Why did Southern officers in the US Army take their oaths so lightly after their states seceded?

Answer 1

I don't know what the exact wording of the oath was but presumeably it was similar to the modern oath in which an officer swears to defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic and to obey yhe orders of the President of the United States and the officers appointed over him. The southern officers did not take their oath lightly. Many of them struggled with their consciences to determine the honorable course of action. Some of them, of course, sided with the Union. For those that did not though, you must understand that their concept of what their country was was different from yours and mine. We think of a state as a subordinate unit in a country but that is not what the word actually means. The word state means a sovereign country. To many southernors of that time their country was their state. The United States was an alliance of sovereign countries and when their state, their country, withdrew from that alliance, which they saw the constitution as permitting, then their oath to the constitution was no longer binding. Michael Montagne Up until the end of the Civil War, it was common to refer to the national government as THESE United States. (If I remember correctly, Lincoln referred to the nation that way in the Gettyburg Address.) The term, THE United States became commonly used only after the Civil War, when the concept of Federalism was changed to the states being subordinate 'provinces' of the federal government. They took their oaths lightly because of one simple reason: What they were giving their word to did not exist anymore.