chap 2

The lines draw on a map had little meaning for the people of the both the North and the South. This was a conflict that was deeply personal to each participant. How else could the ability to face off against family members be explained? This was a matter of personal belief that superseded all things in life; family, economy, and personal welfare.

The motives behind the Civil War, like the people involved in it, were complex and multilayered. Northerners were not all abolitionists nor were southerners all slaveholding separatists. Both regions were populated by people that fought for some of the different reasons of the war or for personal and family honor.

John B. Jones was a proslavery Northerner. At the time of the Civil War’s beginning he was publisher and editor of the Southern Monitor, a pro-secessionist newspaper in New Jersey. He had long been a follower of the issues that threatened to divide the Union and as soon as Lincoln was elected he realized the crisis of political and cultural differences was headed to war.

Jones fled to the South, leaving his family to join him to avoid being arrested in the North as a trouble maker, considering his many years as a voice of southern opposition this was a wise move. His family did join him in the Confederate capitol of Richmond where Jones was a high-level clerk in the Confederate War Department.

While Jones was a native of Baltimore he considered the border states of Maryland, Virginia and Kentucky as dearer than his home land. He wrote in his diary, “Beside our men [Rebels] must prevail in combat, or lose their property, country, freedom, everything—at least this is their conviction. On the other hand, the enemy [Yankees], in yielding the contest, may retire in...

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... the war dragged on and the need for more troops grew, a draft was instituted and a more defined split was seen. Ohio farmers protested and refused to be drafted and resisted to the extent that they attacked soldiers sent to arrest them. Coal miners from Pennsylvania also protested and attacked those sent to draft them.

New York became the sight of the largest riot protesting the draft. For several days there were violent demonstrations. Never before had there been such a major show of insurrection in the young nation.

The rioters were mostly working class men since the draft focused on them while allowing the wealthy to pay $300 to exclude themselves from serving the Union. Soon the violence spilled over into anger against the free negroes on the streets, resulting in hangings. An orphanage for negro children was targeted, as were many other buildings.25