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Originally posted by AndrewK
Well you can apply that model to anything. Hitler said Jews were the ultimate evil, so it was ok to kill them.
In my view there should be a distinction between injuring/killing people and destroying their property. Killing civilians is out of bounds, but burning the cities and looting the valuables can be placed under the category of "draining the South's ability to wage war or reconsitute power after the war". It was necessary to bury the South so that it could not challenge the central government any time soon after the war. Clearly the basic ideals were the maintained after the war, so really if the South was left unscathed with its ability to regain economic power intact, what was to stop it from attempting again to rebel?
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I understand your argument. Our armed forces have destroyed whole city populations. But we have also prosecuted soldiers for individual acts against civilians and against private property. In fact, soldiers are allowed to destroy things but are never allowed to loot. Why is that? Its partly to keep "freebooters" (guess what that means?) out of the military.
In point of fact, the south did not rebel, they seceded. Recall that the former colonies originally entered union as sovereign states. Some of them specifically wrote that if the union failed, they reserved teh right to secede and nobody disputed that assertion of rights. In fact, in the early years of teh 19th century several New England states threatened secession but were dissuaded by arguments from southern states!
Its certainly a moot point now (no law necessary when military defeat rules), but it would have been interesting for Lincoln to have chosen to pursue his aims through the courts rather than the barrel of a gun.