QUAESTIO - Social Sciences Division - UCLA

To Regard Each Other As Of One Common Family
Such conformity also demanded distinct American
patriotism. From a young age, Americans would hear stories
from their parents of American heroes of the Revolution, and
battles like Lexington and Concord. Communities held patriotic
festivals commemorating America’s founding like July 4 th . The
communal emphasis on patriotism would be reinforced in the
camps and military sphere throughout the war so as to overcome
the myriad political attitudes between the soldiers. As soldiers of
these democratic virtues fought the war, political dissent
persistently had the possibility of forming large cliques of
politically disgruntled citizen-soldiers. As historian Reid
Mitchell points out, however, Northern soldiers preferred this
structure in order to fill the ranks with “intelligent freemen” who
“in becoming soldiers…did not cease to be citizens.” 17 The war’s
leaders and military officers employed these shared American
values of virtue in order to sustain motivation to continue
fighting. The premium on this patriotic component of conformity
to republican virtue, moreover, fostered a collective American
political-ideological identity that, after the war, cultivated the
identity of the American nation that re-tied the bonds of
American unity like never before.
Northern regiments would see an unprecedented level of
democratization throughout the war, and this would be enacted
17 Quoted in Reid Mitchell, The Vacant Chair: The Northern Soldier Leaves
Home (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 76.
77