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Introduction:
We have a prescribed opinion here in these United States concerning the Civil War: North good, South bad. Propaganda inculcated through academia and public schools has been quite effective: Abraham Lincoln has long been the most positively viewed U.S. President, revered by both the left and the right. Conversely, the public generally holds negative views of the Confederacy. Given recent events, such as lockdowns, forced vaccinations, shady elections, political censorship, and selective prosecution of dissidents, it’s not surprising to see a recent poll which found 47% of Republicans believe the time will come when patriotic Americans will have to take the law into their own hands.1 It’s time we begin thinking through these things in a serious, deliberate manner, and what better place to begin our study than in the civil war our nation has already endured?
What Constitutes a Just War?
We addressed just war theory in greater depth in our previous article, “Was the American Revolution Justified?” To briefly summarize, Protestants and Catholics alike have historically held that wars can be justly waged on certain criteria. Theologian Greg Bahnsen distilled these criteria into six points which can be paraphrased thus:
Just wars must arise from just intentions - preserving just laws and innocent lives.
There must be a prevening right to use violence, which use must be prefaced by a formal declaration of war.
A just war must be a last resort, with all other options having been exhausted to no avail.
There must be a possibility of victory for the party initiating a just offensive war.2
The cost incurred in a just war must not be a greater evil than that which is to be remedied.
The means employed in a just war must be discriminate and proportionate.
These are the biblical principles of just war; does the American Civil War live up to them?
1. The Intentions of the Belligerents:
Traditionally, the mainstream view has been that slavery caused the Civil War, and the ethics of slavery are certainly relevant. However, this view seems to be waning as young people are more likely to say states’ rights are the actual cause. And while both these factors have their role to play, this bloody war was not fought over philosophical differences – it was more a war of economic conquest. Before the war, tariffs accounted for the vast majority of federal revenue. The industrial North benefited from high tariffs which protected them from European competition whereas those tariffs made it difficult for the agricultural South to trade with European cotton buyers since they couldn’t sell to the South at a competitive rate. Were tariffs really so important to the belligerents? The Confederacy outlawed high, protective tariffs in their Constitution. Lincoln had long advocated these tariffs, saying in 1832:
I am in favor of a national bank… in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.3
In late 1860, the Boston Herald said,
[Should the South secede] she will immediately form commercial alliances with European countries [that] . . . will help English manufacturing at the expense of New England.
Likewise, the Philadelphia Press wrote,
If South Carolina is permitted to establish a free port with impunity, and to invite to her harbor all ships of foreign nations would not disaster fall upon our great northern interests?
Furthermore, the Union raised tariff rates during the Civil War and imposed these heightened rates on the South afterwards during Reconstruction. So, we can safely say both sides viewed tariffs as a – if not the – key issue. The intention of the Union was not primarily to end slavery as Lincoln said in no uncertain terms,
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union...
And as we saw above, “preserving the Union,” then, was another way of saying, “keeping the tariff game going.” The Union’s intentions in starting the war, then, clearly do not align with the first principle of just war.
2. The Right to Use Violence
Did the Union have the right to use violence to coerce the Confederacy into rejoining? No, because the Confederate states had every right to peaceably secede. The Constitution does not explicitly mention secession, but its legality can be deduced from the 10th Amendment:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
A state’s decision of whether to remain in the Union is not delegated to the federal government nor legally prohibited to the states. Thus, said decision resides with each state. This comports with the Founders’ words in the Declaration of Independence:
...whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends [securing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...
Even Abraham Lincoln himself said, in a speech before the House of Representatives in 1848,
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.
This principle of just war also notes that a formal declaration is required for legitimacy, but the Union never formally declared war on the Confederacy. So on two counts, this principle of just war was violated by the Union.
3. Last Resort:
For decades, the United States was held together only by a few slavery-strained threads, and efforts to delay and evade the inevitable ultimately failed. While the issue of slavery in the U.S. was debated as early as the Revolutionary period, and compromise was even made then, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 is when the government made extensive efforts to remain unified. This was followed by the attempted Wilmot Proviso and the Compromise of 1850, each of which proved futile in their turn. The Confederacy sought recourse in another legal option: secession. However, instead of honoring the Confederacy’s legal decision to secede, the Union invaded and occupied portions of the South, thus beginning the Civil War. This needless act violates the third principle of just war theory.
4. Possibility of Victory:
Many claim the Union was destined to win the War from the beginning due to their economic, military, and manpower advantages. Now, the Confederacy was happy to coexist and didn’t need or want to conquer the Union, which, on the other hand, wanted to conquer the Confederacy. Thus, while the Union had an advantage, she also had a more difficult goal. Furthermore, the Confederacy proved to be a formidable opponent, especially in key battles such as 1st and 2nd Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and Cold Harbor. However, the Union had reason to believe they could win, especially after victories such as New Orleans, Vicksburg, Antietam, and Gettysburg. Thus, the fourth tenet of just war was not violated.
5. & 6. Lesser Evil and Just Means:
The final two tenets can be paired together since the amount of evil caused or alleviated by a war is often directly related to the means used in the war. First, the death toll: Until recently, it was held to be about 620,000, but new estimates revise this upward to around 750,000. We’d contend neither the Union’s nor the Confederacy’s goals in fighting the war justified this astronomical bloodshed. But the harm done goes far beyond the death tally. Civil War historian Phil Leigh notes the extent of the economic damage dealt to the Confederacy:
The war had destroyed two-thirds of Southern railroads and livestock. Excluding the total loss in the value of slaves resulting from emancipation, assessed real property values in 1870 were less than half of those in 1860. About 300,000 white Southern males in the prime of adulthood died during the war and perhaps another 200,000 were incapacitated, representing almost 20% of the region’s approximate 2.8 million white males of all ages.
By 1870, Southern bank capital totaled only $17 million, compared to $61 million in 1860. National policies largely ignored post-war Southern poverty until President Franklin Roosevelt commissioned a report in 1938, seventy-three years after the war had ended.
The study disclosed that the South remained America’s poorest region. Its 1937 per capita income of $300 was only half of the $600 for the rest of the country….
During the last year of the prosperous Roaring 1920s, Southern farmers earned an average of $190, which was only about one-third of the $530 average for other American farmers.
Composing more than half of all Southern farmers, tenants and sharecroppers were at the bottom of the heap…. Sharecropper per capita incomes averaged $63 annually which equated to $0.17 per day. By comparison, during the depression that followed the 1873 financial panic sixty-five years earlier, the Ohio Department of Labor estimated the poverty line at one dollar a day. Perhaps most surprising to present-day audiences, Roosevelt’s report disclosed that whites composed half of all sharecroppers and that they lived “under economic conditions almost identical with those of Negro sharecroppers.”
Of three million farm homes surveyed in 1930 only 6% had piped-in water. More than half were unpainted. Only about one-third had screens.
Even today, most of the former Confederate states are in the lowest quartile of state GDP/capita, and only Texas and Virginia narrowly beat the national average.
What accounts for this vastly disproportionate poverty? First, during the war, there were calculated efforts to destroy civilian property and even entire cities, most notably in Sherman’s March to the Sea. General Sherman was particularly vicious, writing to a concerned Mississippi community chairman,
[I]n war the commander on the spot is the judge, and may take your house, your fields, your everything, and turn you all out, helpless, to starve.
And to a fellow commander,
…we will remove and destroy every obstacle – if need be, take every life, every acre of land, every particle of property, everything that to us seems proper… That all who do not aid are enemies… If the people of the South oppose, they do so at their peril; and if they stand by mere lookerson the domestic tragedy, they have no right to immunity, protection, or share in the final result.
During his military campaigns, he acted in full accord with his harsh doctrines.4 His tactics have been described as total war, or at least a precursor of it.
But the outright plunder was not limited to wartime alone. Leigh further notes that, after the war, “Union soldiers, U. S. treasury officials, and Northern businessmen stole most of” the “more than two million fungible cotton bales” which “lay scattered across the South.” Even after the Confederate states were readmitted, the carpetbag regimes rigged – excuse us: fortified – the elections with supervising soldiers. In addition to the high tariffs, the Union also imposed a cotton tax. And tax revenues from the South funded Union soldiers’ veteran pensions (a scheme which became the prototype of our grotesque “Social Security” system). Finally, numerous banking regulations made it difficult for capital to reenter the South.
Indeed, the former Confederacy was reduced to a de facto colony of the North – so much for “preserving the Union.” It should go without saying that no intention of the Union justified the destruction she wrought in the South, and thus the fifth and sixth principles of just war were grossly violated.
Conclusion:
While we only scratched the surface in analyzing the gruesome details of the War, it is clear that according to the biblically-based tenets of just war theory, the Civil War cannot be justified. Given the stats mentioned in the introduction, this cuts against the mainstream grain. No doubt, some readers will disagree, and we invite you to comment with your thoughts. We must examine everything according to the standard of Scripture, and no less with contentious issues, especially when they are so salient, as civil war is today. God bless.
Another found that 66% of southern Republicans and 47% of west coast Democrats favor secession as well.
A nation which has been invaded has the right to defend itself within lawful means no matter the possibility of success.
Quoted in DiLorenzo, Thomas. The Real Lincoln. Three Rivers Press, 2002. Ch. 4.
It should be noted that, earlier in the war, Sherman was much more protective of civilians, even threatening his troops with the death penalty for wanton looting. However, perhaps growing frustration, a war-calloused conscience, increasing autonomy in command, or some combination of the above, led him to loosen his standards on civilian treatment. General Grant followed a similar trajectory.
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