For Cause & Comrades written by James M. McPherson beautifully illustrates and explains the many reasons men fought in the Civil War. McPherson's goal was to zero in on the main reasons men enlisted during the Civil War. He did this by taking actual journal entries from Union and Confederate soldiers. Through these personal accounts McPherson gives a plethora of reasons why three million men fought in both the Union and Confederate armies; two of the main reasons entailing liberty and honor. .
Union and Confederate soldiers both fought for liberty; although liberty had a different definition to both groups during the Civil War. Both the Union army and the Confederate army compared the Civil War to the Revolutionary War, a time when the United States won their independence from the tyrannical England. The Union army claimed they fought, "to preserve the nation conceived in liberty from the dismemberment and destruction."" (Page 105) The Confederate army claimed, "to fight for liberty and independence from a tyrannical government."" (Page 104) .
The Union soldiers wanted to keep the nation in order. They did not want the nation to be split. A captain in the 12th Indiana wrote, "this is not a war for dollars and cents, nor a war for territory "but it is to decide whether we are to be a free people "and if the Union is dissolved I very much fear that we will not have a Republican form of government very long."" (Page 112) The North was very much afraid of what was to happen if the South were to become the victors. This fear made men rush to enlist in the armies. A private in the 70th Ohio wrote the cause of which he fought was, "the cause of the constitution and law Admit the right of the seceding states to break up the Union at pleasure and how long will it be before the new confederacies created by the first disruption shall be resolved into smaller fragments and the continent become a vast theater of civil war, military license, anarchy and despotism? Better settle it at whatever cost and settle it forever.
