- State Loyalty was much higher at the time and people generally viewed themselves as citizens of a state rather than the United States. So, the primary loyalty could easily be the state.
- There was a high degree of societal belief in the Slave States that emancipation would lead to a servile war. The belief was that enslaved peoples were only partially civilized because they were enslaved and that freed, they would revert to their natural barbaric tendencies. These were reinforced with exceedingly lurid tales of what happened in various slave revolts. So, a lot of people in the south felt the Federal government was undermining the basic security of the people (read, white) in slave-holding states.
- As an additional point to the above point, even basic voting rights would overturn the social order in many areas as the enslaved population outnumbered the white population in those areas.
- It is a mistake - and not an inconsiderable one - to view the situation from a rich vs poor dynamic. Take a Slave holding state like Delaware, where there was a total of 1798 enslaved people in 1860, and consider how little the state supported secession as the enslaved peoples really did only help the wealthiest and had no bearing on the overall economy... Contrast that with areas with a much higher proportion of enslaved peoples. There is a direct and verifiable statistical correlation between the number of enslaved peoples and support for secession irrespective of how many people in those areas actually were active slavers. Slavery underpinned the entire society in vast regions of the United States. Even if someone did not enslave someone themselves, they could hire enslaved peoples from their enslavers to perform manual labor. The currency that held up the local economy was mainly from the cash crops and manufactured goods sold for a profit - all of which was based on the labor of enslaved peoples.
- The strict racial hierarchy was embedded in all aspects of the society. A poor white person was never at the bottom of the social ladder. They were always a mile ahead of even the richest free black person in the south in terms of legal rights, social obligations, etc. These perks of being white were reinforced every day in large ways and small ways, so a white person would always feel that they were benefiting from that society.
- Then, there was the adventure side to being a soldier in a war. For a lot of young men, this was their best chance for distinction and fame.
- There was universal conscription and the penalties for avoiding the draft included property confiscation and death. This was where the whole myth of the southern soldiers loyalty to the cause starts to break down. The initial reasons why a southern man might volunteer might have convinced a lot of men to volunteer, but the number of volunteers in the initial wave was nowhere near what was needed. The initial wave of volunteers was very heavily tilted towards the ones who benefitted the most from the southern societal structure. There are many instances of recruiters having trouble filling out the second wave of volunteers in the south. There was plenty of manpower, but no wave of volunteers after the first rush. For example, the exemption granted to anyone who held more than 20 enslaved peoples caused a great deal of resentment because that was a very explicit example of a rich vs poor favoritism.
In general, there were a lot of reasons why an individual might join the army. However good the original enticement might have sounded, this was not enough to sustain the armies throughout the war. Desertion was high and ramped up over the course of the war. Draft avoidance became an artform.