What motivates the average white Union soldier to fight against the southern states?
It's hard to believe that people suddenly willing to die for the freedom and equality of african slaves so suddenly.
>>403171
Because the war wasn't initially about slavery.
Slavery only became a factor later on.
>>403174
>abolitionist of african slaves
>southern states get angry
>decide to rebel
>>403174
>what is the cornerstone speech and the Consitution of the CSA
>>403171
>drafted into the military
>the same as willingly dying for slaves
>>403171
Competition
South had real cheaper working class than them, it had to stop.
>>403188
if everyone thinks the same it would be easy for the union to coup Lincoln and restore order back.But somehow they're willing to join Lincoln and fight the Southern state until the end.The south hate Lincoln because of his abolitionist ideas m8
>>403188
That explains the volunteers in the beginning, thx for the clarification m8
>>403171
White northern state or Yankee are motivated because they believed in the amendment.That all men are created equal unlike the southern states.It's easy to motivate any soldier that they're fighting for a right cause even if they hate blacks.
Plus the white yankee generally hate and look down on their southern counterparts is also a motivation.Even today when I go to the southern states,my mates wouldn't be comfortable eating those greasy and fatty southern food.There's a reason South states stereotypes happen
>>403261
im not american but i always thought it was a tipical unification war like the ones in south america and europe
i mean its contemporaneous and the north even called garibaldi in but he refused over some terms and conditions like uniforms or chain of command or wathever
what further gives me this impression is that the division is tipical, you usualy have one part of the soon to be 'country' that is industrialised and going rapidly trough the steps of technological systematisation of production and finances, maximisation, rationalisation, accumulation, bla... while the other side is tipicaly rural and agricultural, yet competitive as a whole, churning out mass amounts of raw materials, and crucialy begining to industrialise on its own from the surplus amassed from selling corn/cotton/sugarcane/rubber/wathever
this makes the basic delineation, the basic line of political and ideological schism, as well as giving a set of mentalities and logic, again diferent, even hardly compatible
the break happens, (or the war to unify what didnt even break up in the first place, but thats not ACW siutuation so regardles), and once it happens one side, usualy the rural one, takes on a conservative, traditionalis stance, but politicaly the goal is things like indipendence, legislative and political freedom, selfdetermination, 'nation rights' as it were, with financial and economic freedom and free trade comming with it
the other side, basicaly the idndustrialist one, usualy takes on a enlightened moral high ground quoting constitutions and manifestos and praising liberties and human rights and other universal flags of war, but realy the political logic is one of unification, integration into one monolithic system, with one set of rules, one basic political and ideological direction, one centre of power, one legal and political system, set on maximising industrial capital and profit, with a clear idea on what the place and function of the rural regions are
>>403318
any way, thats what i see as the points and reasons for the american civil war
'blacks' or wathever other operative terms, are just ideological meme-words of the time
I've seen letters from German immigrants and their descendents at the time which expressed a stronger class than race consciousness.
That is, they saw slaveholders as being like the junkers they came to America to escape, and opposed what was to them just another aristocracy.
Remember, in Prussia the Serfs weren't emancipated until 1807, and in many other states they were freed by Napoleon. Many immigrants were grandchildren of unfree people, and saw slavery as exactly the kind of institution they came to America to escape.
Germans were 10% of the Union Army, and made a solid anti-slavery bloc. There's records of German immigrants in border states opposing slaveholders and slavery, for example in Missouri, riots in 1861 prevented slave auctions from taking place, their votes ensured an anti-secessionist state legislature, and German militia groups trained to prevent the Missouri state militia from seizing the St Louis Arsenal.
>>403171
The south was not a bunch of inactive Southern Gentlemen who just sat around passively (except as far as abusing their slaves went). The south had been causing shit for decades. The Southerners saw that the British managed to end the slave trade, eventually abolish slavery in the Empire and the French did the same and they knew that people who held abolitionist positions existed in the US and that the free states outnumbered the Slave States. As such they used every dirty trick that they could contrive to gain an upper hand. For every new free state added to the union there had to be a slave state. They instituted a Gag Rule which barred people from evening mentioning Slavery in congress.
Eventually they slipped, there was now not only more than 5 times as many people who were not slaves in the North as there were in the south. When that happened they knew that Slavery was on it's way to eventual extinction in the Union. So they broke away.
1-they were doing their civic/patriotic duty by obeying the draft
2-supported reunification
3 did oppose slavery on religious grounds (read the lyrics to battle hymn of the republic)
>>403171
>got conscripted
>get shot if I desert
>>403373
Also, during the Bleeding Kansas period, German migrants were killed by Border Ruffians. So for them, the was was saving unfree agricultural labourers (just like Opa) from a bunch of stuck up aristocrats who murdered your cousin a few years back. No wonder they'd be willing to kill for a cause like that.
I know I'm focusing on Germans, because they're who I'm interested in, but other immigrants probably had a similar viewpoint.
As for the "native" anglos, it was pretty much a rematch of the English Civil War 220 years earlier, just geographically reversed. The Puritan northerners (who, by the way, sent volunteers to fight with the Roundheads back in the 17th century) vs the flashy aristocratic Southerners (who were descendents of Cavaliers that fled to Virginia). The only difference is Grant didn't think he was literally sent by God, that Lincoln wasn't a kek, and Robert E. Lee didn't become a pirate after the war.
