[DesertRhino]

“Your average Union soldier who fought against slavery wasn’t necessarily fighting to free blacks, but he was fighting against the corrupt slaveholders.”

They were mostly there because they had no choice. The draft and draft riots show this to be the case after the initial fervor.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

The draft was first instituted by the Confederates, and resistance to the Confederate draft was endemic to the rebel system. And the Confederate desertion rate also shows that devotion to the slaveowners’ war was very limited.