I'm sure at least some of those quoted statements were made for the benefit of the girlfriends, wives and mothers back home. I mean, heaven forbid there might be any thought of their menfolk "consorting" with Rebel females!
Bell Wiley actually writes, in discussing instances of Union soldiers praising the beauty of Southern women, "The charm of Southern girls for Federal soldiers became so noticeable in some cases as to excite jealousy among the women of the North. In most instances the fears of lasting attachments being formed in Dixie did not materialize, but in a considerable number of cases, wartime acquaintances ripened into romances leading to marriage. And hundreds of Billy Yanks, some with Northern wives, settled permanently in Dixie after the war."
Despite the negativity so far, methinks it would be very difficult to pin this question down. There are a lot of varied perspectives in the historical record.
It's hard to be contemptuous of one's adversary, under those circumstances.
I think this is a good point - any answers here are going to be by definition generalizations. Every Union soldier that marched South was an individual and viewed the South and its people through their own lens. That said, some of the negativity Union soldiers showed towards Southerners is not necessarily mutually exclusive with respect for the fighting prowess or tenacity of the Southern soldier. A Union soldier could simultaneously think a Southerner was uneducated, backwards, and coarse and admire the steadfastness and bravery they showed on the battlefield. Furthermore, Wiley notes that, "It is worthy of note that tolerance increased with continuing service in the occupied country, and soldiers who remained in Dixie for two years or more often were able to achieve a fair degree of objectivity and accuracy in their observations."
One must take into account that any Union soldier who wrote his opinion of Confederate soldiers could read and write. The views of Union soldiers who could not write were not written down. So yes a reasonably well educated Union soldier probably looked down on Southern soldiers who could not read and write. However, many Southern soldiers could read and write and I suspect some Union soldiers often concentrated on Southern soldiers who could not read and write.
This is an excellent point. Wiley somewhat loosely addresses this issue to an extent in his book. He writes:
It is an interesting commentary on human nature that some of the most earnest critics of Southern culture were men who themselves committed travesties that must have exceeded those of the ignoramuses whom they scorned. A striking example is afforded in the case of Private William B. Stanard of Michigan who wrote his sister from Bell’s Tavern, Kentucky, in February 1862:
The ****ry hear is the hardest plase that I ever Sea Wea Do Not Sea a Scool house near in one hundred Mills and you ask a man if they Go to Meaten they Say they Dont No What it is there aint one in 20 that can tell one Leter from a Nother and every thing els in CordenCee with thear Lurnen.
In addition, he writes that:
When letters written by Southerners fell into Northern hands, great amusement was had in passing them about and making fun of their shortcomings in grammar and spelling. After such diversion a young Connecticut officer wrote his mother: “The ladies are so modest that they write of themselves with a little i. . . . Southern babies send their papas ‘Howdy,’ . . . a certain perfidious [stay-at-home] . . . is ‘cortin the gall’ of one of the brave palmetto soldiers.” He concluded with the comment: “Above all penmanship, spelling and composition showed that the greatest need of the South is an army of Northern Schoolmasters.”
There's surely some Yankee regional bias in there beyond simply "citizens they are subjugating" in wartime. But it's also probable that many Southern whites lived in poverty with illiteracy, dirt floors, widespread tobacco use, etc widespread enough to shock Northern visitors who were unfamiliar with such things from their city lives or more comfortable farm communities.
Now to continue harping on with quotes from Bell Wiley's work, but he argues that, "In considering Billy Yank’s opinion of Southerners, however, it should be kept in mind that common soldiers had relatively little contact with the upper classes. The privileged groups constituted only a small part of the population; a goodly portion of them lived in isolated dwellings; and because of their way of life they were not generally as accessible to the man in the ranks as were people of lesser means and lower social standing. It was the common folk whom Billy Yank most frequently observed and hence who provided the basis of his estimate of the Southern people. But this is an advantage to one seeking information about the South’s past, as the plain folk comprised the overwhelming majority of the population and less is known of them than of the upper classes."
Furthermore, Union soldiers definitely singled out certain groups for hatred over others, such as South Carolinians, seen to be the instigators of the war. Some Union soldiers praised the refinement of the wealthy planter class, others despised its hypocrisy, violence, and role in contributing to the war.
Fraternization between the two groups was not uncommon, for example. Christmas, 1862, at Fredericksburg is a good example. The boys seemed to have really enjoyed one another.
Fraternization definitely happened and is always a curious and attractive moment that reflects the so-called better angels of our nature. They certainly happened, from the large scale example you shared at Fredericksburg to smaller scale trading and verbal jousting along the picket lines. Lance Herdegen, who has spent his life studying the Iron Brigade, made a comment during an interview that I thought was quite illuminating. When asked about fraternizations, he responded:
In many ways, the soldiers of both sides had more in common than what separated them. I think that examples of kindness between foes occurred with some regularity, but that did not mean both sides didn’t try their best to kill each other. The stories of a Confederate soldier helping a Yank or a Yank helping a Johnny were seized upon by the veterans after the war as examples to be used in bringing the country back together. The stories of compassion were accepted and highlighted and the cruelty of combat put aside. It was all part of the great healing process. I think that is why we see so many of these romanced incidents in 19th century accounts.
To conclude this overlong post, I think it is worth remembering the context in which the soldiers made their comments. Soldiers aging between 18 and 25 had grown up during the most contentious sectional conflict the country had ever faced, one so bad that it actually led to open warfare. In their youth, they heard story after story filled with vile rhetoric about one side or the other. They either read the papers themselves or heard it from those in their hometown that could read. Soldiers on the whole had never traveled widely, and marching into the South was to them the same as visiting an entirely different country. It was a charged environment they grew up in and a brutal war that they took part in. Both of these factors shaped the opinions of the soldiers. Furthermore, like any humans, soldiers of the 19th Century could be filled with contradictions, liking some aspects of Southern culture and life and hating other parts of it. Their opinions could shift and slide depending on what was happening to them. The death of a friend I would assume would sour and harden the opinions of a Union soldier toward their foe. Visiting plantations and witnessing the brutality of slavery firsthand, something most Union soldiers had never before seen with their own eyes even if they had heard about it, also altered their opinions.
And, though I know this is not the purpose of this thread, we cannot forget that Southerners had the same sort of varied, hostile, and friendly opinions of their Northern foes (they are all immigrant hordes bent on crushing our way of life, etc.).