The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters

McPherson examines the work of American religious history scholar Henry Stout. In Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War, Stout investigates the justness of the Civil War. McPherson explains the two elements of just war theory: jus ad bellum, which is defined as a rationale for going to war, and jus in bello, which is defined as conduct during war. With the only acceptable rationale for going to war being self-defense, Stout absolves the moral historian of determining the rightness and wrongness of the North and the South because both sides saw themselves as acting in self-defense at Fort Sumter. 

McPherson turns to Stout’s examination of jus in bello, measured by the principles of proportionality and discrimination. According to Stout, the Civil War was initially just by these principles but devolved into unjustness based on Lincoln’s strategy of total war in response to the South’s unconventional war tactics and obstinacy toward the Union. Stout also asserts that abolition is the one redeeming feature in the unjustness of Lincoln’s total war strategy, and he also acknowledges the Confederacy’s unscrupulous treatment of Black and white Union soldiers. Because Stout does not convey which is the greater evil, total war or enslavement, he evades a final determination of which side is right and wrong in their war conduct.