Why Did Civil War Soldiers Fight For So Long?

One month after the first shots of the Civil War were fired at Fort Sumter, the New York Herald thundered that white Southerners were “ripe for their deliverance from the most revolting despotism on the face of the earth.” Four years later, the rival New York Times marked the South's subjugation with “gratitude for deliverance” and a reminder of “the moral elements of the national cause.” That a pro-Lincoln, pro-Republican, pro-emancipation newspaper like the Times would invoke the theme of deliverance at the end of the war comes as little surprise. But that an anti-Lincoln, white supremacist—albeit pro-Union—daily like the Herald could have evangelized the morality of the Northern cause at the very outset comes across as breathtaking.