Did the north conduct the war justly . And you are free to a lot of other work here. Harry wrote a book called upon the altar of nation. Dr. Mcpherson of the nation. Harry stout is a history of American Religion and he called his book a moral history of the civil war. He talked about the just war theory going back to saint augustine. And he talked about the way in which, there are two ways to address the question of a just war. One is the reason for going to war in the first place. He came up with the conclusion that the only legitimate reason the only just reason for going to war was selfdefense. A defensive war is a just war. And the other dimension of just war theory is the conduct of the war. He came out with the idea that the confederates were fighting a just war in the sense that they were defending themselves against invasion. My answer to that would be, who started the war . You could define the union motive for going to war as defensive. Defending the flag, defending the union