To say that Edwards, Cogburn, and Wales are all in this sense Western figures more than they are Civil War figures is not to deny their connection to the South. It is a reminder of competing and complex themes or ideas of justice: Put simply, if we are in a retroactively judgmental mood, or, perhaps like the makers of The Outlaw Josey Wales and their audience, in a 1976 post-Vietnam state of despair about all official narratives and the full history of “the Union,” we can define all Union soldiers, and even the sainted Abraham, as “fighting for genocidal imperialism.”