Pschological affect of the Civil War
... The Northern states refused to grant the right of Southern states to secede, and in April 1861 the war began. The Civil War was a particularly brutal war, where over a million men died. This war was much more than what most men expected. Men joined with the notion that war was a little more than their boyhood war games. ... The unimagined conditions of war caused the young men to develop a psychology of survival where they would do whatever it took to survive. ... According to Simpson author of Mind and the American Civil War “desertion existed as a problem in the army of the Unted states before 1861 and it failed to have found a cure by 1865. ... Many young men went into the war naïve of what war really was. Most boys thought war was nothing more than there childish games. Before actually encountering war they were fascinated with military life and the excitement of massed conflict. ... When the men actually got to war they began to realize that bullets were to fly and many men would get wounded or killed. After understanding what really went on in war the men were not to fond of being there. ... Men could not deal with the fact that their loved ones would miss them, so they felt compelled to desert the war. ... Some men were ignorant to the war and did not even know why it was being fought and others were foreign to America but they were still brought in to fight in the war. ... These men were ignorant to the real issues of the war and were little identified to the struggle. ... Because these men were forced to the war and did not volunteer they were potential material for desertion. Ella Lonn author of Desertion During the Civil War said, “Their hearts would not be devoted to a cause for which they had failed to volunteer.” Because the soldiers did not choose to go to war they felt no loyalty to the cause.