The ultimate cause of the American Civil War was White supremacy, not simply slavery. That prejudice brought on war and also affected the treatment of prisoners of war and the consequences of Southern surrender. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and the incorporation of Blacks into the Union army infuriated the Confederates and doomed the traditional practices of the cartels. When Black troops were recruited, Confederates refused to exchange captured Black soldiers, deeming them to be escaped slaves. The North responded by ending exchange and parole altogether. Now prisoners on both sides endured long-term confinement in prisoner of war camps, a practice that became the rule in Western warfare. The surrender of the Confederacy came through the surrender of its individual armies because the state was inoperative. But, although the conventional war ended in 1865, the fighting did not cease. Surrender transformed the conventional conflict into White supremacist terrorism and insurgency during Reconstruction, 1865–77. Ultimately, the will of the federal government and the Northern population tired of trying to establish racial equality in the South, and the occupation of the South ended. In an important sense, the South ultimately won by preserving White supremacy in its government, society, and culture.

To Frederick Douglass, the Civil War was a holy fight for freedom fought through speeches and writings on three main subjects. First, slavery was sin and abolition was the will of God. Second, abolition would require violence. Third, African Americans merited full inclusion within the United States. Douglass’s analyses are marked by both moral clarity and capacity for contradiction, which allowed him to convey equal and opposite truths about a Civil War as revolutionary as it was incomplete. Both the moral clarity and the ability to encompass opposites grew directly from Douglass’s understanding of God – merciful and wrathful – at work in the war. While Douglass’s embrace of violence and conviction of God’s will might give us pause, Douglass teaches that things can be opposite and true – a war can both transform a nation and fall short – at the same time.