Upon the Altar of the Nation : A Moral History of the Civil War

A profound and timely examination of the moral underpinnings of the War Between the StatesThe Civil War was not only a war of armies but also a war of ideas, in which Union and Confederacy alike identified itself as a moral nation with God on its side. In this watershed book, Harry S. Stout measures the gap between those claims and the war’s actual conduct. Ranging from the home front to the trenches and drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Stout explores the lethal mix of propaganda and ideology that came to justify slaughter on and off the battlefield. At a time when our country is once again at war, Upon the Altar of the Nationis a deeply necessary book.

Harry S. Stout is Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Religious History at Yale University and the author of The New England Soul. His awards include an N.E.H. Research Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship.