What They Fought For - 1861-1865 — Vocabulary
James M. McPherson
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Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial.†p.54.2alternate pages27 more

The dominant themes in letters were homesickness and a longing for peace.p.14.2alternate pages8 more

Because, said northern soldiers almost as if in echo of Abraham Lincoln, once admit that a state can secede at will, and republican government by majority rule would come to an end.p.30.4alternate pages16 more

Some Union soldiers avowed a more abstract motive of revenge for Confederate atrocities elsewhere, even the Fort Pillow massacre.†p.40.2alternate pages10 more

Exactly a year later, an Alabama corporal who had just been captured at Gettysburg nevertheless expressed confidence that, fighting for "the same principles which fired the hearts of our ancestors in the revolutionary struggle," the South would ultimately win the war.†p.10.1alternate pages7 more

"bursting the bonds of tyranny," and the like, may come across to this post-Freudian age as mawkish posturing, romantic sentimentalism, hollow platitudes.†p.12.9alternate pages9 more

This bias cannot be helped, for it reflects the selectivity of the evidence available to the historian who seeks to get inside the minds of those men.†p.17.1alternate pages5 more

How could men sustain a high level of idealistic commitment through the grim experiences of disease, death, exhaustion, and frustration as the war ground on year after year?p.42.1alternate pages4 more

Texans seemed particularly ferocious on this subject, at least rhetorically.†p.21.9alternate pages4 more

Confederate soldiers' letters and diaries continued in 1864 and even into 1865 to abound with such expressions as this "gigantic struggle for liberty," for "the great Democratic principles of States' Rights and States' Sovereignty," for "the dear rights of freemen" against "tyranny and oppression," ...p.25.1alternate pages5 more

Many Americans in Thomas Jefferson's time felt acutely the paradox of fighting for liberty while holding other people in slavery.†p.50.7alternate pages3 more

But soldiers from other states were not far behind—especially states that experienced northern occupation and confiscation of property.†p.21.9alternate pages4 more

It was the visceral counterpart of retribution for invasion and destruction that increasingly motivated Confederate soldiers.†p.41.8alternate pages4 more

The attitudes of a good many soldiers on this matter were more pragmatic than altruistic.†p.59.5alternate pages2 more

"I will never stand by and see my native soil polluted by a horde of Abolition incendiaries" or for that matter by the "lowest and most contemptible race upon the face of God's earth,"†p.19.8alternate pages19 more

Whose idealism could survive all that? A good bit of evidence exists to support Linderman's contention that it did not survive.p.42.4alternate pages2 more

"Instead of indulging in feelings of despondency let us compare our situation and cause to those of our illustrious ancestors who achieved the liberties we have ever enjoyed and for which we are now contending."p.10.6alternate pages2 more

"The central idea of secession," said Lincoln, "is the essence of anarchy."†p.32.5alternate pages5 more

It is better to die than be subjugated, and I for one am ready and willing to fight to the bitter end.†p.12.6alternate pages4 more

How could men sustain a high level of idealistic commitment through the grim experiences of disease, death, exhaustion, and frustration as the war ground on year after year?p.42.1alternate pages5 more