2025 Year in Review #7: Thinking About Slavery
“How Much Did Soldiers Think About Slavery?” That was the question Evan Portman asked in our seventh-most-read post of 2025. His post, published on April 16, 2025, examines the central issue of the war and what soldiers thought about it at the time.
With more than 160 years of hindsight available to us, you think we’d have a clear-eyed view of the question, yet a surprising number of people remain willfully blind about the role of slavery and the war. Evan’s post takes a look. It comes in at #7 on our list of most-read posts written in 2025.
As a bonus, you might also want to check out one of our most-read posts of all time, “What was So Wrong with Slavery,” written by Steward Henderson on April 26, 2019. Later in our “Year in Review,” you’ll see where Steward’s post falls on our list of Top Ten most-read posts of all time—stay tuned!
According to James McPherson, less than 10% of soldiers on either side were concerned with slavery; not surprising, as only 7% of Southerners owned slaves.
Mr. Schafer is misrepresenting Professor McPherson’s argument, and frankly, I don’t think he would appreciate Mr. Schafer taking him so entirely out of context. Let’s take a look, shall we? I’m going to reference specific page numbers from the 1997 edition of McPherson’s “For Cause and Comrades,” which was an updated and expanded version of the Walter Lynwood Fleming lectures he gave in 1995, which were later compiled into the book, “What they Fought For.”
On pp.106, he states explicitly that, “Unlike many slaveholders in the age of Thomas Jefferson, Confederate soldiers … expressed no feelings of embarassment or inconsistency in fighting for their own liberty while holding other people in slavery. Indeed, white supremacy and slavery and the right to own property in slaves were at the core of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers fought.” I’d ask you to note his phrasing here – white supremacy was at the very CORE of the ideology for which Confederate soldiers gave their lives.
Over the next five pages, he explains in great detail how Confederate soldiers of all social backgrounds understood slavery and white supremacy as the defining feature of the Southern social, political, and economic systems. He also provides dozens of quotes from letters and diaries to support his statement. Here is one, from a junior officer in the 28th Mississppi just as an example, “This country without slave labor would be completely worthless…We can only live & exist by that speices of labor: and hence I am willing to fight to the last.”
As McPherson concludes his discussion, he points out something extremely important, that I think is worth remembering. He states that while Union soldiers wrote about slavery in much greater numbers than did Confederate soldiers, “there is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox.” Why? Because, he explains,
“Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern “rights” and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only twenty percent of the soldiers avowed explictly pro-slavery purposes in their letters and diaries, NONE AT ALL [his emphasis] dissented from that view.” (pp.110)
So, I’m not sure how he could be much clearer here. I’m left wondering if Mr. Schafer read the entire book, or if he simply cherry-picked the parts that fit his particular worldview.
It’s also important to note that for many northern soldiers, their first personal encounters with slavery came when they traveled with Federal armies into the South, where they saw slavery first-hand for the first time. Being something novel, it was obviously something they would write about. Southerners, meanwhile, marinated in slavery as a regular part of their daily existence, whether they owned slaves or not. So, it’s not something they were likely to write about because it lacked novelty.
I get tired of the argument that “only such-and-such a percentage of Confederates owned slaves.” That completely ignores the fact that every single Southerner benefitted from the economic system and social structure built on slavery.
Well Prof – after you’ve run off all the descendants of Confederate soldiers with comments like that you should have a nice, tidy D.E.I. space where you won’t get tired of anybody’s arguments.
If “facts” now equal “DEI,” then I suppose that’s okay. I have nothing against Confederate soldiers or their descendants; I do get tired of Lost Cause fantasies, though. Fortunately, plenty of Confederate descendants are well grounded in reality rather than Confederate romance.
If one served in any arm of the Confederate military one was fighting for slavery. That is not a debatable issue. To validate this I refer dissenters to Stephens “Cornerstone Speech,” or the fact that the various secession ordinances referred to the need to protect the institution of slavery.
Gauging soldiers’ motivations can be difficult because it’s so nuanced. I agree that institutionally the Confederacy doubtless supported slavery, and its soldiers therefore supported the perpetuation of that practice by fighting for the Confederacy, whether directly or indirectly. That doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that every Confederate soldier enlisted in the army solely in order to protect slavery.