Everyman's War: A Rich and Poor Man's Fight in Lee's Army

In our class discussions, the phrase “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” has been used at times to describe the Civil War and its military service inequalities between poor and rich men of the Confederacy. It has been mentioned in class that rich men sometimes were able to pay others to substitute their draft call to the military. The Confederacy also had enacted the Twenty Slave Law which allowed one white man of a household to be exempt from service for every twenty slaves that were owned by the household. Factors like this may lead one to believe that the Civil War was, indeed, a “rich man’s war and poor man’s fight”.

Interestingly enough, however, I came across an article titled “Everyman's War: A Rich and Poor Man's Fight in Lee's Army” in Civil War History, in which the author argues that not only did rich men equally participate in the Confederate war effort, but that their presence in the military was an overrepresentation in comparison to their actual percentage in the Confederate population. The author notes that many rich men did not take advantage of the Twenty Slave Law. Also, he mentions that rich men were less likely to desert the military and somewhat more likely to become injured or killed in action, stemming partly from their investment of the slave institution of the Confederacy.

The author’s evidence and research for his position is presented in a most interesting fashion. First off, the author notes how many previous historians often supported their “poor man’s fight” arguments with letters and diary entries from disgruntled poor soldiers. Although (as most historians do) the author still uses these types of sources in his research, the bulk of his evidence in backed more in statistical information. He used a stratified cluster sample of Robert E. Lee’s army to determine the percentages and proportions of rich and poor men in the Confederate military. Overall, I believe the author provides a solid counterargument to the more widely held conception of the “poor man’s fight” in the Civil War.

Glatthaar, Joseph T. “Everyman's War: A Rich and Poor Man's Fight in Lee's Army.” Civil War History 54, no. 3 (2008): 229-246. Accessed April 12, 2013. http://muse.jhu.edu/.