A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy

What it means to be an American, both for Americans and foreigners, is largely determined by one’s attitude toward the war to defeat Southern independence in 1861–65. More books have been written about this war than about any other event in secular history, and they continue to pour forth. It has been a war to conjure with. To Americans, at least, it has seemed pregnant with transcendent, mythical, and theological meanings. What meaning can libertarians find in that great struggle?

Volume 16, Number 2 (2002)