Upon the Altar of the Nation (79 page)

The system of total war employed in the West aimed at subjugating entire races of people. Incredibly, as he did with Confederate women and children during the Civil War, Sheridan defined the Indians as the “aggressors” deserving destruction. In a letter to Sherman in 1873, Sheridan drew on their Civil War experiences as justification for the Indian wars:

General Sherman agreed. In response to the Fetterman massacre of December 21, 1866, Sherman had dictated: “We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women, and children.”
⁵
If Sherman did not literally intend extermination, the rhetoric certainly succeeded in bringing terror to the life of every Indian—man, woman, and child.

Americans don’t want to concede the unforgivable wrongs committed by the likes of Lincoln, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Lee, Forrest, Early, and Davis. Individual acts of immorality occur in all wars. But armies are hierarchies, and responsibility ultimately resides at the top. The web of lies, suppression, and evasion that developed in the Civil War not only shock but also bear witness to the power of war to corrupt—especially at the top. Predictably, as the war continued, the abuses grew ever greater. These were not a rational “measured response” to essentially political challenges, as justifiers of the carnage would like to believe. Rather, the abuses reflected a feeding frenzy of blood for blood’s sake. Nobody significant on either side was ever held to account. Privates may have been executed for rape, but no commanding officer was ever executed for creating the orders and culture in which rape could easily take place. No commanding officer that we know of ordered the death of prisoners of war. But by creating a war with no thought for prisons and prisoners and by refusing all attempts at exchange and amelioration, they again created the environment in which unimaginable suffering and death took place.

Why is it important to finally write the moral history of the Civil War? It’s important because we are its legates, and if we question nothing from that costly conflict, then we need question nothing in conflicts of the present and future. Issues of discrimination and proportionality recur in every war. The Civil War does not provide an especially encouraging model in this regard, especially if the crimes go largely unnoticed beneath the natural urge to forget and move on. But as with the Holocaust, if we forget, we do so at great peril to our own humanity.

Judging the Civil War is not a brief for pacifism. Rather, it is an endorsement of the idea of a just war. There are no ideal wars. Peace is the only ideal, and every war is at some level a perversion of it. In a less than ideal world, however, in which we sometimes labor under a moral imperative to war, we cannot afford to do less than demand a just war and a merciful outcome.

The idea for this book first took shape during a conversation with my friend and colleague John Demos in the early 1990s. We talked about new research projects and I mentioned long-standing interests in American religious history, and newly emerging interests in the Civil War as the “fulcrum” of American history. I told him that I did not want to write a “religious history” of the war that focused exclusively on chaplains and ministers, though their words would certainly be important. Nor did I want to write an exclusively military history of the war, though battles too would be central. After listening for a little longer he replied, “Well, it sounds to me like you’re interested in writing a moral history of the Civil War.”

“A moral history of the Civil War.” I now possessed a title in search of a book. Twelve years and many turns in the road later, I completed the book and “rewarded” John with the first look. Despite the rigorous demands on his own writing schedule, he read the manuscript carefully and offered critical advice and encouragement. Obviously I remain solely responsible for the arguments (and mistakes) in this book, but without that guiding title, I doubt I would have ever undertaken the project.

Two other early readers slogged through rough drafts of chapters and, in the process, gave friendship and collegiality new meaning. They are Grant Wacker of Duke University Divinity School and Robert Bonner of Michigan State.

While I would not—could not—write a technically sophisticated military history of the Civil War, it increasingly became clear to me that the battles had to represent the spine of the narrative. In writing my way through the war, I have depended heavily on the multivolume classics by Allan Nevins, Bruce Catton, and Shelby Foote. James M. McPherson’s
Battle Cry of Freedom
combined all of those chroniclers’ verve and style with a social historian’s eye for political and economic context that renders his history one for the ages. My footnotes only begin to express how much I have relied on that book, and his other writings on slavery and the Civil War.

Research libraries are every scholar’s home away from home. Three have been especially essential to this book. First and foremost, I owe a debt of gratitude to Yale University, whose unrivaled libraries and generous sabbaticals supplied the time needed to engage in the systematic research and writing required to complete this project. A special thanks to Nancy Godleski for introducing me to electronic resources on the Civil War that I never knew existed.

Two research archives deserve special thanks for their long-term support. First, on this project, as with every other book I have written, the American Antiquarian Society has stood in a league of its own. For resources and collegial support I cannot imagine a better environment. In particular, I wish to thank Nancy Burkett, Joanne Chaison, Maria Lamoreux, Thomas Knoles, Georgia B. Barnhill, John Hench, and the Director, Ellen Dunlap. Second, I wish to acknowledge the Presbyterian Historical Society and its staff in Philadelphia for providing access to their superb newspaper collections. A special word of thanks goes to Frederick Heuser, Kenneth J. Ross, and Boyd Reese.

For fellowship awards that funded research assistants and travel monies I am indebted to the Pew Charitable Trusts’ senior scholar’s awards, administered by Joel Carpenter; to Yale University, especially Susan Hockfield and Barbara Shailor; and to the Association of Theological Schools’ Lilly Faculty Fellowship program.

To cover a subject as broad as this it is necessary to visit archival collections throughout the country. Invariably I found the staffs of these libraries and historical societies eager to render assistance on everything from bibliography to local restaurants. In no particular order I wish to thank: the Huntington Library and Art Gallery; the Louisiana State University Archives; the Baptist Historical Society at the University of Richmond; Emory University; the John Hay Library at Brown University; the Robert E. Speer Library at Princeton Theological Seminary; the Newberry Library; Tulane University Archives; the University of Notre Dame; the New York Public Library; the Chicago Historical Society; the Georgia Historical Society; the University of Texas Barker Center for American History; the University of North Carolina Southern Collection; Duke University’s Perkin Library; the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee; the Disciples of Christ Archives, Nashville; Vanderbilt Divinity School; the Confederate Museum in Richmond; the Virginia Historical Society; the South Carolina Historical Society, Charleston; the South Caroliniana Library, Columbia; the William Smith Morton Library at Union Theological Seminary of Virginia; the Alabama Department of Archives and History; and the Library of Congress.

Friends and family helped with penetrating questions and warm accommodations on frequent and far-flung research trips. I especially thank Laura Mitchel Lauretan in Washington, D.C.; Debbie and Scott Robinson in Richmond, Virginia; Douglas Sweeney, then a graduate assistant at Vanderbilt Divinity School; and James Early in Charleston, South Carolina. Closer to home, Susan Stout offered unstinting encouragement—and friendly prodding—to “get back to the book,” and I will be forever in her debt. My children, Deborah and James, have always encouraged my work, but in this case they also worked multiple summers Xeroxing sermons and newspapers, cataloguing books, and compiling bibliographies. In every sense of the term they were research assistants and I thank them.

From my first arrival at Yale twenty years ago, my colleagues in history and religious studies have been a scholar’s dream come true. They are also wonderful friends who took time from their own busy schedules to read my manuscript in its entirety. I especially thank David Blight, Jon Butler, Johnny Mack Faragher, Glenda Gilmore, Kenneth Minkema, Gene Outka, and the aforementioned John Demos. Towards the end of the project, Sarah Hammond took time away from graduate work to offer insightful assistance with text editing and fact checking.

Outside of Yale, another group of old and new friends also read the completed manuscript, saving me from many errors. I am pleased to acknowledge James F. Cooper Jr., Allen Guelzo, James Block, Bertram Wyatt-Brown, John Boles, Bernard Lytton, and Christopher Grasso.

For expert editorial assistance and guidance on the organization and layout of the manuscript I owe a special debt to Deborah H. DeFord. Deborah also offered expert guidance on the book’s illustrations and maps. The maps were prepared ably by Adrian Kitzinger. My agent, Andrew Wylie, has proved to be a vigorous promoter of my book and a careful reader. The staff at Viking Penguin, in particular my unfailingly wise editor, Wendy Wolf, and her assistant, Clifford Corcoran, have offered superb assistance every step of the way.

Several institutions offered me opportunities to present my work in progress, and the exchanges that took place on those occasions invariably clarified my thinking. I want to thank the departments of history and religion at the following universities: Duke University, the Yale Center for the Study of Religion in American Life, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Notre Dame, Calvin College, Union College in Tennessee, the University of Connecticut, Baylor University, Messiah College, St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia, the University of Florida, Princeton University, and Arizona State University

Some of the last reading of my father, Harry Stober Stout, consisted of the final chapters of my book, just coming to life as his was ebbing. I am profoundly grateful that he lived to read the first draft and offer his wise observations on war and the meaning of America from his experiences in the Pacific in World War II. Even as I looked back on the life and influence of my father in the writing of this book, I have looked forward to my grandchildren and the moral decisions their generation will be called upon to make. It is to both past and future that I dedicate this book.

1
Axtell, “Moral History of Indian-White Relations Revisited,” in his
After Columbus,
20.

2
Of Christian just-war theorists, the most important were Francisco de Vitoria (1486-1546), Francisco Suárez (1548—1617), Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1704), Christian Wolff (1679-1754), and Emmerich de Vattel (1714-1767).

3
Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars;
Ramsey,
Just War;
Elshtain,
Just War Theory;
Best,
Humanity in Warfare;
Johnson,
Just War Tradition;
O‘Brien,
Conduct of Just and Limited War.

4
Unlike Realpolitik, just-war theory refuses to separate politics from ethics. See Elshtain, “Just War as Politics,” in Decosse,
But Was It Just?
43-60.

5
On civil wars, see Walzer,
Just and Unjust Wars,
96.

6
See the argument in Parish, “War for the Union as a Just War,” in Adams and van Minnen,
Aspects of War in American History,
82.

7
Allen,
Constitution and the Union,
12—13. On the moral ambiguities of secession see Buchanan, Secession. Less persuasive—because it is more polemical—is Charles Adams,
When in the Course of Human Events.
For an incisive critique of Adams’s “neo-Confederate” reading of secession, see Feller, “Libertarians in the Attic,” 184-94.

8
Fred Anderson,
Crucible of War.

9
In terms of total-war language, definitions are crucial. Two important works that challenge my sense of “total” war are Neely, “Was the Civil War a Total War?” 27, and Grimsley,
Hard Hand of War.
Both of these historians aptly employ technical definitions of total war originating in World War II to refer to the deliberate murder of civilians with unprecedented weapons of mass destruction. But, in my opinion, the
mentality
of total war existed in the Civil War and prepared Americans for greater destructions once the technology emerged. “Savage” wars (of which white Americans were superb practitioners) routinely blurred the distinctions between soldiers and civilians, but I would not necessarily term wars against Indians “total.” My definition, as will become clear through the text, is more historically relative and traces the seeds of twentieth-century “modern” wars of universal mobilization to the Civil War. For works that take up a total-war terminology see, for example, Johnson,
Just War Tradition,
281—326; Janda, “Shutting the Gates of Mercy,” 7—26; and Winik,
April 1865.

10
This point is powerfully argued in William Lee Miller,
Lincoln’s Virtues,
436-40.