Gary Gallagher: prediction

Transcript context

…What can we say about the motivation? On the psychological side, did the members of the Confederacy hate the members of the Union? Well, that escalated on both sides during the war. As more and more loss came, they did. There was more hatred directed toward the enemy more and more. This notion that it’s they’re all brothers and not really mad at each other and… That just doesn’t hold up. There are places where the soldiers fraternized with one another and traded tobacco for coffee and that kind of stuff, but no, the bitterness as the war went on, and there was greater loss on the home front, and as the war became more all-encompassing and really went after the entire… the civilian side of the Confederacy was not shielded from it, the bitterness increased and increased and increased. And there’s a lot of unhappiness with the war behind the lines in the Confederacy, absolutely, unhappiness with the government. There’s desertion. About 15% of Confederate soldiers deserted. About 12% of United States soldiers deserted. So there’s desertion on both sides. There’s war-weariness, but the war goes on because I think if you had been able to poll most white Southerners even late in the war and say, “Okay, here are your choices. You either have Jefferson Davis in the government and the war goes on, or you’re going back into the United States and the Lincoln government will be in charge and you won’t have slavery. Which one do you pick?” They’re gonna pick the first one, and that’s why the war went on as long as it did. But at the same time, to fast-forward, and that maybe teaches you something about the nature of war, but after the war, maybe some of the decisions that Grant made, people were able to rediscover the brotherhood.…

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