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

McPherson’s close reading of his fellow historians’ influential texts is characterized by counterpoints that build upon the moral considerations introduced in Chapters 1 and 2. Stout’s and Neely’s texts are diametrically opposed, for while Stout presents the war as total war and criticizes the elevation of moral issues to political issues, Neely claims that the remarkable restraint is undergirded by moral convictions. McPherson comments on both historians’ perspectives, noting that “Neely’s article had great influence. Few historians now describe the Civil War as a total war. Harry Stout was the last to do so, in 2006” (47). With Stout and Neely being on opposite ends of the spectrum, McPherson occupies a midpoint, promoting a thesis of “hard war” (47) that does not take a middle ground on issues of morality or destruction. 

When discussing Stout’s lack of determination on which side acted justly according to the terms of jus ad bellum, McPherson poses the rhetorical question, “In what war, we might ask, did one side or the other not consider its cause just?” (33). He highlights Stout’s “twist of logic” (37) whereby Stout distinguishes between Black and white soldiers fighting for the same cause of freedom as just and unjust, respectively. McPherson’s sarcastic and derisive tone communicates his belief that the morality and conduct of the North lies in good standing. McPherson’s determination requires elevating abolition, and thus the lives of Black people, to a priority that is not secondary to white wealth and power, as exemplified by his explanation that the total war thesis “focused on the radical transformation of the Southern socioeconomic order as well as on the destruction caused by the conflict” (48). Thus, in his judgment, the Civil War “destroyed the wealth and national political power of the Southern planter class” (48). 

The inclusion of these statements at the beginning of Chapter 4 serves two purposes. First, McPherson contextualizes Stout’s equivocating perspective, which is described in Chapter 3. One can only find moral equivalence in the Confederate murder of Union prisoners of war and Union destruction of Confederate civilians’ property if losing a mere way of life for a few is judged to be just as important as losing or diminishing the lives of an entire group of people. Second, this analytical framework sets the stage for McPherson to refute Neely’s remarkable restraint thesis. Confederate guerillas carried out savage plundering and pillaging expeditions in Missouri, East Tennessee, and other Confederate and border territories, killing in cold blood and terrorizing civilians. Sherman and Sheridan’s destruction of Confederate private property was a strategy adopted in the face of the Confederates’ unconventional war tactics, and it only targeted civilians who were a part of guerilla bands. In Chapter 9, McPherson returns to the strategy and its relationship to emancipation, and his juxtaposition of Confederate and Union aims and war conduct illustrates his judgment of which side is on the right side of morality. 

McPherson’s moral determination is also encapsulated in his defense of Abraham Lincoln’s character from Stout and Goldfield’s criticism. In their view, Lincoln’s role as a messianic figure in American civil religion renders him emblematic of the problematic insertion of moral causes into political issues. However, McPherson challenges their assessment of Lincoln by noting that Lincoln professes not to know the will of God. This discussion of Lincoln begins building on The Impact of Leadership and Individual Actions on Historical Outcomes. 

Moreover, McPherson highlights increasing religiosity as a phenomenon propelled by the war’s high level of death and destruction. In Chapter 4, his exposition of the role of Christianity and personal salvation in reckoning with death and destruction, as seen through the lenses of Schantz and Faust, underscores the moral absolutism discussion in Chapter 3. Authors from both chapters assert The Transformation of the American National Identity, but they also lend credence to the idea that there is some justness to be found on both sides. However, by contesting Schantz and Faust’s assertion that the reckoning strategies from both sides are the greatest legacies of the Civil War, and instead awarding that honor to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, McPherson again communicates that his moral determination is firmly entrenched on the Union side.