Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union, 2nd ed. By Earl J. Hess. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997. Pp. xx, 154).
Coming out of his dissertation, Earl J. Hess’s Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union argues that the Northern war effort war sustained by their ideology and culture. For Northerners, it was the values of “self-government, democracy, individualism, and self-control” which provided an impetus to fight. (1) The republican ideals of the American Revolution had been gradually eroded until they were re-awoken by the firing on Fort Sumter.
Hess stipulates that the break-up of the nation caused to Northerners to focus their attention on the cultural differences between the two sections. It was South’s peculiar institution, with its archaic, hierarchical system, which had forced the break. Northerners, then, became the upholders of the righteous virtues upon which America was founded. Northerners’ value system included individualism and egalitarianism. Self-government helped promote these interests. The virtuous citizen supported the common interests in order to preserve their pursuit of self-interest. Southerners, with their belief that the masses could not govern themselves, created an elite ruling class. As Northerners saw it, the South’s entire system ran counter to the values of America.
Though the two sections held many of the same beliefs, the focus on slavery caused most Northerners to miss this. Indeed, the firing on Fort Sumter caused many who were hesitant for war to become ardent supporters of its prosecution. Some people were even willing to let the South go their own way before the attack on the fort. Many Northerners believe the South to be conspiring against the government of the Founding Fathers with their actions and wanted to force slavery upon the entire nation. It was an assault upon all the values Northerners held dear because it was assaulting the government that encompassed those values. To Hess, Northerners saw a struggle over whether or not the free government of America could survive against an oligarchical slave power trying to erase freedom.
Additionally, Northern ideology braced them for the horrors of war. Walt Whitman’s experience working in Union hospitals is one example Hess gives. The virtuous nature of the cause eased a great deal of grief and made the sacrifice of lives more tolerable. Even soldiers in the field felt it was, on some level, glorious to die for the great cause of the North. Being sick and relegated to a hospital was something of a disappointment and wound to a soldier’s pride. Even the general population accepted the massive loss of life, albeit with a little more anxiety as they awaited news of friends and family. Hess points out that those types of fatalities brought home the realities of war and caused self-interest to become the common interest as one death helped put others in the same light. In addition, soldiers clung to the voluntary nature of the cause and often found it difficult to reconcile their belief in liberty with the need for military discipline.
For the volunteer soldier, it was difficult to have officers who, in normal life, would be considered his equal but gave him orders on the battlefield. This ran counter to the ideas Northerners believed in. The volunteer nature of the military was a founding principle of America, and soldiers believed in it, as they moved from military life back to being an ordinary citizen. The virtuous nature of this act proved how important the war was to the idea of America and that the volunteer army was a crucial element. Hess also examines those who supported the war but not how it was prosecuted. Measures such as conscription, the abolishment of habeas corpus, and the Emancipation Proclamation made people upset, but most Northerners willingly sacrificed liberty to save the nation, which would ultimately give them liberty.
In the final chapter, Hess discusses the aftermath of the war on the republican ideal. He finds a great deal of continuity in the beliefs of Northerners during the war. A new generation, which had not known the war, grew up and lost its republican zeal. While the work raises some fine points, it does pose problems. Too often, Hess uses broad historical strokes to give all Northerners the same beliefs and never quite relates ideas to behavior. Northern ideology is a fact, and the author makes no effort to establish how representative his selection of people actually is. Additionally, the work lacks organization, moving from topic to topic on a whim. However, Hess makes a promising start in attempting to understand Northern ideology and the rationale of the people to fight.
Texas Christian University Blake Hill
Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union. By Earl J. Hess. (New York: New York University Press, 1988. Pp. 1-127.)
In Liberty, Virtue, and Progress: Northerners and Their War for the Union, Earl J. Hess, argues that ideology and cultural values provided the key motivations for societies in war. More specifically, this monograph based on Hess’s doctoral dissertation affirms that ideals of self-government, democracy, individualism, egalitarianism, and self-control sustained the Northern war effort in the Civil War. Amid the ongoing historiographic debates over the place of ideas versus economic interests versus other causes, Hess firmly upholds the significant of ideology. Shared ideas drew people together amid the chaotic tendencies of war. Northerners defended the Union because of the set of shared values it embodied. They fought to preserve political freedom, defend democracy against oligarchy, and uphold law against the forces of disorder. The war was a moral effort.
Hess identifies several overlapping yet distinct values. Northerners promoted an individualistic, almost libertarian, strain of thought; people wanted the opportunity to feel in control of their lives, unconstrained by others. Along with the emphasis on the individual came an emphasis on egalitarianism. The term democracy highlighted the ideal of self-government, but spilled over into other realms, such as economic opportunity. Though the influence of eighteenth-century republicanism had begun to fade, many still adhered to republicanism’s concept of virtue as the key to preserving self-government. Virtuous men recognized that to pursue self-interest, one must promote the common interest. Some Southerners did indeed counter that the country was a republic, not a democracy, and that the people could not be trusted to rule themselves; this made an elite ruling class (themselves, coincidentally) necessary. While slavery united white Southerners, Northerners tended to brand all Southerners as hierarchical, pro-slavery radicals and failed to recognize how many common values North and South shared.
Northerners perceived an inevitable clash between two societies, one based on democracy, the other on slavery and aristocracy, Hess asserts. Many Northerners believed the South was conspiring to force Northern states to accept slavery and suppress democracy. Northerners increasingly recognized that slavery had a detrimental effect on Southern whites. The South seemed to be attacking whole system of freedom and self-government established by the Founders. The Southern attack on Fort Sumter galvanized Northerns; people who had tentatively accepted secession would not tolerate the use of violence against the United States government. Northerners valued government for its close ties to law, order, and liberty. The Confederate attack represented a threat to each Northerner’s rights to property and liberty, because it assailed the institutions that guaranteed those rights. For Northerners, then, the war concerned whether free government was strong enough to defend itself against oligarchic slave power. Hess observes that Northerners with no abolitionist background turned against slavery because they believed it caused the attacks against the Union.
Ideology motivated soldiers on the battlefield and helped sustain them amid suffering. People strongly valued self-control, the ability to remain firm to one’s ideals during the chaos of battle. Ideals helped people make sacrifices and cope with losses. While promoting a willingness to sacrifice for the cause, Northern individualism also ensured that people continued to value individual lives and not take lightly the costs of war. They emphasized voluntary giving of oneself, honoring the individual at the same time that they elevated a greater cause. Soldiers clung to the voluntary nature of their military service and never fully resolved tensions between liberty and the demands of military discipline. Hess also examines Northern dissenters, who Hess claims shared an appreciation for the Union and desire to preserve it, but vigorously opposed Lincoln’s war policies, especially emancipation, on ideological grounds.
The final chapter examines postwar ideology in the North; Hess finds tremendous continuity as Northerners retained the values and perspectives that guided them through the war. A small minority criticized the failure to establish liberty and equality for blacks for more fully (a criticism Hess seems to be making himself by the way he devotes so many pages to the subject), but they had little effect. This volume effectively makes the case for a significant ideological component to the Union war effort, but could have been stronger. Hess blends all ideals (be they Unionist, abolitionist, or religious, for example) in melting pot, when he could have presented a more nuanced picture by differentiating them more clearly. The book’s structure also leaves something to be desired, as Hess roves from topic to topic without an apparent organizing principle. Still, this concise overview of Northern ideology has usefulness to any student of the Civil War, and would be particularly helpful for those new to the field.
Jonathan T. Engel