Yeah but you're talking about attitudes 100+ years ago.
You would continually be shocked at just how much we continue to be like people that lived even thousands of years ago. Human beings have a constantly shifting ethical/moral standard that is dependent on many factors, but there are many themes to the way we behave, and as most historians are want to tell you (with ample evidence), the moment the shit hits the fan, the thin veneer of civilization we tend to cloak ourselves in fades away remarkably quickly.
The
famous Milgram experiment put people in three groups - experimenter, learner and teacher. Learner and teacher were put in different rooms. The experimenter then would prod the teacher to ask questions to the learner, whom they could not see, only hear. The experimenter would inform the teacher that for every question that the learner got wrong, they would have to send an electric shock to the learner. More horrifying, they were told each learner had a heart condition. The experimenter would always prod with the following answers to the teacher:
1. Please continue.
2. The experiment requires that you continue.
3. It is absolutely essential that you continue.
4. You have no other choice, you must go on.
Now as this went on, the learner was told to act as if they were in pain, having trouble breathing, or whatever. As it went on, more and more quite obvious health issues were occurring, and the learner eventually would act as if he went silent (passed out or died) if the teacher kept electrocuting him. Of course, no actual electrocution was happening, but the teacher thought it
was.
Some times people would ask why they had to continue. Some would stop and leave. But if after the prodding of those 4 questions listed about the teacher still didn't want to continue, the experiment would end. A mindblowing 60 percent of people issued the maximum amount of shock to the people on the other end. Some were uncomfortable, some questioned why this test was going on. But the end result is
they were still willing to cause possible death-dealing electrocution to someone they didn't know.
Now, the test is not without its critics, but similar tests have been carried out in other formats, such as a test which made people into sort of makeshift prison guards, and another set of subjects would be prisoners. By the end of the test, many of the prison guards had gone remarkably far and abused their power to the extreme - sometimes even going far beyond the boundaries of the test, also causing some controversy over the ethical nature of this test. But, regardless, the end result was a huge amount of people were willing to abuse their position of authority.
People are people. For as much as we change, we have very real deep seated selfish sides that cause us to dehumanize people for very specific reasons. That causes so many of us to throw caution to the wind and become, for lack of a better word, monsters.
So yeah, 100+ years ago people have a different set of moral/ethical standards. But there is not much between us and them, or at least remarkably less difference than you'd ever expect.
Did the bold really happen?
I find it hard to believe two people could have grew up in the same house, and joined two different sides in such a fundamentally moral thing as the US civil war.
Yeah, and not just brother against brother. Sometimes father against son, uncle against nephews, it was a truly tragic war, like so many civil wars are. Fascinating history, but tragic