All 11 Uses of
motive
in
What They Fought For - 1861-1865
- Of 374 Confederate soldiers whose letters and diaries I have read, two-thirds expressed patriotic motives.†
p. 13.9 *motives = reasons for doing something
- Thus the groups most likely to express strong ideological convictions are overrepresented in the sample: for example, 75 percent of the soldiers from slaveholding families avowed strong patriotic convictions, compared with 42 percent among nonslaveholders; 43 percent of those from slaveholding families expressed ideological motives, compared with 27 percent of the nonslaveholding soldiers.†
p. 15.3
- In general, a larger proportion of soldiers from lower-South cotton states expressed strong patriotic and ideological motives than of those from the upper South.†
p. 16.5
- These were purposes and motives that, for obvious reasons, functioned much more powerfully for Confederate than for Union soldiers.†
p. 18.4
- Two years later an officer, also from Illinois, made the same point in a letter to his wife: "They are fighting from different motives from us.†
p. 19.3
- Bitter enmity and a desire for revenge became the consuming passion of many Confederate soldiers—motives that, like defense of home and hearth, operated much more powerfully for them than for Union soldiers.†
p. 21.4
- Southern motives seem easier to understand.†
p. 27.1
- Among Confederates, 82 percent of the officers, compared with 52 percent of enlisted men, avowed patriotic motives; 52 percent of the officers but only 28 percent of the enlisted men went further and discoursed upon ideological goals.†
p. 35.4
- It may explain the dogged determination that sustained Union soldiers through four long years of fighting in enemy territory against a foe sustained by the more concrete motive of defending that territory.†
p. 36.4
- Some Union soldiers avowed a more abstract motive of revenge for Confederate atrocities elsewhere, even the Fort Pillow massacre.†
p. 40.2
- This motive, not surprisingly, was much less in evidence among nonslaveholding soldiers.†
p. 52.6
Definitions:
-
(1)
(motive as in: What is her motive?) a reason for doing something
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, motive can refer to something that causes motion in an inanimate object. Even less commonly, it can refer to a distinctive feature in music, art, or literature.