Conduct

Confederates and Unionists would never achieve their stated national purposes without the triumph of their respective armies. Each nation’s standing—including emancipation in the United States—depended entirely on the conduct of military institutions populated largely by common citizens of each republic. This chapter demonstrates how each government subscribed to notions of just war theory: how nations justified, explained, limited, and expanded military conduct in accordance with the laws of war and the self-defined standards of “civilization.” To exceed or ignore a just war delegitimized a national cause before a reproving global community. Both the United States and Confederacy claimed principal standing among the western community of nations, influencing how both republics restrained military conduct while always being mindful that escalation and destruction necessitated legal and martial justification. Ultimately, the chapter questions the veracity of the American Civil War as a “total war,” contributing to a decades-long scholarly debate.