The American civil War that ravaged the nation during most of the 1860s demonstrated something extrordinay - the dedication of soldiers from the same nation to fight against one another. The Confederacy, fed up with the Federal Government's claims that it was superior to State laws and rights, was formed by seven states that Seceded from the American Union. When they fought the Civil War, they felt that they had been betrayed by the government that the original thirteen states had created, and were now fighting once again for their independence from a tyranic government, much like a second Revolutionary War. The Confederate soldiers weren't just fighting to war because they felt differently than the North, but they fought because they truely believed that they were the second wave of revolutionaries that would go down in the history books. They looked up to idols such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and other American forefathers as role models for their cause. In their eyes, the war was for a just cause, which is much of the reason that it's still commonly known as the War of Northern Aggression.
The North, meanwhile, fought for a completely different cause. The Union was fighting the Civil War primarily because it had to, because to lose it would bring humiliation and even loss of freedom to the United States. Soldiers in the Union Army argued to stay in battle because of their patriotism to the United States, and fought the rebelling Confederacy to protect the nation that their forefathers had established; Washington, Jefferson and the other forefathers. The same heroes who the Confederates looked up to. However, the Union army didn't completely feel this way. While a vast majority of the Confederate Soldiers fought avidly for patriotic purposes, only a little more than half of the Union Army fought genuinely because they believed in this war. Yet all in all, the Union Army's goal was to protect the very foundation that the nation was based on, and to prevent the Confederates from destroying it.
All in all, most public officials on both sides of the divided America agreed on one thing. The very issue of slavery itself was the primary reason that the nation stood divided. While not the ultimate issue in the war and why it was fought, Slavery was thought of very differently depending on what end of America you stood on. The South saw the North's view on slavery as a way to annihilate thousands, even millions of dollars woth in property. However, the Northern soldiers didn't see things very differently for the most part. Some Union units even used captured former slaves to do the dirty work for them. However, Lincoln realized that the war would only be won if the slaves were freed, once and for all. This alone would cause chaos in the Confederacy, with slaves legally fleeing and even fighting the soldiers. After the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union was on its way to a sweeping victory.
