I suppose it doesn’t fit with the trendy story line these days. Of course, I argue that it’s hard enough to see why all the poor whites who didn’t own slaves or plantations fought, but perhaps that’s the other aspect of the conflict that has been forgotten. It would be really cool to see correspondence from my ancestors back then hinting about what they thought of the war, but one side of my family was illiterate and the other side didn’t appear to have any close family members in the conflict and/or curiously didn’t save any correspondence from those years.
It's on Amazon, but they've changed the title. Must have reissued it (it's been awhile). For Cause and Comrades
One of my gg grandfathers is quoted - the private in the cavalry, not the well to do captain of artillery. He said he felt that he should help defend his country from attack (iirc he said something along the lines of "how can I stand an idle spectator while my country lies bleeding in the dust", they really did talk like that back then), and that besides it would look odd if such a large family wasn't well represented in the army.
We have about 100 of his letters that he wrote back to his wife from the war. We donated them to Emory University after I wrote my thesis on them.