By Doug Bandow

America's worst conflict ended 150 years ago today. Well, almost. On April 9, 1865 Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, the South's most successful fighting force, at Appomattox. Gen. Joseph E. Johnston didn't yield his threadbare command in North Carolina until April 18. Other residual forces continued in the field until May.

Nevertheless, Lee's meeting with Union commander Ulysses S. Grant was both the practical end of Confederate resistance and essential beginning of national reconciliation. The conflict killed perhaps 750,000 Americans, ravaged much of the South, malformed the national government, and destroyed America's political checks and balances. The Civil War was the nation's most consequential conflict. As such, it offers important lessons for Americans today.

Never has a war better illustrated the adage that the victors write the histories. What could possibly justify four years of mass slaughter and destruction? 

Southerners contended that states had a constitutional right to secede. There were fair arguments on both sides. However a dispassionate court might rule, the more important question was: what could warrant killing those on the other side of the debate? In particular, why should a democratic republic with a limited government built on a commitment to individual liberty respond to dissatisfied citizens desiring to join a new political community by killing them — as well as invading their lands, overthrowing their institutions, and burning their homes? Even if Southerners were acting foolishly and illegally in advocating secession, as I believe, they surely did not deserve this response.

Eliminating slavery would have offered a powerful moral cause for war. Human bondage was no minor blemish, but a fatal flaw of Southern society. And no government which uses its power to hold people in slavery can be either moral or limited. However, abolition isn't why the two sections fought. The seven Deep South states left out of fear for the security of their "peculiar institution." But ever-practical Abraham Lincoln called out the troops to maintain the Union, not outlaw human bondage. Racism was rife in the North and abolitionists were a decided minority. A call to arms for liberating slaves would have brought forth a trickle rather than flood of army recruits.

After Lincoln raised troops to invade the seceding seven, another four slave states left, dramatically expanding the Confederacy's resources, including population and industry. Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia had been inclined to stay in the national union, but not if doing so meant attacking their Southern brethren. Washington's decision for war extinguished what Unionist sentiment remained. These four states left over the principle of a voluntary political relationship, which Lincoln and most Northerners were not prepared to accept.

Of course, Lincoln had adroitly maneuvered the South into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. In this way the Confederacy's leadership greatly strengthened the Union's hand. But that single act of war did not justify general war. The North invaded to reclaim the South, not just Fort Sumter.

Few on either side had any conception of what they were getting into. Former U.S. Senator James Chesnut of South Carolina spoke for many in North and South alike when he offered to drink all of the blood that would be shed as a result of secession. Many in both sections thought a small battle or two would end the affair. One of the few to accurately glimpse the future was William T. Sherman, who warned Southern friends that "This nation will be drenched in blood." 

Of course, he did much to make that prediction come true.

The conflict started small. The first major fight occurred at the Battle of Bull Run (or Manassas) on July 21, 1861. Both sides bungled badly but the North's forces did worse. Total  casualties ran about 4900, with fewer than 1000 dead. That was a hideous toll at the time, but soon such a result would seem like a minor skirmish. The Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) on September 17, 1862 yielded the greatest single-day toll of the war, 23,000 casualties, with about 3600 dead. In the summer of 1864 the slaughter was epic, with Gen. Grant's Army of the Potomac alone losing close to 60,000, roughly as many soldiers as Lee had in uniform. Lee's losses, about half as many, were shocking enough.

Indeed, this bloody toll sobered many early enthusiasts for war. Sen. Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, as Unionist as a state could be, reflected on the carnage: "If that scene could have been presented to me before the war, anxious as I was for the preservation of the Union, I should have said: 'The cost is too great; erring sisters, go in peace'." Had he and other Northerners done so, three-quarters of a million Americans would have lived.

The alternative to this slaughter was simple, as Wilson admitted. Indeed, before the shooting started some Americans presciently opposed war. For instance, leading Unionist editor Horace Greeley wrote in the New York Tribune: "We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets." When his home state of Virginia voted to secede, then Col. Lee, who turned down Lincoln's offer of command of the Northern armies, explained: "I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than a dissolution of the Union. … Still, a Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me."

Despite the unnecessary casualties and destruction of the Civil War, most Americans today still reflexively call Lincoln a great president who "saved" the country. He did end slavery, a notable achievement, yet war probably wasn't necessary to do so. In fact, only one other nation abolished human bondage through violence—Haiti decades before. Every other slave society ended the awful practice peacefully. America was not even the last slave system to go; Brazil abolished the deeply rooted institution legally in 1888. No Brazilians died to free that country's slaves.

Nor did Lincoln save "America." Rather, he preserved the national political union. One can argue that Americans are better off today than otherwise even with the Leviathan state which took shape during the conflict, but that conclusion is not self-evident. Two smaller, less centralized and intrusive governments, competing for the loyalty of citizens able to freely move between the North and South, almost certainly would have better respected Americans' liberties and avoided foolish foreign conflicts. Less hampered by an overbearing political establishment,  two Americas likely would have been more prosperous than today's single Goliath as well.

In any case, it's unlikely that whatever advantages came from a national union warranted the high human cost of the Civil War. The U.S. government now usually criticizes foreign governments which similarly use force to prevent secession. Indeed, Washington went to war to support ethnic Albanians in Kosovo who wanted to secede from Serbia.

Few advanced industrialized states would imagine using force to prevent citizens from leaving, whether Scots in Great Britain, Catalonians in Spain, Flemish in Belgium, or Quebecers in Canada. Not all countries are so humane, obviously, but Western governments, including in America, largely have rejected nationalism as a justification for war. If Californians or Texans voted to secede, who in America would insist that Washington send in the bombers? The argument over constitutionality and prudence would not be decided by force. Surely Americans shouldn't kill Americans to settle another controversy over secession.

The Civil War is endlessly fascinating. True history buffs will never cease to enjoy studying the endeavors of Lee, Grant, and the rest of the conflict's riveting cast. In fact, southern partisans are right to call the conflict the War Between the States or even War for Southern Independence, since the South never contended for control of the whole government, necessary for a true "civil war." Here, too, the victors wrote the history.

Yet what is history to us was reality for tens of millions of Americans, especially the three-quarter million who died in the conflict. It's not enough to argue the Civil War like many people discuss the last NCAA basketball final or Superbowl contest. We should learn from the conflict and apply the lessons to controversies today.

Given the extensive but unnecessary carnage of the Civil War, Americans should pledge never again to use military force to compel people to stay together politically, either at home or abroad. More fundamentally, Americans should not go to war anywhere absent genuinely compelling stakes. The cost of releasing the dogs of war is simply too great, as was dramatically demonstrated by America's greatest killfest which mercifully concluded 150 years ago.