1st Amendment and Constitution

What did these men in blue and gray believe they were fighting for? A sentence in that letter of the New York captain gives us a clue : Every soldier knows he is fighting not only for his own liberty but even more , for the liberty of the human race for all time to come . Another clue is provided by a wounded private who described a debating society organized by convalescent soldiers during the last winter of the war . Among other questions , they debated , and resolved that the struggle will do more to establish and maintain a republican form of government than the Revolutionary war .

These themes of liberty and republicanism formed the ideological core of the cause for which Civil War soldiers fought , Confederate as well as the Union . Americans in both North and South believed themselves custodians of the legacy of 1776 . Its also mentioned