Ohio History Journal

"The Soldier's Creed"

 

By LESTER J. CAPPON*

 

 

Patriotism is an essential factor in waging war and shaping its

outcome. Since the causes of a war, as fixed in the minds of the

participants, affect both the deeper and shallower feelings of

patriotism and are in turn influenced by it, loyalty and the will to

fight are closely interrelated. The concern of the military in recent

years with the soldier's ideas of war aims has aroused interest in

his attitudes during previous conflicts. Among these the American

Civil War, with its complex causes and its typical American soldiers,

who were civilians in uniform, continues to raise questions that can

be answered only partially from the sources available.

Whatever the contributory causes of this war, one question often

asked is worth reconsidering: Did the northern soldier fight for his

country because it was embodied in the inseparable Union of all the

states, or did he take up arms primarily because of his conviction

that the slavery issue must be settled and no other recourse re-

mained? No contemporary poll of soldier opinion was taken. The

evidence from which conclusions are drawn must be winnowed

piecemeal from   scattered records.  By this painstaking process

Professor Bell Wiley has reached his conclusions on this and many

other facets of the soldier's thoughts and actions,¹ but at best their

remarks are often brief and inconclusive. Additional evidence,

found in unusual detail in the document published herewith, pro-

vides a commentary on the motivations and spirit of patriotism dur-

ing the first year of the war.

 

* Lester J. Cappon is director of the Institute of Early American History and Cul-

ture at Williamsburg, Virginia.

1 In his The Life of Billy Yank, the Common Soldier of the Union (Indianapolis

and New York, 1951).

320

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"THE SOLDIER'S CREED"          321

 

The slavery question as an economic and moral problem in the

minds of reasonable men was mixed with a high percentage of

emotion when critical incidents arose to stir their passions. The

same may be said of patriotism, which, for that generation of

dismembered political loyalties confounded by slavery, became ulti-

mately the clear-cut unifying issue. To the abolition minority the

slavery picture was literally and figuratively one of black and white.

Therefore their solution was single and over-simplified, while among

moderate antislavery groups the question elicited a variety of an-

swers. The historical approach to it as fundamentally a problem

of race relations² enlightens our appreciation of its complexity in

the minds of thoughtful Americans of the 1850's and '60's who

asked, After slavery, what? Love of country evoked a far more

positive response than freedom and equal rights for the American

Negro.

Minor Millikin, who wrote "The Soldier's Creed," lived in south-

western Ohio, where residents of a free state had long observed

at close range race relations under the shadow of Negro slavery. If

northern opinion elsewhere was hopelessly divided on practical

means of ridding the nation of the institution, in the Ohio Valley

postponement of any attempt at solution fitted the temper of the

times.³ Here, as in other areas bordering on the slave states, free

Negroes and fugitive slaves had produced economic and political

friction. What might be the results of an influx of freedmen? Mil-

likin resented the southern view (expressed by James H. Ham-

mond) that labor was the business of slaves and northern wage-

earners, the "mudsills of society," but his emotions were apparently

stirred against the southern aristocracy rather than on behalf of the

slave. It was possible to be antislavery at heart and yet take false

comfort in the idea that slavery as a southern institution could be

isolated exclusively as a southern problem. Northerners and south-

erners could no longer find common ground on which to strive for

a way out of the dilemma. Not even northerners could agree on

 

2 The most thoughtful and well balanced presentation of this point of view is in

Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln (New York, 1950), II, 462-471.

3 Wood Gray, The Hidden Civil War: The Story of the Copperheads (New York,

1942), 29-30, 65, 90, 98-100; Eugene H. Roseboom, The Civil War Era, 1850-1873

(History of the State of Ohio, edited by Carl Wittke, IV, Columbus, 1944), 327-328,

341-348, 352-353, 368, 399-402.

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322    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

objectives involving the Negro. Slavery was a delicate issue and a

doubtful one on which to expect united response in the crisis of 1861.

By the time of President Lincoln's inauguration the "house

divided" had become a grim reality through secession and the organ-

ization of a southern confederacy. This action by the South threw

the emphasis on state rights as the immediate issue of the crisis.

Although the doctrine of state rights was held by many Americans

outside the South, secession threatened the nation, now continental

in expanse and a generation older and prouder since President

Jackson's provocative toast in 1830, "Our Federal Union--it must

be preserved." Lincoln accepted the challenge in 1861 by making

his primary objective the preservation of the Union, by peaceful

means if possible, reluctantly by war if necessary. In taking the

initiative the South had secured advantage over the temporizing

Buchanan administration, but Lincoln capitalized on his defensive

position by stressing the cause to be maintained, the nation itself.

Since the diplomacy of nerves centering in Fort Sumter might deter-

iorate into war, he took every precaution to keep the United States

government on the defensive. This stand was consistent with the

assurance in his inaugural address that there would be no bloodshed

or violence, "unless it be forced upon the national authority."⁴

Patriotism and politics become closely intermingled under threat

of war. If the Lincoln administration refused to retreat at those

points where force threatened to meet force, the South must main-

tain its initiative in self-justification. Under these circumstances it

was clarifying the issue for the American people in other sections

of the country. Lincoln realized of course that patriotism is most

responsive and thoroughgoing under attack. When the political

and constitutional challenge of secession was followed by military

challenge in the firing on Fort Sumter, "the great uprising" through-

out the North⁵ on behalf of the Union confirmed the president's first

objective, which now became the primary war aim. At the base of

4 James G. Randall, Lincoln the President (New York, 1945-52), I, ch. 12, is a

penetrating account of the Fort Sumter episode; see pp. 297-302 on the significance

of Lincoln's inaugural address.

5 "The Great Uprising" is the title of Chapter 2 of John B. McMaster, A History

of the People of the United States During Lincoln's Administration (New York and

London, 1927). See also Kenneth M. Stampp, And the War Came: The North and

the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861 (Baton Rouge, 1950), 205.

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"THE SOLDIER'S CREED"           323

 

the house divided had been and still was the slavery question, on

which the older political parties had foundered, but slavery, over-

shadowed by the all-embracing cause of the Union, receded tem-

porarily from the center of the stage, though by no means dismissed

from men's minds. Moreover, patriotism became the great asset of

the Republican party, which had been branded as sectional by its

opponents in both the North and the South. Now it asserted its

newly won role as the party of the Union.

The wave of patriotism which converted thousands of northern

civilians into soldiers in 1861 was a response to Lincoln's call for

volunteers to preserve the Union and a confirmation of his previous

policy.⁶ But to attain his objective by invasion of the South posed

a paradox. If the North must fight a war of conquest, who was the

greater sinner under either the Constitution or the Higher Law?

The Copperheads later made capital of this confusion of issues in

their peace campaign. To the southerner, defending his home and

established order, it was a war of aggression--a concept which

served as a rallying cry not only for the Confederate soldier but also

for later generations upholding the "lost cause." Since he was on

the military defensive, war aims were easily simplified for the

Confederate soldier. The thought of defeat envisaged the end of

the Confederacy, a hostile army in occupation, and a future fraught

with grave uncertainty. To the federal soldier, however, the pros-

pect of defeat at no time forecast the dissolution of his government

and his way of life.⁷   The certainty of security at home, whether

the war's outcome was victory or negotiated peace, may have diluted

many a northern soldier's enthusiasm for conquest as compared

with his southern opponent's impelling will to fight.

War aims are widely discussed by the politician with voice and

pen, but seldom by the soldier who is said by cynics to fight the

 

6 Marveling at Lincoln's patience and forebearance before Sumter, Henry Adams

asserted in 1861: "Nor, if strength is wanted, has ever any Government developed

more than our own, when, at one stamp of his foot, the President called the whole

nation to arms, and the bristling lines of bayonets poured down from every township

in the North, to sustain the integrity of the Union." Henry Adams, "The Great

Secession Winter of 1860-61," Massachusetts Historical Society, Proceedings, XLIII

(1909-10), 687.

7 This point is well brought out in Carl Russell Fish, The American Civil War:

An Interpretation (New York and London, 1937), 169; and the element of nation-

alism, in The Diary of George Templeton Strong, edited by Allan Nevins and Milton

H. Thomas (New York, 1952), III, 264.

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324    THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

politician's war. How deeply did the federal soldier feel his loyalty

and what did it mean to him? At opposite poles, the casual and

the reflective attitudes are illustrated on the one hand by the raw

recruit from up-state New York who said "he had voted for Abe

Lincoln, and as there was going to be trouble, he might as well

fight for Abe Lincoln," and furthermore he had always wanted to

see the world;⁸ and on the other hand by the thrice-wounded veter-

an Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who wrote in 1864, "If one didn't

believe that this war was . . . a [Christian] crusade, in the cause

of the whole civilized world, it would be hard indeed to keep the

hand to the sword."⁹ Between these extremes were many grada-

tions of opinion at different stages of the war. Historical evalua-

tion of this diverse testimony provides a partial measure of the

soldier's patriotism.

Professor Wiley, who has given thoughtful consideration to the

motives of federal soldiers in the light of their personal records,

declares that "love of country and hatred of those who seemed bent

on destroying its institutions impelled many to enlist, though often

patriotism was indistinguishably blended with practical urges. . . .

For every Yank whose primary goal was emancipation were to be

found several whose chief goal was the Union and the system of

government that it represented.     The objective was often im-

perfectly expressed, but the ideal shines through in unmistakable

clearness."¹⁰ Turning now to the author of "The Soldier's Creed,"

we may view him and his youthful convictions with better historical

perspective.

Minor Millikin (1834-1862) was a native of Hamilton, in Butler

County, Ohio, and a graduate of Miami University.11 In Decem-

ber 1857 at the age of twenty-three, he became part owner and

editor of the Hamilton Intelligencer, which he developed during

the two years of his editorship into a vigorous organ of the Repub-

 

8 Strong, Diary, III, 121.

9 Holmes to Charles Eliot Norton, April 17, 1864, in Touched with Fire: Civil

War Letters and Diary of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., 1861-1864, edited by Mark

DeWolfe Howe (Cambridge, Mass., 1947), 122n.

10 Wiley, Billy Yank, 38, 44. See also William Matthews and Dixon Wecter,

Our Soldiers Speak, 1775-1918 (Boston, 1943), 143-144, 146, 189, and Merle Curti,

The Roots of American Loyalty (New York, 1946), 160, 162-164, 166-167.

11 Memorial Record of Butler County, Ohio (Chicago, 1894), 221-222; Bert S.

Bartlow and others, eds., Centennial History of Butler County, Ohio (n.p., 1905), 871.

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"THE SOLDIER'S CREED"              325

lican party. In its running fight with the Democratic Telegraph

in a region usually controlled by Democrats, the Intelligencer at-

tacked the Buchanan administration for its openhanded support of

slavery expansion in the territories, but cast aspersions on the

American Antislavery Society as the "American Society for the Dis-

play of Frantic Fools."¹² Nevertheless, Butler County continued

as a Democratic stronghold, with outspoken support of state rights,

and voted against Lincoln in 1860.13 A man of Millikin's convic-

tions had doubtless made up his mind by the spring of 1861 on his

course of action if war came. Among the vanguard to answer the

president's call for volunteers, he helped recruit the first company

of Ohio cavalry. This work led to his commission as first lieutenant

and to service in the first West Virginia campaign. He had risen to

the rank of colonel before he was assigned to Rosecrans' army in

Tennessee in 1862. There, during a cavalry charge at Stone River

on December 31, Millikin was killed.¹⁴

"The Soldier's Creed" was found among Millikin's papers after

his death. His patriotic reasons for joining the army, intermingled

with his understanding of the causes of the war, reflect the narrow-

minded sources of friction between North and South as well as those

broad controversial questions involving "our old Constitution and

our old liberties." There is ample evidence that the invective which

had been flung with abandon between the sections during the ante-

bellum years left its indelible marks on men's minds, Millikin's

among them. Economic considerations regarding the effect of the

war on the country's prosperity were evidently in his mind too. The

slavery issue as such is conspicuously missing from his Creed, and

an explanation for the omission, especially during the early period

of the war, has been suggested above. His concluding resolutions,

prefaced by a kind of confession of faith addressed to the second

person, suggest that he may have used or intended the Creed to in-

doctrinate the soldiers under his command, and therefore he de-

veloped his ideas in considerable detail. He may have had in mind

 

12 Hamilton Intelligencer, 1858-59 passim, especially April 29-June 10 and October

1-29, 1858.

13 Gray, Hidden Civil War, map on p. 32, showing area, including Butler County,

fifty percent or more against Lincoln in 1860.

14 A History and Biographical Cyclopaedia of Butler County, Ohio (Cincinnati,

1882), 186, 219-221; Memorial Record of Butler County, 221-222.

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326         THE OHIO HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

 

too the state rights Democrats of his native county who were ad-

vocating a negotiated peace.¹⁵ Love of country was exalted in "a

holy cause." The religious and moral overtones are typical of that

generation which linked duty with righteousness to a degree that to

us smacks of the self-righteous. And the crusading spirit which the

"holy cause" could inspire is expressed in the preface to his last will,

written three weeks before his death in battle: "Death is always the

condition of living, but, to the soldier, its imminency and certainty

seems [sic] also the condition of his usefulness and glory."¹⁶

Colonel Millikin was another federal soldier who recorded his

reasons for going to war, but since he was more articulate than most

officers or privates, his statement of objectives in a framework of

patriotism seems worthy of rescue from the oblivion of local history.

 

The Soldier's Creed¹⁷

I have enlisted in the service of my country for the term of three years,

and have sworn faithfully to discharge my duty, uphold the Constitution,

and obey the officers over me.

Let me see what motives I must have had when I did this thing. It

was not pleasant to leave my friends and my home, and, relinquishing my

liberty and pleasures, bind myself to hardships and obedience for three

years by a solemn oath. Why did I do it?

1. I did it because I loved my country. I thought she was surrounded

by traitors and struck by cowardly plunderers. I thought that, having been

a good government to me and my fathers before me, I owed it to her to

defend her from all harm; so when I heard of the insults offered her, I

rose up as if some one had struck my mother, and as a lover of my country

agreed to fight for her.

2. Though I am no great reader, I have heard the taunts and insults

sent us working-men from the proud aristocrats of the South. My blood

has grown hot when I heard them say labor was the business of slaves

and "mudsills;" that they were a noble-blooded and we a mean-spirited

people; that they ruled the country by their better pluck, and if we did

not submit they would whip us by their better courage. .... So I thought

 

15 The Butler County Democrats protested continuance of the war in the summer

of 1861 and again in 1862. Gray, Hidden Civil War, 74, 93, 94. In August 1864 a

Copperhead meeting was held in Hamilton. Ibid., 180.

16 Will Record, I, 531, Butler County Probate Court, Hamilton, Ohio.

17 Henry Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio (centennial edition, Columbus,

1889-91), I, 357.

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"THE SOLDIER'S CREED"                   327

 

the time had come to show these insolent fellows that Northern insti-

tutions had the best men, and I enlisted to flog them into good manners

and obedience to their betters.

3. I said, too, that this war would disturb the whole country and all

its business. The South meant "rule or ruin." It has Jeff Davis and the

Southern notion of government; we our old Constitution and our old

liberties. I couldn't see any peace or quiet until we had whipped them, and

so I enlisted to bring back peace in the quickest way.

I had other reasons, but these were the main ones. I enlisted, and gave

up home and comfort, and took to the tent and its hardships.

I have suffered a great deal-been abused sometimes-had my patience

severely tried-been blamed wrongly by my officers-stood the carelessness

and dishonesty of some of my comrades, and had all the trials of a volunteer

soldier; but I never gave up, nor rebelled, nor grumbled, nor lost my temper,

and I'll tell you why.

1. I considered I had enlisted in a holy cause, with good motives, and

that I was doing my duty. I believe men who are doing their duty in the

face of difficulties are watched over by God.

2. I felt that I was a servant of the government, and that as such I

was too proud to quarrel and complain.

3. I know if with such motives and such a cause I could not be faith-

ful, that I could never think of myself as much of a man afterward.

And so I drew up a set of resolutions like this:

1. As my health and strength had been devoted to the government, I

would take as good care of them as possible; that I would be cleanly in my

person and temperate in all my habits. I felt that to enlist for the govern-

ment, and then by carelessness or drunkenness make myself unfit for

service, would be too mean an act for me.

2. As the character I have assumed is a noble one, I will not disgrace

it by childish quarrelling, by loud and foolish talking, by profane swearing,

and indecent language. It struck me that these were the accomplishments

of the ignorant and depraved on the other side, and I, for one, did not

think them becoming a Union soldier.

3. As my usefulness in a great measure depends on my discipline, I

am determined to keep my arms in good order, to keep my clothing mended

and brushed, to attend all drills, and do my best to master all my duties

as a soldier, and make myself perfectly acquainted with all the evolutions

and exercises, and thus feel always ready to fight. It seems to me stupid

for a man to apprentice himself to as serious a trade as war, and then try

by lying and deception to avoid learning anything.

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