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They Went into the Fight Cheering Parkway Publishers It is likely that without compulsory military service, the Confederacy would have lost the Civil War two and a half years earlier than Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Like most large-scale modern wars, the Civil War was fought predominantly by men who did not want to be in the army. Many Southerners did not volunteer at the first opportunity. They believed in the “cause,” but they had homes, families, and jobs. Enthusiastic volunteers built the Confederate army in 1861, but by early 1862, the volunteer spirit had waned throughout the South. North Carolinians were no exception. Their early rush to enlist supplied more than forty thousand soldiers to the Confederate army between May 1861 and February 1862. Like the other Southern states, most of North Carolina’s remaining contribution of manpower to the Confederacy would have to be supplied through coercion. From the summer of 1862 until the very last days of the war, North Carolinians were subjected to the most efficient conscription system in the Confederacy. Their service in the Army of Northern Virginia and their fighting spirit sustained the Confederacy through four years of total war. They Went into the Fight Cheering! skillfully intertwines the lives and letters of North Carolinians with the Confederacy’s progressively desperate measures intended to sustain its armies. Conscription generated intense political and social conflict throughout the South. Confederate leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Zebulon Baird Vance, and Braxton Bragg were drawn into the controversy, often on opposite sides. They Went Into the Fight Cheering! fills a void in North Carolina and Confederate history with well documented yet sympathetic treatment of men and women who were caught up in the great American tragedy.
Reviews “I found this book to be very readable and it kept my interest in both the history itself and the historical figures involved. It is obvious the Mr. Hilderman spent a lot time researching his subject: i.e. the extensive amount of resources cited in footnotes and bibliography. It is refreshing to read a work that is not full of the propaganda of some groups that want us to believe every Southerner was wholeheartedly for the war. The author, I believe, gives a truthful picture of the emotional turmoil for any man facing the prospect of a prolonged conflict, which the War Between the States truly was.” “Being a person who is moderately interested in the Civil War and whose ancestors fought for the cause, I was very pleased with They Went into the Fight Cheering because it gave me a sense of what the soldiers, their families, and neighbors went through as people. I am interested in the human story surrounding the war and found myself 'in their shoes': the inner turmoil of the men as they struggled to balance their desire to maintain their Southern heritage and way of life with the realities of leaving their families and homes to go to war and the stress of being left behind as a wife/mother/child. The actual letters reproduced in the book (which to my joy include the vocabulary and spelling of the era) are particularly touching and added to my experience as I read.” Amazon.com reviewers
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