Even in the Midst of an Enemy’s Country the Dictates of Humanity Must at Least Be Observed

Chapter five considers how consistenly Union armies adhered to the Lieber code and its underlying moral vision of a hard yet human war by investigating the Union army’s treatment of civilians and their property in two notoious campaigns: Philip H. Sheridan's 1864 Shenandoah Valley Campaign and William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea and through South Carolina. These campaigns witnessed great destruction (often utterly unwarranted) and also persistent restraint. Federals' moral vision of hard yet humane warfare inspired both, for many Union soldiers believed both were necessary in a justly waged war.

The Sternest Feature of War

Chapter four considers how consistenly Union armies adhered to the Lieber code and its underlying moral vision of a hard yet human war by investigating the Union’s use of formal retaliation against Confederate soldiers in the latter half of the conflict. Through several case studies of the Union’s consideration and use of retalition, this chapter demonstrates that Union officials did by and large follow the letter and spirit of the Lieber code in the use of retaliation. The chapter argues that while most Union officials remained wary of formal retaliation against captured Confederate soldiers, they saw the tool as a way to punish and curtail the worst abuses in war committed by Confederates.

The More Vigorously Wars Are Pursued, the Better It Is for Humanity

Chapter three explains how the Berlin-born scholar Francis Lieber refined the Union’s moral vision of hard yet humane war into a coherent set of rules applicable to the entire Union army. The chapter devotes extensive attention to the life and ideas of Francis Lieber, and the Lieber-drafted General Orders No. 100, the “Lieber code,” the most detailed and influential code of military conduct to emerge from the Civil War. The 157 articles of the Lieber code collectively instructed Federal officers and soldiers on how to reconcile in practice the hard hand of war with humane restraint.

Not to Destroy but to Make Good

Chapter two continues to trace the origins of the Union army’s “hard yet humane” just-war policies by investigating the Federal experience in occupied Memphis and New Orleans in 1862. Occupying two major Confederate cities forced Union officers and soldiers to come into direct and frequent contact with hostile Confederate civilians. In the process, Union officials further developed detailed military rules and policies for how best to wage a “hard yet humane’ just war. Particular attention in chapter two is paid to the ideas and actions of Benjmain F. Butler in New Orleans and William Tecumseh Sherman in New Orleans.

Introduction

On New Year’s Eve 1863, an anxious George W. Lennard sought blessed assurance of his eternal fate. Lennard began the American Civil War as a private in an Indiana regiment and was eventually commissioned lieutenant colonel of the Fifty-Seventh Indiana Volunteer Infantry. He survived some of the most gruesome fighting of the Western Theater, from Shiloh to Stones River to Missionary Ridge. As another year of war dawned, Lennard confessed in a letter home that he dreaded nothing more than the thought of what awaited him after death. He longed for “a clear and well defined hope that all would be well with me in the world to come.” “You will say,” he wrote his wife, “why dont you be a Christian? I say, how can a soldier be a Christian?” He continued: “Read all Christs teaching, and then tell me whether ...

Conclusion

Did the Union succeed in waging a truly just war against the Confederacy? Does a historian really have any business answering such a question, or is it best left to ethicists, philosophers, and theologians? I have not tried in this book to pronounce some kind of final verdict on the justice and morality of the actions of Civil War Americans. But neither do I think historians should quickly dismiss the question, “Was the American Civil War a just war?” If nothing else, the question beckons serious consideration of the nature of the war as a military conflict—why the fighting took on the distinct character that it did. It is a question that ultimately confronts historians with the challenge of untangling one of the Civil War’s great paradoxes: Why did the war possess a peculiar mixture of destructiveness and restraint? How could the same war unleash the costliest carnage in American history and yet also inspire earnest, innovative efforts to define just conduct in war and restrain the conflict’s devastation?...

A War of Barbarism or of Comparative Humanity

Chapter one traces the origins of the Union army’s “hard yet humane” just-war policies to an unexpected time and place: guerrilla-ravaged Missouri in the opening months of the Civil War. The chapter shows how Union officers in Missouri, as they confronted hostile guerrillas, first constructed detailed military rules and policies that embodied the vision of just warfare that would eventually characterize the entire Union military effort. Some historians have argued that when Federal armies in this region faced problems associated with guerrillas and hostile Confederate civilians they responded by resolutely embracing the hard hand of war – which is true, but only half the story. These same challenges also simultaneously inspired many Union officials to work to establish and abide by certain constraints.