Maxwell Hoversten INTD 100 McBride 10/17/2013 A Greater Purpose: Why Soldiers go to War Ever since Charles Darwin turned man’s understanding of the world upside-down with the publication ofOn the Origin of Species, scientists have spent considerable amounts of time and money researching the nature of life. One of the paramount findings of this research is the will to live, or tendency toward “self preservation,” shared by all organisms. This will to live manifests as a biological impulse that leads individuals to act in ways favorable to their survival (1). Such a concept is hardly shocking; evolutionary theory would suggest that any organismwithouta will to live probably didn’t last too long, particularly in the face of hungry predators that did. Yet the human condition is a complex one, and it leads us to do things no other species would ever do, with a notable example being voluntary participation in a war. Why would a man or woman neurologically hard-wired to maintain his/her well- being willfully engage in a situation that so greatly jeopardizes that well-being?This question is particularly relevant as it relates to the American Civil War, which saw more casualties than any other war in our nation’s history to date (2). Because war is political, it’s quite easy to find political issues underpinning a soldier’s desire to fight. During the Civil War, Southern men volunteered for the army to protect the rights of the states against the federal government. States’ rights were indeed a focal point of the South’s initial secession and later fight against the North, but the push for states to maintain a large level of autonomy largely came from a desire to preserve the institution of slavery (3). While this is hardly a noble goal, the average Southern soldier didn’t think of himself as fighting for slavery; he was engaged in a war between liberty and tyranny, freedom and enslavement. To hear him talk evoked images more of the Revolutionary War than the cotton plantation (4).
