What did the Confederates feel they were fighting for?
An honest answer is that there may have been as many different reasons for fighting this war as there were soldiers in the Confederate Army. The politically correct revisionist historians would like to state the Confederate soldiers were fighting to protect and preserve slavery. It seems an odd statement since less than 10% of those men were actual slave holders. Some common answers that appear over and over from the Confederates were that they were fighting to establish their own government, just as their forefathers did in the first American war for Independence in 1776. Just like in 1776, years of oppression and many complex and interwoven issues produced the feeling in the Southern population to secede and then later to take up arms to defend their land. Some were fighting to repel the invasion of the Federal Army and in essence fighting to protect their home and families. Since the constitution did not authorize the Federal government to make war on a state, yet the Federal milita
