This Great Struggle by Steven Woodworth

not equally eager to admit the fact that they were fighting over slavery and the status of African Americans. Confederate leaders made no secret of the fact that they were fighting for slavery and white supremacy. In a March 21, 1861, speech in Savannah, Georgia, Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens proclaimed, “Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea [to that of the equality of the races]; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.” 1
    By contrast, Union leaders during the first half of the war were not nearly so forthright about what kind of war this was and why they were fighting it. This was never more true than in the immediate aftermath of Bull Run, when a traumatized U.S. Congress feared that support for the war might collapse in the wake of the humiliating defeat. In a July 22, 1861, proclamation, authored by Kentucky Representative John J. Crittenden, Congress announced “that this war is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union.” 2
    In a very narrowly technical sense, this was correct. Although the southern states had seceded because they did not accept the incoming administration’s position on slavery, the U.S. government was presently waging war simply to suppress the rebellion and restore obedience to the law without regard to the cause for which the rebellion had been launched and the law defied. It was not fighting directly for the cause of freeing the slaves—yet. Nevertheless, even at this early stage of the conflict, the most cursory observer of American politics could easily predict the likely results of Union victory. Lincoln had previously expressed his and his party’s goal as placing slavery “in the course of ultimate extinction.” A rebellion that tried and failed to break up the Union for the sake of slavery would only tend to bring that extinction closer than it would otherwise have been. Notwithstanding Congress’s bland denials, even in these early days it was clear to all concerned, especially to the slaves themselves, that a Union victory would shorten the days of slavery.
    Northern leaders had political reasons for their desire to emphasize the cause of saving the Union and enforcing the law and to play down the issues of slavery and race. White southerners were virtually unanimous in their support for slavery and white supremacy, but a significant minority of them opposed secession, especially in places like western Virginia, East Tennessee, and other parts of the upland and Appalachian South. On the other hand, although support for the war to preserve the Union was far from unanimous in the North, it did command a fairly sizable majority of support across the region. By contrast, the cause of abolishing slavery would scarcely command a majority, even in the North, much less in border slave states like Crittenden’s own Kentucky. Emphasizing that they were waging a war solely for the restoration of the Union and not for the abolition of slavery was a way that northern leaders could unite their own section of the country and divide the South, at least to some degree.
    MCCLELLAN RISES IN THE EAST; FIGHTING BEGINS IN THE WEST
    In the immediate aftermath of Bull Run, however, Lincoln and those around him in Washington had little leisure to think about the meaning of the war, how it should be presented to the public, or even of the great mobilization about to begin across the North. The president’s immediate concern