For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War

McPherson starts this chapter by mentioning that the traditional means of motivating soldiers is “training, discipline and leadership” (46). Training, however, is lack, at least at first. Many men see themselves as individuals, and it takes some time for them to understand the value of close-order drilling and other types of training:

‘A soldier is not his own man,’ complained a young Indiana private to his sister. Take drill, for example. ‘You fall in and start. You here feel your inferiority, even the Sargeants [sic] is hollering at you to close up, Ketch [sic] step, dress to the right, and sutch [sic] like’ (47).

Desertion is also difficult for commanders on both sides to implement, so often coercion is implemented: soldiers who run are shot. Both the Union and Confederate armies form units specifically to stop skulkers—those too paralyzed by fear to fight. Both armies also punish skulkers afterward, sometimes with physical punishments, such as lashes: “The whole brigade stood at attention to watch the ‘wretched creature’ get thirty-nine lashes on his bare back” (51). Others are shot, since Confederate commanders, especially, see skulkers as bad as deserters.

The second part of the chapter focuses on leadership. Good leaders could inspire their men to accept the training and discipline, while bad leaders often provoke the ire of the men under their command. Being too strict is one mode of poor leadership. Another is for leaders to see themselves as above the men they command. One way a bad leader could combat the ire aimed at him was to perform well in battle. Courage under fire often warmed troops toward a commander, as did the commander showing his troops kindness. Performing poorly, or showing cowardice, ruins a man’s reputation in battle, which shows the ilk of the men who fought. McPherson ends by saying that despite the long-held beliefs that training, discipline, and leadership are the measures by which an army marches, the men who fight in the Civil War “came from a society that prizes individualism, self-reliance, and freedom from coercive authority” (61). The values of the time, McPherson says, held the individual, rather than the society, responsible for that individual’s actions. What really counted were one’s own virtue, will, and convictions.