Dumbar realizes that the Civil War was more complex and potentially corrupt as a fight than the warfare among American Indian tribes. In the Civil War, he officially fought for his country and to end slavery. The first reason is quite abstract, the second is not abstract but is it more complex than that. Slavery was an immoral, brutal institution and was also economically unviable but the industrial workers of the North were not treated that much better than African slaves. African slaves were slaves but the condition of workers in the North was somewhat comparable to indentured servitude. Additionally, not all Southerners had slaves and they fought to defend what they saw as an attack on their "agricultural" way of life. Also, Dumbar reflects on what he perceives as the Manichean qualities of warfare among Indian tribes. As he fights with them to repel the Pawney tribal attack he comments on how this fight is so simple and pure in its motives: "They are not fighting for territorial gains, or to make a man richer, or for abstract reasons as freedom and liberty. They are fighting to defend their elders, their women and their children from attackers that want to massacre them and enslave the survivors".
