{"product_id":"what-this-cruel-war-was-over-soldiers-slavery-and-the-civil-war","title":"What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers  Slavery  and the Civil War","description":"\u003cp\u003eA vivid  unprecedented account of why Union and Confederate soldiers identified slavery as the root of the war  how the conflict changed troops ideas about slavery  and what those changing ideas meant for the war and the nation.  Using soldiers letters  diaries  and regimental newspapers  Chandra Manning allows us to accompany soldiersblack and white  northern and southerninto camps and hospitals and on marches and battlefields to better understand their thoughts about what they were doing and why. Mannings work reveals that Union soldiers  though evincing little sympathy for abolitionism before the war  were calling for emancipation by the second half of 1861  ahead of civilians  political leaders  and officers  and a full year before the Emancipation Proclamation. She recognizes Confederate soldiers primary focus on their own families  and explores how their beliefs about abolitionthat it would endanger their loved ones  erase the privileges of white manhood  and destroy the very fabric of southern societymotivated even non-slaveholding Confederates to fight and compelled them to persevere through military catastrophes like Gettysburg and Atlanta  long after they grew to despise the Confederate government and disdain the southern citizenry. She makes clear that while white Union troops viewed preservation of the Union as essential to the legacy of the Revolution  over the course of the war many also came to think that in order to gain Gods favor  they and other white northerners must confront the racial prejudices that made them complicit in the sin of slavery. We see how the eventual consideration of the enlistment of black soldiers by the Confederacy eliminated any reason for many Confederate soldiers to fight; how  by 1865  black Union soldiers believed the forward racial strides made during the war would continue; and how white Union troops commitment to racial change  fluctuating with the progress of the war  created undreamt-of potential for change but failed to fulfill it.  An important and eye-opening addition to our understanding of the Civil War.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44955457847349,"sku":"ByrdShop_0307264823","price":48.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780307264824.jpg?v=1770308437","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/what-this-cruel-war-was-over-soldiers-slavery-and-the-civil-war","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}