Marie Claude quoted something Whiskey had written:

“Also I wanted to comment on whiskey’s refelexion in the other thread

“People do not fight and die for a Constitution, or the idea that all men are created equal, or the idea of America or France or the United Kingdom. That’s a fantasy.”

It is *not* a fantasy, and I must agree with Marie, this is one of the most surprisingly false statements Whiskey has made. I don’t doubt that he believes this, which probably illustrates the wide divide between his thinking and the vast majority of Americans, past and present. (especially past)

I’ve spent quite a bit of time reading letters and first person accounts of the American Civil War – not novels or later generations understandings, but the actual voices of the men who fought, in their own words. The best are the letters that men wrote home to tell their families what they were doing and why they were doing it. These are far from uncommon, in fact most soldiers referred to this in almost every letter they wrote. (They also discuss it and their campfire conversations about the topic in their journals, which many kept) The first impression, sadly, is that the average 19th century American with only a few years of formal education was still on average far more literate and well-spoken than most college graduates are today. (anyone who does research for themselves will find this confirmed hundreds of times over) The realization that good writing was once common and is now becoming a lost art is part of what got me hooked in looking at these. (it’s also why I read this blog)

But what is really striking is that over and over, these men on *both* sides were willing to give their lives for an ideal – on the north, for the concept of “The Union” and an inviolable Constitution (by far the most common motivator, rather than equality) and on the South, for the idea of States Rights and an anger at northerners telling them what to do. (but not to preserve slavery, very few southern soldiers were slaveholders) In their own words, this is what they say over and over that they are willing to die for. Over a million men willingly became casualties for those ideals – today, I constantly wonder, even with our much greater population, how could we find so many men willing to die for an ideal? Our forefathers did. There is a constant refrain in their writings – their beliefs were more important to them than their lives.

Something else that I found almost shocking, and contrary to my expectations, is that in their letters most of them understood that they were going to die along the way, yet still they did it anyways. They hoped to live, but they did not fear death and they accepted it as a likely outcome. At Cold Harbor, where Grant lost 30,000 men in an afternoon, his entire army before the ill-fated charge wrote their names on pieces of paper and pinned them to the inside of their uniforms, so that their bodies could be identified and sent back to their families. Knowing that they were about to die, they still went willingly. Over and over, soldiers on both sides charged into their deaths knowingly, because they believed their ideals demanded it of them. For the South it wasn’t just Pickett’s charge but Franklin, Tennessee, where the entire officer corps of Hood’s Army virtually committed suicide for the chance of one last victory near the end of the war. People who said that 9/11/01 was “the worst day in American history” have no idea how many times America (combining both sides) took losses of 20,000 to 30,000 men in a single day in that war. And both sides kept on coming back for more.

Over and over when I read these accounts, I am left with a feeling of astonishment and humility – could I ever be capable of that level of devotion to an ideal? Could anyone in our self satisfied, solipsistic generation? I know there are some, and many of those already wear the uniform proudly. But I doubt that even many of them go into service expecting to die as so many of my forefathers did. I can only be thankful that I have been lucky enough in my life to never yet have been put to the test that so many who preceded me have taken on so willingly.