Did the soldiers in the civil war care about the slaves at all?
They cared about what they care about in every war. Not getting shot/stabbed/blown up and preventing their buddies from doing the same.
I'm sure there's patriotism and high minded ideals here and there but those probably lasted until the first shots are fired and get trampled into the dust in the first charge
>>1074500
Many surely did. But most people who go to war do it for personal reasons, i.e. to travel and experience war, or because they have no other prospects, or because they'd be looked down upon if they didn't. Still more do it out of a general sense of "fighting for my people" regardless of the policies of those who started the war.
Once actually in the war, >>1074511 self-preservation is the name of the game.
But also remember that a lot of people mainly lived on farms, so the information they had about the war was largely going to be coming from local papers, which were generally biased as fuck.
>>1074500
>Did the soldiers in the civil war care about the slaves at all?
Why would they? Until the Emancipation Proclamation, the war was about unification of the union and it was a very unpopular idea with riots kicking in once the draft started. The idea that was war was over the North wanting to free slaves is misguided at best considering it didn't become a war goal until the war was already half way over and even then it was to gain slave manpower into the Union Army and drum up idealism to make the draft go smoother than it had been up to that point. For the Confederacy, it was likely that even fewer soldiers fought for the slaves considering how few slave owners there actually were. Southern chivalry was the name of the game back then and the invasion by the North, no matter who started the war, brought it out in almost everyone. As the war drug on, a revanchism of sorts dug in and thus more people saw their honor or family honor affronted and enlisted. The draft went exceptionally smooth in the Confederacy for this reason.
tl;dr
Outside of a few, it's not likely.
>>1074562
Many poor, farming Southerners (i.e most of them) likely did have an opinion on the slavery issue because they were terrified of blacks being on the same level as them.
>>1074573
Extremely unlikely. Free blacks in both the North and South were treated worse than the poorest of whites. Equality wasn't even close to being on the docket even after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued.
>>1074500
>>1074579
Sure, it was unlikely, but that doesn't stop people from freaking out over it.
It was the 19th century equivalent of that argument that tolerating gayness will lead to people being okay with bestiality next.
>>1074582
>1864x4327
>1864
>>1074579
>>1074588
Here.
>Typical of the commissioner letters is that written by Stephen Hale, an Alabama commissioner, to the Governor of Kentucky, in December 1860. Lincoln’s election, he observed, was “nothing less than an open declaration of war, for the triumph of this new theory of government destroys the property of the south, lays waste her fields, and inaugurates all the horrors of a San Domingo servile insurrection, consigning her citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans. The slave holder and non-slaveholder must ultimately share the same fate; all be degraded to a position of equality with free negroes, stand side by side with them at the polls, and fraternize in all the social relations of life, or else there will be an eternal war of races, desolating the land with blood, and utterly wasting all the resources of the country.”
>What Southerner, Hale asked, “can without indignation and horror contemplate the triumph of negro equality, and see his own sons and daughters in the not distant future associating with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality?” Abolition would surely mean that “the two races would be continually pressing together,” and “amalgamation or the extermination of the one or the other would be inevitable.”
>>1074500
Here's a recording of a Confederate who served in the Calvary
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uHDfC-z9YaE
It's a really good primary source
>>1074643
The situation being unlikely doesn't mean it can't be common thought. Common thought in the middle ages was that travelling to a saint's grave and hanging out around it for a while could heal deformities and shit.
And the government isn't the soldier, but you can bet your ass something as charged as my quote was put in the papers the soldier had access to, influencing his opinion.
>>1074651
>unlikely thoughts are common thought
You are a fucking idiot.
>>1074652
Brilliant retort, you've decisively won the argument. I really liked how you acknowledged my points and everything.
Currently, a common thought is that Muslims are all evil and want to destroy the Western world. It's unlikely, especially considering quite a large number of them live peacefully in the Western world without causing a fuss, but it is nonetheless a widespread opinion.
>>1074666
I outright called it an unlikely thought of a soldier. In fact, there's a spoken memoir, a.k.a. a primary fucking source, of a soldier right in the fucking thread >>1074630 who went to war over revanchism and Southern honor and not niggers.
>Currently, a common thought is that Muslims are all evil and want to destroy the Western world. It's unlikely, especially considering quite a large number of them live peacefully in the Western world without causing a fuss
Ah yes, just 50% of them want Sharia Law and a good many want extralegality for Islam, but you know.
>>1074674
Well, you would say that it's likely that Sharia Law is a good thing, yes?
>>1074674
>Ah yes, just 50% of them want Sharia Law and a good many want extralegality for Islam, but you know
Woah, the last /pol/ inforgraphic i read said 48%! We'd better do something quick.
>>1074582
The civil war wasn't an end all be all "it's about slavery and slavery only", your image is in no way an objective analysis of history, and is mainly a representation of the opinions of the political elite.
Not the average soilder.
>>1074674
Sharia is pretty great, doe
>>1074690
No, I'm adressing the meat of the argument.
If it's a common view that Sharia Law is a good thing, you'd have to be an idiot to think that's unlikely.
>>1074674
See? It's a common opinion. Note that I said "all", but I digress.
Admittedly, I haven't checked that out due to being at work at the moment, but how long after the war is it recorded? I'm sure it's a good source, but fifty years can do a lot to distort one's memory, especially if they've been filled with the rest of society dissuading a certain point of view.
It should be noted as well that Southern cavalry had an air of nobility to it:
A Southerner was, on average, considered a superior horseman to his Northern counterpart, especially early in the war. Roads in the rural South were generally poor, and horses were used more for individual transportation than they were for the carriages and streetcars of the urbanized North, where many of the early Federal cavalry regiments were formed.[6] Furthermore, Southern society was more stratified, which made the soldiers more accustomed to a hierarchy of command and were generally considered more suited to the martial lifestyle.
Confederate soldiers owned their horses and were compensated on a monthly basis. If a soldier's horse was sick, injured, or killed, the soldier was responsible for returning home and replacing the horse at his own expense. The general rule was that the soldier had 60 days to return with a new horse or he was forced to become an infantryman, which was considered to be an ignominious fate.
Counting cavalry as the common soldier is questionable, considering they held themselves above the average grunt.
>>1074686
>Not the average soilder.
Well the average soldier isn't who defines the political aims of a war.
>>1074709
Did you even read OP.
>>1074511
This honestly. Once the bullets started flying all idealism went out the window and it became about survival
>>1074579
>Free blacks in both the North and South were treated worse than the poorest of whites.
The richest man in Maryland at one point was a free colored man who owned hundreds of slaves.
>>1074914
To be fair, money talks. A poor free black would certainly not see a fraction of the respect that man did.
What was his name? That is legitimately interesting.
>>1074500
A bit, I read that German immigrants (mostly farmers formerly serving the Prussian landed nobility) joined the Union Army to fight against the same kind of oppressive landowners they fled from in the first place
>>1074934
A free northern black had it better than a poor southern white.
>>1076470
I'm not arguing that. I'm saying Poor Joe Freeman would not have been treated with the same regard of that Marylander.
But yeah, a lot of Southern whites were practically serfs, and that extended to blacks upon emancipation as well.
"well, you're free now, so you can go off and confusedly try to make a life for yourself or stay here and let me shackle you with debt to keep doing what you were before."
