Content area
Full Text
What They Fought For, 1861-1865. By James M. McPherson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994. Notes. Index. Pp. xv, 88. $16.95.
Discerning the motivation of men in battle is a complex affair. It is rendered even more difficult in the case of those who fought during the Civil War, because its veterans largely seemed willing to participate in the ennoblement of the tragic contest, in the end elevating it to a romantic crusade. This postwar propensity to bury the hatchet, asserts Professor McPherson, tended to obscure the vivid ideological convictions held by the young men of 1861-65. That those men had such deeply held ideological convictions, which provided the motivation for them to persevere despite the carnage around them, is precisely what McPherson illustrates in this brief but tantalizing work.
Though peer pressure...