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Gen. Henry Halleck told his invasion forces in 1861 that Southerners “have been told that we come to oppress and plunder. By our acts we will undeceive them.”
In November 1861, Gen. John Dix prepared his invasion of Virginia’s eastern shore and spoke of “giving [Virginians] them the strongest assurances of kind treatment and protection . . . they may be gained over without bloodshed.” Dix added that Virginians “have got it in their heads that we want to steal and emancipate their Negroes.” Despite these pronouncements of deliverance from despotic “rebel” rule, the reality told a different story.
A colonel of the 20th NY Volunteers at the Outer Banks of North Carolina wrote his commanding officer: “I regret to be compelled to state that the conduct of the men and some officers of my command has been that of vandals.” The descent into total war had begun.
Not a War of Oppression
“Few northerners sought the overthrow of slavery, for although most considered the institution morally corrupting and economically stifling and wanted to halt its spread, they deemed blacks unfit for freedom in a republic.
The northern-dominated U.S. Congress of July 1861 affirmed the narrow goals of the Crittenden Resolution, which it passed with hardy a dissenting vote. It declared “that this war was waged, on our part, in any spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of these States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union, . . . as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease.”
These last twelve words reflected a fear that a prolonged war might rage out of control, burst its bonds and devour the very ideals and institutions it was meant to preserve. Lincoln himself worried that an extended conflict would “degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.”
(When the Yankees Came: Conflict & Chaos in the Occupied South, 1861-1865. Stephen V. Ashe. UNC Press, 1995, pp. 25-27)