Editing Confederate States of America (section)

===Motivations of soldiers===
{{Main|Confederate States Army#Morale and motivations}}

Most soldiers who joined Confederate national or state military units joined voluntarily. Perman (2010) says historians are of two minds on why millions of soldiers seemed so eager to fight, suffer and die over four years:

{{Blockquote|Some historians emphasize that Civil War soldiers were driven by political ideology, holding firm beliefs about the importance of liberty, Union, or state rights, or about the need to protect or to destroy slavery. Others point to less overtly political reasons to fight, such as the defense of one's home and family, or the honor and brotherhood to be preserved when fighting alongside other men. Most historians agree that, no matter what he thought about when he went into the war, the experience of combat affected him profoundly and sometimes affected his reasons for continuing to fight.<ref>{{cite book|editor=Michael Perman|editor2=Amy Murrell Taylor|title=Major Problems in the Civil War and Reconstruction|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5rPbZT_hrncC&pg=PA178|year= 2010|publisher=Cengage |page=178|isbn=978-0618875207}}</ref><ref>James McPherson, ''For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War'' (1998)</ref>}}