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3 H the ardor of patriotism april–july 1862 This war is a horrid thing, & though I shall devote my life & honor to the cause of my country, still I would be very glad to see peace come . . . As it is I see only a protracted struggle ahead, that many of us will not see the end of, & yet I try always to think that I will live to see success crown our holy cause. —John Meems, 11th Virginia Infantry, April 3, 1862 B y late April 1862, the uncertainties and problems generated by the enactment of the Draft Act receded as a new campaign season dawned. Virginia Confederates took solace from the belief that this would be the last year of war, if indeed the war lasted the whole year. Some men resigned themselves to a longer conflict, enlisting for the unspecified term ‘‘for the war’’ but always with the expectation that victory would come in one form or another. Many Confederates anticipated foreign recognition, hoping that Britain and France would bestow the legitimacy upon Confederate nationhood that Abraham Lincoln refused to concede . During 1862 Confederates gathered psychological sustenance from their military victories even as their physical sustenance drained out of them. With victories in battles around Richmond, in the Shenandoah Valley, on the now-hallowed battleground at Manassas, and from the heights above Fredericksburg , morale soared among eager and resolute Confederates. But all these battles, and those that did not go as planned, like the September invasion of Maryland, imposed massive casualties and consumed valuable resources upon which all Virginians depended.∞ As the war grew longer and more intense, Confederate soldiers thought more deeply about the purposes and goals of their new undertaking. The early commitment of Virginia Confederates to fight through the bloody year of 1862 drew on several distinct but complementary sources of inspiration. Institutional factors played an important role, with soldiers continuing to favor a more democratic and responsive army, and with Confederate leaders promoting a new nation that promised to serve the interests of all southerners . The sustained presence of Federal troops in the state, their increasingly direct attack on slavery, and the rumors about the atrocities they committed fueled a sense of revenge that sustained many soldiers. Soldiers’ interest in 66 H the crucible of war protecting their families’ emerged as a key motivation as the scale and scope of the war expanded. Finally, Confederates built a new culture of sacrifice, displayed most publicly in the deaths of noble soldiers but also in the support given to the nation by civilians at home. These elements emerged among Virginians in di√erent ways during the year; combined with the military victories in the region, they led Confederates to believe that permanent independence from the North was both the right course and a feasible one. D uring a normal April, most Virginia men would have been preparing their tools, seeds, and work force for the planting season. The political excitement of secession and the ensuing martial celebrations after Virginia’s exit from the Union had marked the preceding April as one of the most unusual in memory. April 1862 would be remembered as marking the shift to a new calendar ruled by the rhythms of the battlefield. After this year, Virginia men would look to the spring thaw not as a time of renewal but as the opening of a new season of warfare and violence. The enactment of the conscription legislation in April followed several months of argument over the issue and in some ways served as an anticlimactic finish to the violent debate among soldiers and the public over the proper way to fill the ranks. As James Old’s experience revealed, men often expended their energy denouncing the act in the early months of the year while still confined to camp. As the campaign season opened in April, and as Confederate o≈cials sought to persuade men to reenlist, opposition to the draft within the army began to decline. Volunteers resented the notion that military service could, or would ever need to be, coerced from citizens, but in the face of the coming Union attack, most soldiers set aside their concerns with recruitment policy and prepared themselves for more war. Most volunteers had entered the service with their neighbors and kin in the same company, and those who entered without contacts had formed bonds with the men in their units over the first twelve months of war. Consequently , most seized...

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