New Jersey's Civil War Experience

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New Jersey’s Internal Struggle

I began research for this paper with questions in mind and so many sources that I thought it would take a year to get through them all. The first question I sought to answer was did New Jersey have any sympathy for the Confederacy. I quickly found the answer to be yes, but that wasn’t a large enough question to develop a paper with, so I asked the question why. Why, if there was sufficient sympathy for the Confederacy and ample opposition to Lincoln and the Union in general did New Jerseyans join the Union Army in such large numbers? Why is it published in nearly every secondary source that New Jersey’s contribution to the Civil War was impressive and her patriotism widespread? In my search for the answers, I found great contradiction. One book would call New Jersey the “Copperhead State” and the next would speak of the “Carnival of Patriotism” in the New Jersey. So, I drew my own conclusions. New Jersey was not a state that was pro-Union from the start. Opinions varied, some citizens supported Lincoln, abolitionism, and Unity of the states at any cost, including war, while others were not shy in opposing the war or Lincoln. There were people who supported the South and those who depended on its business, but there were also those who saw the South’s secession as treasonous and worthy of the declaration of war. These differences caused instability within the state.
The purpose of this paper is not to categorize New Jersey as only a state so sympathetic to the southern cause that it was treasonous, but to show the various issues that caused internal conflict within the state. The Civil War is known as the war between brothers, yet we often look at it as if the states were clearly cut Union or Confederate. New Jersey is known as a Northern State, so the issues that occurred within it before being unified as such seem to be overlooked. It is common knowledge that New Jersey took the side...