Why fight the Civil War? The Cause of the Civil War is another major theme in the book. The Southern understanding of the Cause is much different than most people's assumptions. To the men of the Confederacy, it is not about slavery. In fact, Lee himself has no slaves and does not believe in the institution. It is instead about freedom, about preserving the right of states to manage their own affairs and way of life. It is what we fought for in the American Revolution. In a lot of respects, if the Civil War is viewed with the same mindset as the Revolution, a case could be made for Jefferson Davis being right. Unfortunately for the South, everyone else perceives it to be about slavery, and this misperception prevents the South from obtaining much needed foreign help.
The Cause from the Northern perspective is revealed through the conversations and thoughts of Chamberlain and his men. The ironic thing to note here is that the North is also fighting for freedom. But it is freedom of the individual, not the state. The North is fighting for freedom from slavery, freedom to become whatever you can by your own hard work.
Shaara uses these differences in beliefs to characterize the people in his story. Lee's men will follow him anywhere for their Cause. Longstreet has no use for one. Chamberlain is nearly a zealot for his. These personal reactions define the people involved.
The reactions also show the sense of confusion and misunderstanding about the whole war. There is a sadness to it all. One has the feeling as the story progresses that if the two sides could have sat down calmly and really listened to each other, they might have heard a similar thing and worked out a peaceful solution. It only intensifies the sense of waste one feels by the end of the book over so much bloodshed and death.
