Tag: a more civil war

February 5, 2020

D. H. Dilbeck: Did Union Armies Really Wage a Just War? The Lieber Code and Sherman’s March to the Sea

There are several possible ways to explore how fully the Union army adhered to the Lieber code. But the spirit of the code was perhaps nowhere more fully realized—for good and ill—than in Sherman’s March across Georgia in late 1864. The March, like the code, embodied the spirit of a vigorous (and therefore hopefully short) war that proceeded within certain restraints. Continue Reading D. H. Dilbeck: Did Union Armies Really Wage a Just War? The Lieber Code and Sherman’s March to the Sea

American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History

October 24, 2016

D. H. Dilbeck: What is a Just War? How the Union’s “Lieber Code” Answered a Perennial Question

Lieber was a Berlin-born jurist and scholar who taught in South Carolina from 1835-1856, but was professor of history and political economy at Columbia College in New York City at the outbreak of the Civil War. Almost as soon as the war began, Lieber (who wrote widely on the laws of war in the antebellum era) saw the need for something like the code he eventually drafted. The traditional just-war framework distinguishes between jus in bello, just conduct in war and jus ad bellum, legitimate reasons for engaging in war. Continue Reading D. H. Dilbeck: What is a Just War? How the Union’s “Lieber Code” Answered a Perennial Question

American History/Author blog entry/Civil War/Guest Bloggers/History