Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (69 page)

In 1861 many Americans had a romantic, glamorous idea of war. "I am absent in a glorious cause," wrote a southern soldier to his homefolk in June 1861, "and glory in being in that cause." Many Confederate recruits echoed the Mississippian who said he had joined up "to fight the Yankies—all fun and frolic." A civilian traveling with the Confederate government from Montgomery to Richmond in May 1861 wrote that the trains "were crowded with troops, and all as jubilant, as if they were going to a frolic, instead of a fight."
²⁶
A New York volunteer wrote home soon after enlisting that "I and the rest of the boys are in fine spirits . . . feeling like larks." Regiments departing for the front paraded before cheering, flag-waving crowds, with bands playing martial airs and visions of glory dancing in their heads. "The war is making us all tenderly

25
. For a perceptive critique of the "Jominian school," see Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson,
Attack and Die: Civil War Military Tactics and the Southern Heritage
(University, Ala., 1982), 146–53.

26
. Davis,
Battle at Bull Run
, 57; Wiley,
Johnny Reb
, 27; Hudson Strode,
Jefferson Davis: Confederate President
(New York, 1959), 89.

Stephen A. Douglas

Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum

William H. Seward

Library of Congress

Free-state men ready to defend Lawrence, Kansas, in 1856

The Kansas State Historical Society

Stockpile of rails in the U.S. Military Rail Roads yards at Alexandria

U.S. Army Military History Institute

U.S. Military Rail Roads locomotive with crew members pointing at holes in the smokestack and tender caused by rebel shells

U.S. Army Military History Institute

B & O trains carrying troops and supplies meeting at Harper's Ferry

U.S. Military Academy Library

Railroad bridge built by Union army construction crew in Tennessee after rebel raiders burned the original bridge

Minnesota Historical Society

Blockade-runner
Robert E. Lee
, which ran the blockade fourteen times before being captured on the fifteenth attempt

Library of Congress

U.S.S. Minnesota
, 47-gun steam frigate, flagship of the Union blockade fleet that captured the
Robert E. Lee

Minnesota Historical Society

Above:
Abraham Lincoln

Liouis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum

Right:
George B. McClellan

Louis A. Warren Lincoln Library and Museum