A review of ‘Tis Not Our War: Avoiding Military Service in the Civil War North (Stackpole Books, 2024) by Paul Taylor
Since the infamous 2020 “Summer of Love” riots and political escapades that resulted in a new wave of Confederate iconoclasm, Americans have reconsidered including Confederate heroes as worthy company in Memorial Day celebrations. This is ironic because without the dedicated service of Southern women, “Memorial Day” may not exist.
Modern historians have made a considerable effort to destroy the “Lost Cause” myth of the conflict, even insisting that Confederate resolve, both among the civilian population and in the military ranks, was far less than previously understood. This helps reinforce the false dichotomy of the Northern “righteous cause” versus the evil Southern “slave power” made popular in the last few decades. The Trump administration has pushed back, albeit tepidly at times, with Trump himself publicly praising Robert E. Lee. But for many Americans, the War has to be about slavery, not for historical understanding, but because of modern politics. The “Third Reconstruction” cannot continue with a nuanced interpretation of the past.
For example, what if the real myth of the “Civil War” was Northern commitment to the conflict? What if Northerners, not Southerners, had little interest in the War and did more to shirk and openly resist than the people of the South? According to Paul Taylor, there might be some truth to this.
In contrast to the nearly seventy-five percent of white male Southerners of military age that served in the Confederate cause, white Northern commitment never reached more than about forty percent of the total population. This was buttressed by large numbers of immigrants and later black military participation, but as Taylor explains, white Northerners dodged participating in the war effort from the beginning of the conflict. In fact, he writes that for nearly “two thirds of the North’s White men of military age…not having to don a blue uniform became a paramount concern.” This did not mean that many Northerners were committed to the war early in the conflict. In 1861, one Massachusetts citizen wrote, “I used to think it was only necessary in order that we might have a respectable country to exterminate about 4/5 of the population of the South.” But after understanding that most Northerners were not as committed, this man now thought, “the extermination of 3/5 of the north would have to be added, in order to rid the whole country of its damned fools and cursed thieves & hypocrites.” Clearly mental illness is not just a modern problem among fanatical leftists.
Taylor agrees with William Marvel that high unemployment and the prospect of a paycheck motivated a substantial number of Northerners to enlist in 1861. If not for the money, many Northerners would not have marched South. Taylor writes that, “Though modern scholarship places slavery as central to our understanding of why the Civil War was fought, relatively few men who chose to enlist in the war’s opening months did so with slavery’s abolition as their primary motivator.” Union, not slavery, led men to enlist–that along a not-so-subtle reminder from Northern women that cowards would not be well received when courting. In fact, slavery may have driven some men to avoid joining the army. One Ohio housewife wrote to her son that, “I would not mind freeing the Negroes if they could be sent off and not come back here again.” For a large number of Northerners, blacks became a convenient way to avoid filling out the ranks. Their reasoning was simple. Why should they fight and die for the welfare of black people, free or slave? Taylor argues that “Almost all mid-nineteenth century White Americans, in the north or south, simply took it for granted that White racial supremacy was the natural biological order in the same matter of fact way that they knew the sun would rise in the East. Any differential treatment of Blacks by Whites required no unique clarification, and when one was offered, it was presented as a reasoned thought explaining an obvious reality….The New England ‘Yankee’ abolitionist…was viewed almost universally as a dangerous kook willing to tear down a blessed nation in order to elevate a degraded race. By the time the Civil War commenced in 1861, most of its participants and especially the younger rank and file had been born and raised in a culture that believed White supremacy to be God’s and nature’s ordained order.”
Taylor provides several interesting quotes to defend this argument. A Pennsylvanian wrote that, “There is some men here that would shoot Horace Greely [sic] and Wendell Philips as quick as they would Jeff Davis or Beauregard.” A New Yorker insisted that, “I did not come out to fight for the nigger or abolition of slavery, much less to make the nigger better than white men, as they are every day becoming in estimation and treatment of the powers at Washington.” A soldier from Illinois asserted that, “I tell you I did not come down here to do such dirty work as to fight to free the niggers. I enlisted to maintain the constitution of the United States,” while another Pennsylvanian simply said, “Loyal as I am, I would not serve my country with niggers for my companions.” So much for a “righteous cause” of racial harmony and egalitarianism. Blacks served as “companions” every day in the Confederate army and in society at large. That was normal.
Taylor also explains that slavery drove some Southerners to support that Union because they believed slavery would be better protected by the United States than the Confederate States. This was especially true in the border States. Southern opponents of secession who rallied to the Union cause ultimately felt deceived by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. They joined the fight to save the Union, but as a slave-owning Union major from Kentucky wrote, “we who are in the army feel that we have been grossly deceived by the President and the party in power….” This is a small section of the book, but Taylor correctly identifies a major theme of opposition to secession in 1861: slavery. When the Union army occupied and burned Columbus, Georgia in 1865, one large pro-Union slaveowner felt betrayed by Union generals who freed his slaves.
Taylor lists several reasons Northern men avoided military service. Some figures that the War would be short and their participation unnecessary, and with financial or family obligations at home, joining would not make sense. Others understood the hardships of camp life, poor supplies and food, and ditching signing up. Not getting paid drove desertion, but Taylor discusses how some men figured out how to make “bounty jumping” a profession. Go on take the money and run had real meaning during the War as rich men paid to keep their sons and themselves out of the action by paying for substitutes. In fact, Taylor concludes that only six percent of the over 700,000 men drafted into the Union army actually wore a blue uniform. Most dodged the draft. Some immigrants avoided service because of rampant Northern nativism. Some went to college to do their “patriotic duty,” while others thought blacks should just fight for themselves. A small number of men with “conscientious scruples” avoided military service, but most who remained out of the army simply pretended to be sick or hurt or ran away to Canada among other places. The enrollment records are littered with shirkers.
Taylor concludes that the War, “was hardly the widely popular moral crusade portrayed within much of our collective historical memory” for many Northerners, if not most. Like other Northerners who wanted to pretend that they were dedicated abolitionists after the War’s conclusion, “righteous cause mythologists” used the memory of the War for political gain. That continues to this day on both the left and the right. Taylor provides a worthwhile review of Northern dissent during the War in order to remind Americans that dissent does not equal treason nor is it un-American. In fact, Taylor argues that opposition to war might be the most American of all principles. It’s in our DNA.
