Was U.S. Civil War a just war?

[estesbob]

I have not read the whole thread, but I would say it was not a just war at all. Had the North allowed the Southern states to secede, the union would have shrunk, true, but there would have been no loss of life, over 600,000 I think was the final tally. For it to be a just war, more than 600,000 lives would have to have been presumed to be lost if the war did not happen. **Slavery would have died on its own, as many nations had already banned it and I suspect would have started to boycott Southern cotton. **Much the same thing happened in South Africa. If I am not mistaken, I thought Virginia insisted on the right to secede when it signed the Constitution.

Joseph Sobran surmised that if the South had been allowed to leave the Union, Roe v Wade might never have happened. The country was conservative enough in '73 that some state might have left, had there been a precedent to do so in the 1800’s. Where in the Constitution is a state forbidden to leave? Where in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to attack Americans? (Apologies to Mr. Sobran, I’m sure I am parphrasing poorly)

I guess one perspective would be differnet if one were one of the 4.5 million human beings enslaved. Slavery was an abject evil and it needed to be ended by any means necessary.

 

[Steve40]

I guess one perspective would be differnet if one were one of the 4.5 million human beings enslaved. Slavery was an abject evil and it needed to be ended by any means necessary.

Both you and Little Flower gave me something to think about. Little Flower almost over came my northern bias but you make a good point too. However, I struggle with the end justifying the means. I believe that both your means and your ends must be moral and, that is the question, were the means of war moral? Is the death of 600,000 worth the freedom of 4.5 million? I’d like to say I’d give my life for it, but 1.5 million children in the womb are considered property today and are put to death every year. I give far less than my life for them.
I disagree with thinking that slavery would have ended anyway and the best thing to do was nothing , perhaps I grow impatient with the killing of children today, doing nothing for the sake of myself.

 

[didymus]

The better question, from a truly Catholic perspective, would be; which war, if any, that the U.S. has fought, was just?

  						The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. 								The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. 								**At one and the same time**:

• the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
• all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
• there must be serious prospects of success;
• the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
  These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

The simple answer to your question is NO. I doubt that any war, anywhere, ever has lived up to all the standards of the just war doctrine.
It is impossible to get people to kill their brethren without at the same time hating them which, of course, leads to all the evils & excesses of war.

 

[DanteAlighieri]

The better question, from a truly Catholic perspective, would be; which war, if any, that the U.S. has fought, was just?

Easy: the Second World War.

Peace,
Dante

 

[JohnnyReb]

I’m biased and from NY state. But if I remember correctly the South drew first blood by attacking a Federal location. This justified the North going to war, it was an act of war as a first aggressor. The North had the right to retaliate. I don’t believe the North would have gone to war lightly. Again just based upon my understanding of history (which the winner usually writes), the plan for the North was to let more free states come into the Union and politically remove slavery. The North went to war to preserve the Union. They had the legitimate authority to govern and this authority was under attack.

The abolishment of slavery was a by product of the war and not the original reason for going to war. However, the injustice of slavery is grave enough, worth dying or killing for. All actions of all commanding officers and men can not be justified but this is not what makes a war unjust.

I think the guide lines from your link are vague and the reality is that God gives civil authority. That authority can be used for the common good or not. Since God gives the authority He shall be the Judge. The Pope and Magisterium of the Church have a right and responsibility to comment on wars, but just as civil authority does not come from the Pope, ultimate judgment over a war being just or not will not come from us or the Pope and the Magisterium.

Well from my user name, you can tell my answer will probably be just as biased.

Pope Pius IX sent a letter to president Jefferson Davis, which was addressed in the following manner:

This Pope called Jeff Davis “Honorable President of the Confederacy.” …

Civil War scholars debate as to whether this constitutes an official recognition of the Confederacy by Pope Pius IX, but the Pope never said anything in support of the Union, and the Union cause, that I am aware of.

I do not think that starving women and children, the needless loss of thousands of men on both sides, the burning of towns, cities, and crops in the south, was justified by the end of slavery, which most likely would have been ended even if the South had won. It is not a viable economic system.

The Southern states stated that they merely wanted to be left alone and allowed to secede from the Union. They wanted to negotiate their independence with Lincoln. The Confederate government told Lincoln that they would consider the reinforcement and restocking of Fort Sumter with more food and munions as an act of aggression. Lincoln reinforced the fort, the South fired. Each side will continue to say that the other was the aggressor. According to just war, it could be argued that the South was justified in defending themselves from aggression by firing on the fort.

 

[JohnnyReb]

I guess one perspective would be differnet if one were one of the 4.5 million human beings enslaved. Slavery was an abject evil and it needed to be ended by any means necessary.

Ends justify the means, do they?

 

[Ahimsa]

Mary, you are exactly right. In many ways the Civil War was a constitutional crisis. Prior to the CW it was the United States are in all documents - a clear reference to the fact that we were not the nation that we are today. The concept of one nation, under God, indivisible is a result of the CW. After the fact not because of the fact.

In other words: development of doctrine!

 

[Ahimsa]

Does Just War Theory apply to (1) intra-national, civic rebellions only; or (2) both civic rebellions and conflicts between independent states; or (3) international conflicts only? Seems to me that the theory applies only to number 3.

As such, a civic rebellion such as the Civil War would not fall under Just War Theory regulations.

 

[estesbob]

Well from my user name, you can tell my answer will probably be just as biased.

Pope Pius IX sent a letter to president Jefferson Davis, which was addressed in the following manner:

This Pope called Jeff Davis “Honorable President of the Confederacy.” …

Civil War scholars debate as to whether this constitutes an official recognition of the Confederacy by Pope Pius IX, but the Pope never said anything in support of the Union, and the Union cause, that I am aware of.

I do not think that starving women and children, the needless loss of thousands of men on both sides, the burning of towns, cities, and crops in the south, was justified by the end of slavery, which most likely would have been ended even if the South had won. It is not a viable economic system.

The Southern states stated that they merely wanted to be left alone and allowed to secede from the Union. They wanted to negotiate their independence with Lincoln. The Confederate government told Lincoln that they would consider the reinforcement and restocking of Fort Sumter with more food and munions as an act of aggression. Lincoln reinforced the fort, the South fired. Each side will continue to say that the other was the aggressor. According to just war, it could be argued that the South was justified in defending themselves from aggression by firing on the fort.

The South seceded over slavery. it was only after the war that they started the nonsense about the “lost cause” and "states rights’. The Southern States held 4.5 million people in brutal bondage. I can not beleive that in day and age anyone even attempts to defend what the South stood for.

 

[estesbob]

Ends justify the means, do they?

I am at a loss for words that you even attempt to defend, more or less try and justify the confederacy. Boggles ones mind.

 

[Zooey]

Even a cursory reading of the articles of secession of the rebelling States will show that the ONLY Stae Right that was at issue was the Right to own Slaves.

Piffle. Pshaw. Pfui.
The 1st state to legalize slavery:Massachusetts.
The 1st to abolish the slave trade:Virginia.
Lincoln, the “liberator” was a white supremacist & favored apartheid & deporting all blacks.

I have not read the whole thread, but I would say it was not a just war at all. Had the North allowed the Southern states to secede, the union would have shrunk, but there would have been no loss of life, over 600,000 I think was the final tally. For it to be a just war, more than 600,000 lives would have to have been presumed to be lost if the war did not happen. Slavery would have died on its own…Much the same thing happened in South Africa. If I am not mistaken, I thought Virginia insisted on the right to secede when it signed the Constitution.

Right! As did the others. West Point was teaching secession as a right when the 1st shots were fired.

… if the South had been allowed to leave the Union, Roe v Wade might never have happened.

It would not, & could not have happened.

Where in the Constitution is a state forbidden to leave? Where in the Constitution is the federal government authorized to attack Americans?

It isn’t!!! On the contrary.

Pope Pius IX sent a letter to president Jefferson Davis, which was addressed to the]“Honorable President of the Confederacy.” …
Civil War scholars debate as to whether this constitutes an official recognition of the Confederacy by Pope Pius IX, but the Pope never said anything in support of the Union, and the Union cause, that I am aware of.

I do not think that starving women and children, the needless loss of thousands of men on both sides, the burning of towns, cities, and crops in the south, was justified by the end of slavery, which most likely would have been ended even if the South had won. It is not a viable economic system.

The Southern states stated that they merely wanted to be left alone and allowed to secede from the Union. They wanted to negotiate their independence with Lincoln. The Confederate government told Lincoln that they would consider the reinforcement and restocking of Fort Sumter with more food and munions as an act of aggression. Lincoln reinforced the fort, the South fired. Each side will continue to say that the other was the aggressor. According to just war, it could be argued that the South was justified in defending themselves from aggression by firing on the fort.

Amen!!

 

[Zooey]

Does Just War Theory apply to (1) intra-national, civic rebellions only; or (2) both civic rebellions and conflicts between independent states; or (3) international conflicts only? Seems to me that the theory applies only to number 3.

As such, a civic rebellion such as the Civil War would not fall under Just War Theory regulations.

It was not a civil war. It was as much a war for independence as the American Revolution.

The South seceded over slavery. it was only after the war that they started the nonsense about the “lost cause” and "states rights’. The Southern States held 4.5 million people in brutal bondage. I can not beleive that in day and age anyone even attempts to defend what the South stood for.

Bologna.
The “free” blacks in the north were in bondage to Yankee slave peddlers.
I know; they worked out of my own hometown: The local stop on the Underground Railroad was run by slavecatchers, who sold the escapees, as well as Native Americans, & poor whites. To slaveholders wherever they could find them.

I am at a loss for words that you even attempt to defend, more or less try and justify the confederacy. Boggles ones mind.

Again, bologna.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m sorry, but you don’t. Yankees invented the anti-slavery argument to cover their backsides.
You have been reading too much Yankee fiction, & not enough of the facts of the case.
The war had nothing to do with slavery, nothing to do with civil rights for anyone. Yankees fought to preserve their fortunes.
We Confederates fought for our lives, our homes, & our sacred honor.
In the South, slaves could earn money & buy their freedom. When they hit the north, the Yankee “liberators” sold them for cold hard cash.Fact. Not fiction.
There were more slaveholders in the north, than in the Confederacy. They SOLD their slaves for a tidy profit, while Southerners were freeing slaves!
Abraham Lincoln wanted to sell all blacks–slave & freedmen–back to the slave traders in Western Africa. He didn’t consider them fit to be in the company of white people. He believed in apartheid. He was a white supremicist.
Those are the facts.
The **fiction **is what the north has been peddling ever since.

The War For Southern Independence was a Just War against an unjust aggressor.
The injustice is all in what the Yankee profiteers did to the South. Including people of colour.

 

[Nino]

So the South thought BUT Britain had been stockpiling cotton for years in anticipation of a war.

The closest Britain came to entering the war was not over Cotton or Slaves-it was over the Trent affai-caused wehen an American Man of War stopped a British ship and pulled off the Confederate Diplomats

 

[Nino]

.in the 1790 census.NY reported over 21,000 slaves…Mass reported zero…Virginia had the most 293,000…NY outlawed slavery on July 4th ,1827…the old cemetery I work and lecture at has slaves or former slaves buried there,I contacted the local African american church and a sizable group came up and we had a dignified ceremony on that day…Lincoln lampooned that silly argument of the south over here at Cooper Inst…in Feb 1860…'the south claims if we try and keep them in the union,they will fire and kill us …that .well we are the murderers…like a highwayman who robs us and then says…if you resist,we will kill you and your the murderer…now thats cool!" Yes boys and girls,it was Abe Lincoln who first used that expression…'thats cool" back in 1860!!! Its trendy for the ruling class to hit the great men of our past…that way…the Clintons,Bushes,FDRs etc dont look quite so bad…yeh sure!Abes last speech had to do with the freed blacks being allowed to attend schools next to whites…that sealed his doom…my three favorite presidents…Washington,LIncoln and Teddy Roosevelt…George for he was the first,Abe for he kept our nation intact and Teddy for all the rest…Nino

 

[a_priori]

If the South had been allowed to secede I wonder how they could have expected God’s blessing when they thought owning people was OK.

With two prominent Union generals in the family tree I should probably recuse myself from this discussion/debate/argument. Everyone sees what they see and I don’t think any minds will be changed.

 

[LRThunder]

It was not a civil war. It was as much a war for independence as the American Revolution.

Bologna.
The “free” blacks in the north were in bondage to Yankee slave peddlers.
I know; they worked out of my own hometown: The local stop on the Underground Railroad was run by slavecatchers, who sold the escapees, as well as Native Americans, & poor whites. To slaveholders wherever they could find them.
Again, bologna.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m sorry, but you don’t. Yankees invented the anti-slavery argument to cover their backsides.
You have been reading too much Yankee fiction, & not enough of the facts of the case.
The war had nothing to do with slavery, nothing to do with civil rights for anyone. Yankees fought to preserve their fortunes.
We Confederates fought for our lives, our homes, & our sacred honor.
In the South, slaves could earn money & buy their freedom. When they hit the north, the Yankee “liberators” sold them for cold hard cash.Fact. Not fiction.
There were more slaveholders in the north, than in the Confederacy. They SOLD their slaves for a tidy profit, while Southerners were freeing slaves!
Abraham Lincoln wanted to sell all blacks–slave & freedmen–back to the slave traders in Western Africa. He didn’t consider them fit to be in the company of white people. He believed in apartheid. He was a white supremicist.
Those are the facts.
The **fiction **is what the north has been peddling ever since.

The War For Southern Independence was a Just War against an unjust aggressor.
The injustice is all in what the Yankee profiteers did to the South. Including people of colour.

The Civil War was nowhere NEAR the American Revolution. The only infringement on southern “liberties” (ironic since they kept a portion of their population in chains) was in their minds.

Before the Civil War, there was only a small movement for abolition. Most of the North just wanted to stop the expansion of slavery. Had the South realized that distinction, there probably would not have been secession and thus no Civil War.

Granted, most of the opposition to slavery was not for humane reasons and Lincoln wasn’t a saint, but 7 of the 11 Confederacy states pulled out just because a candidate they liked won, which is a poor reason to secede. I could understand Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas’s reasons for leaving, even if I disagree with them.

 

[estesbob]

It was not a civil war. It was as much a war for independence as the American Revolution.

.

The South Fought to protect slavery. Period. :

Methodist Rev. John T. Wightman, preaching at Yorkville, South Carolina: “The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South . . . This war is the servant of slavery.” The Glory of God, the Defence of the South (1861), cited in Eugene Genovese’s **Consuming Fire **(1998).]
From the Confederate Constitution:

• Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
• Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: “The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government.”

From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:“The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves.” (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: “No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country.” (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: “Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.” [Augusta, Georgia, *Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]

• John C. Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina: “The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail.”
• James H. Hammond, Congressman from South Carolina: “Sir, I do firmly believe that domestic slavery, regulated as ours is, produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth.”
• Hammond again, from later in the same speech: *“the moment this House undertakes to legislate upon this subject [slavery], it dissolves the Union. Should it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, *I will abandon it the instant the first decisive step is taken looking towards legislation of this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, practice, disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this republic sink in blood.”
• Henry Wise, Congressman (and future governor) from Virginia: “The principle of slavery is a leveling principle; it is friendly to equality. Break down slavery and you would with the same blow break down the great democratic principle of equality among men.”

 

[estesbob]

Piffle. Pshaw. Pfui.
The 1st state to legalize slavery:Massachusetts.
The 1st to abolish the slave trade:Virginia.
Lincoln, the “liberator” was a white supremacist & favored apartheid & deporting all blacks.

Selected Statistics on Slavery in the United States

(unless otherwise noted, all data is as of the 1860 census)

**Total number of slaves in the Lower South : 2,312,352 (47% of total population). **

**Total number of slaves in the Upper South: 1,208758 (29% of total population). **

**Total number of slaves in the Border States: 432,586 (13% of total population). **

**Almost one-third of all Southern families owned slaves. In Mississippi and South Carolina it approached one half. The total number of slave owners was 385,000 (including, in Louisiana, some free Negroes). As for the number of slaves owned by each master, 88% held fewer than twenty, and nearly 50% held fewer than five. (A complete table on slave-owning percentages is given at the bottom of this page.) **

**For comparison’s sake, let it be noted that in the 1950’s, only 2% of American families owned corporation stocks equal in value to the 1860 value of a single slave. Thus, slave ownership was much more widespread in the South than corporate investment was in 1950’s America. **

**On a typical plantation (more than 20 slaves) the capital value of the slaves was greater than the capital value of the land and implements. **

Confederate enlistment data is incomplete because many records were lost when the South collapsed, but it is possible to estimate, very loosely, the number of men in the Confederate army who came from slave-holding families. For this discussion, click here.

**Slavery was profitable, although a large part of the profit was in the increased value of the slaves themselves. With only 30% of the nation’s (free) population, the South had 60% of the “wealthiest men.” The 1860 per capita income in the South was $3,978; in the North it was $2,040. **

members.aol.com/jfepperson/stat.html

 

[JohnnyReb]

The South seceded over slavery. it was only after the war that they started the nonsense about the “lost cause” and "states rights’. The Southern States held 4.5 million people in brutal bondage. I can not beleive that in day and age anyone even attempts to defend what the South stood for.

No, not all the southern states seceded over slavery. The lower South cited slavery as a cause, but also tariffs. But when Lincoln called for 75,000 troops to launch a war against against their southern brothers, Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina left the Union. Maryland and Kentucky did would have as well had the Lincoln administration not illegally interfered with their state governments from voting on the matter.

 

[JohnnyReb]

The South Fought to protect slavery. Period. :

Methodist Rev. John T. Wightman, preaching at Yorkville, South Carolina: “The triumphs of Christianity rest this very hour upon slavery; and slavery depends on the triumphs of the South . . . This war is the servant of slavery.” The Glory of God, the Defence of the South (1861), cited in Eugene Genovese’s **Consuming Fire **(1998).]
From the Confederate Constitution:

• Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: “No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.”
• Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: “The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government.”

From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:“The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves.” (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: “No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country.” (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: “Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition.” [Augusta, Georgia, *Daily Constitutionalist,

March 30, 1861.]

• John C. Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina: “The defence of human liberty against the aggressions of despotic power have been always the most efficient in States where domestic slavery was to prevail.”
• James H. Hammond, Congressman from South Carolina: “Sir, I do firmly believe that domestic slavery, regulated as ours is, produces the highest toned, the purest, best organization of society that has ever existed on the face of the earth.”
• Hammond again, from later in the same speech: *“the moment this House undertakes to legislate upon this subject [slavery], it dissolves the Union. Should it be my fortune to have a seat upon this floor, *I will abandon it the instant the first decisive step is taken looking towards legislation of this subject. I will go home to preach, and if I can, practice, disunion, and civil war, if needs be. A revolution must ensue, and this republic sink in blood.”
• Henry Wise, Congressman (and future governor) from Virginia: “The principle of slavery is a leveling principle; it is friendly to equality. Break down slavery and you would with the same blow break down the great democratic principle of equality among men.”

Here is an essay on the causes of the war from a southern point of view for you to read. Its too long to reproduce in a post here.

This sums it up well:

There were those, a few years ago, who were especially devoted to the somewhat stereotyped phrase that in our Civil War one side (meaning the North) “was wholly and eternally right,” while the other side (meaning the South) “was wholly and eternally wrong.” I might cite those on the Southern side of the great controversy, equally sincere and fully as able, who would have been glad to persuade posterity that the North was “wholly and eternally wrong”; that her people waged war upon sister States who sought peacefully to set up a homogeneous government, and meditated no wrong or warfare upon the remaining sister States. These Southern leaders steadfastly maintained that the Southern people, in the exercise of the freedom and sovereign rights purchased by Revolutionary blood, were asserting a second independence according to the teachings and example of their fathers.