Featured Which State Would You Fight For During The Civil War?

My ancestors were all over the map, mostly in the West, so they're no help to me in answering this question. But if I was a young man, like most Civil War soldiers, and I had lived in some state that was involved in the conflict for all of my life, and grown up surrounded by the attitudes and beliefs of the people in that state, I think it goes pretty much without saying that I would fight for my home state. If it was a border state and I had to choose which side I would fight on, I would certainly choose Union if I had the values and opinions I do today. But seeing as I'd be in the mid-19th century, I think it would be pretty doubtful that I'd have the exact values and opinions I have today, and so it would be impossible to say.
 
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If I was living with my ancestors and extended family I probably would have ended up in either the 16th Georgia or Cobb's Georgia Legion. Either one would be more than acceptable to me.
I'd be in Wofford's Brigade, McLaw's Division.

Despite getting my dander up about it now, I would probably wimp out at Gettysburg to keep from having to storm through the Wheat Field. Those folks probably had three times the resolve I do, but who knows for sure?
If I could be a "bullet-proof spectator" I'd join them behind the wall at Fredericksburg to witness their finest hour.
 
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Most likely Virginia and for the Confederacy. It's where I'm from and have lived all my life. Probably would've been in a unit from either Fauquier or Culpeper. I can't ride a horse, so probably the infantry or artillery, I guess.

This is supposing a lot. I'm trying to take how I am now and mixing it with thoughts of the time. I can't imagine that I would be the exact same person then as I am now. I'm plenty fine with the Union now, but I don't know if 1860 me would've been. I think it would be easy to beat my chest now and say that I'd be one way or the other, but to really be put in it is something else entirely.
 
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If it were based on ancestry, I'd either be out on the Iowa frontier, in some foreign country (Ireland or Sweden, both on my mother's side), or in some Ohio or Kentucky regiment (Union).

If it came down to choice, I'd either fight for an Iowa regiment (Union) or a North Carolina regiment (Confederate).
 
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Me I would fight for the State of Maine. :cannon: My family was from there and from California. But there was no battles in the west coast so that's why pick Maine.

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California had a unit at Gettysburg, at the Angle. Not made up of Californians, as I understand, but paid for by California. You could have joined, I bet.
 
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After years of thinking I knew exactly what side I'd be on, today I find myself uncertain about it.

My present state of being gets disgusted when I read about the agitators, "War Hawks", and "Fire Eaters" such as Edmund Ruffin and John Brown. So many people wanted war so badly. Now that I have a son, the thought of him dying in a ditch alone or being mutilated by canister shot is very disheartening. While I love the romanticism of paintings depicting soldiers kissing their sweethearts goodbye, the reality of the situation is much more grim than we often imagine. Not only was the young man going off to possibly never return, but his young wife and child was left without a chance is most cases. The scene in "Cold Mountain" with Natalie Portman displays the plight of the widow and the orphan very well, IMO.

All the while, Edmund Ruffin and the like (North and South) were sitting in there parlors sipping mint juleps and trying to profit off of the war however they could, politically or financially.

So many young pawns sent to the slaughter. I'd be foolish to think that I'd be smart enough to avoid it. Hindsight is 20/20.

If I knew then what I know now, I think I'd be more like Alexander Doniphan. In reality, I have no reason to belive that I wouldn't be enlisting right behind my ancestors in various Alabama outfits.
 
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