that they should be completely eradicated:
A Louisiana cavalry sergeant [...] by the time Vicksburg and Port Hudson had fallen [said that] the ‘only thing’ that kept him going was ‘absolute hatred of […] the hyperborean vandals with whom we are waging a war for existence […] I expect to murder every Yankee I ever meet’ (149).
Confederate armies are especially vindictive against black troops, often murdering them when they try to surrender: “As a North Carolina private explained to his mother after a skirmish with a black regiment: ‘several [were] taken prisoner & afterwards either bayoneted or burnt’” (152). Union soldiers from border states also feel especially vengeful; some of this vengeance comes from seeing family and friends killed in Southern invasions, which often results in massacres enacted as retribution for previous massacres:
A Wisconsin soldier with Sherman’s army in Georgia wrote to his fiancée that when his regiment charged Confederate works at Resaca in May 1864, ‘twenty-three of the rebs surrendered but the boys asked them if they remembered Fort Pillow and killed all of them’ (154).
The rhetoric of revenge often buoys hope for the armies. But aside from vengeance, an army’s morale, as McPherson points out, is “internal to the armies themselves” (155). This morale comes in the form of victory: a victory can sustain an army at least until the next defeat, while a defeat may often cause another defeat, due to lack of morale. Even hearing of the victory of another army can improve morale for the winning side, while hearing of losses can sink it. By 1864, the Confederacy, despite the vengeful words, is ready to fall, having suffered too many losses.
Chapter 11 Analysis
As McPherson scours letters from soldiers for what causes them to fight, and keep fighting, he finds vengeance as a cause. Several soldiers express a desire to fight until the enemy is dead. One Georgia lieutenant instructs his wife to teach their children to look upon the North with “bitter hatred” (149). A Louisiana cavalry sergeant claims the only thing that keeps him going was “absolute hatred” (149).
For the South, this code is tied up in social and cultural concerns such as slavery and continued economic livelihood, plus their desire to be “free.” Southern soldiers, after the North begins to invade, see the land they love destroyed, and so the desire for vengeance is perhaps stronger in the South, but McPherson gives examples of Northern soldiers also holding on hard to hatred, especially those from border states who experience firsthand Southern invasions, and see their friends killed.
The results of the hatred and desire for vengeance are important in several ways. The first is that this hatred lasts long after the war ends: through Reconstruction, lynchings, the KKK, and the Civil Rights movement, all of which have their roots in slavery and the Civil War.
The second is that vengeance will not win the war. The South holds hard to hatred and vengeance, but what they need are victories. McPherson explains that news of victories could buoy an army’s spirits, and that winning a battle themselves could sustain these hopes: “War weariness an economic breakdown on the home front accelerated the decline of the soldiers’ will to fight. In the North, by contrast, military victories in September and October 1864 had revived flagging morale” (162). The continual piling up of losses, along with economic hardships, eventually causes several armies of the Confederacy to fold, and ultimately brings about Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.
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By James M. Mcpherson
