Reluctance to Kill in a Just War?

Both Skip Stout and Drew Gilpin Faust mention a phenomenon of the Civil War that I find interesting, especially as it relates to Stout’s reluctance to declare a final moral judgment over whether or not the reasons for the civil war are “just” or not.[1]  Soldiers of both armies, North and South, “though patriots and nonpacifists, could not bring themselves to kill another human being in the heat of battle.” [2] Or, as Faust put it, “Civil War killing… required work – intellectual and psychological effort to address religious and emotional constraints.” [3] Soldiers did not want to kill their enemies because they believed it was wrong, both naturally and religiously.

To overcome this natural reluctance to kill, “Sermons and religious publications North and South invoked the explored the traditional “just war” doctrine, emphasizing that killing was not merely tolerated but required in God’s service. There is “nothing in the demands of a just and defensive warfare at variance with the spirit and duties of Christianity,” an oft-reprinted tract for soldiers emphasized.” [4] With preachers, chaplains, tracts, Christian magazines and other sources of religious authority urging men on to kill their fellow countrymen, the scruples of the ordinary solider could not help but be often overcome.

Could the Civil War not take on an overtly religious dimension for both its participants and its onlookers with religious authorities on both sides making vocal arguments that it was not only acceptable, but a duty to God to kill the enemy?  If we could remove the influence of chaplains, “fighting parsons,” tracts, and other religious authorities as authorizers of the killing via a counter-factual argument, how different would the Civil War look?  Finally, and most importantly in my mind, what does this reluctance of soldiers on both sides to kill say about Stout’s reluctance to make a final judgment about whether or not the war is just?

[1] Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: a Moral History of the American Civil War (New York: Viking Adult, 2006), 457-8.

[2] Stout, 341

[3] Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (New York: Knopf, 2008), 33.

[4] Ibid.