The Routledge Sourcebook of Religion and the American Civil War

A History in Documents

Robert R. Mathisen, Robert R. Mathisen

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135022501
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Geschichte
• Categoria: Amerikanische Bürgerkriegsgeschichte

In recent years, the intersection of religion and the American Civil War has been the focus of agrowing area of scholarship. However, primary sources on this subject are housed in many different archives and libraries scattered across the U.S., and are often difficult to find. The Routledge Sourcebook of Religion and the American Civil War collects these sources into a single convenient volume, the most comprehensive collection of primary source material on religion and the Civil War ever brought together.

With chapters organized both chronologically and thematically, and highlighting the experiences of soldiers, women, African Americans, chaplains, clergy, and civilians, this sourcebook provides a rich array of resources for scholars and students that highlights how religion was woven throughout the events of the war. Sources collected here include:

•Sermons
•Song lyrics
•Newspaper articles
•Letters
•Diary entries
•Poetry
•Excerpts from books and memoirs
•Artwork and photographs

Introductions by the editor accompany each chapter and individual document, contextualizing the sources and showing how they relate to the overall picture of religion and the war. Beginning students of American history and seasoned scholars of the Civil War alike will greatly benefit from having easy access to the full texts of original documents that illustrate the vital role of religion in the country's most critical conflict.

Chapter 1
From the Election through Secession November 1860 to June 1861

“It does seem as if our people are tempting the vengeance of God by the madness of their [South Carolina’s] conduct.”

—Wilmington (N.C.) Herald November 9, 1860

Weeks before the election of Abraham Lincoln on November 6, 1860, South Carolina had been sending signals that an election of the “abolitionist Lincoln” would be grounds for the state to secede from the Union. Though less than 40 percent of the people’s votes were cast that day for A. Lincoln (as he often signed his name), he easily defeated his three opponents by collecting 180 of the 303 electoral votes. South Carolina, which had threatened secession as far back as 1828, now moved forward to execute what it had earlier only talked about. It was the growing intention of South Carolinians to seek what the Wilmington (N.C.) Herald referred to as “the madness of their conduct.”

This increasing anticipation of secession found its way into the homes, legislative halls, and pulpits in both the South and the North. In the North, Congregational minister Henry Ward Beecher was never shy about pointing to slavery as the principal reason for the sectional discord, and, indeed, the South made it easy for Beecher and many other Northern preachers by its continued linking of slavery to secession talk. In many of his sermons Beecher allowed little room for compromise with the South. The avoidance of a national split was made even more difficult due to the clerical debate over the question of the sinfulness of slavery.

On December 14, President James Buchanan designated January 4, 1861, to “be set apart for Humiliation, and Fasting, and Prayer throughout the Union,” seeking God’s “Omnipotent Arm [to] save us from the awful effects of our own crimes and follies—our own ingratitude and guilt towards our Heavenly Father.” Before that could take place, however, on December 17, South Carolina assembled its secession convention in the Baptist Church in Columbia, where it passed unanimously a resolution to secede from the Union. Three days later the convention met in Charleston and adopted the Ordinance of Secession with no dissenting votes.

The nation was now divided, and a review of some Fast Day sermons delivered on January 4 indicates that humiliation, fasting, and prayer may have been in short supply. While Rabbi Bernard Illowy of Baltimore was asking, “Who can blame our brethren of the South for their being inclined to secede?” in Boston, Rev. Orville Dewey was already referring to the national conflict as “a holy war … a righteous cause.” And war had not yet been declared.

Before another month had passed, six additional Southern states joined South Carolina in organizing a separate and independent government, the Confederate States of America (CSA). By the middle of March both President Abraham Lincoln of the United States of America and President Jefferson Davis of the CSA had delivered their inaugural addresses, invoking the favor of God upon their respective lands as they groped into an unknown, hazardous future. Both hoped for a peaceful resolution of the crisis, and neither expected a war.

The beginning of the war at Fort Sumter in mid-April resulted in more finger-pointing, as each side now could blame the other not only for the crisis of the previous months, but for the war itself. The blame game played out not only in newspapers and legislative halls, but also in churches. In early May, Southern Episcopal Bishop Thomas Atkinson and Northern Unitarian James Walker sparred over where the right resided, with the former claiming Southerners to be “the servants of Christ” and the latter predicting that “a righteous Providence” would accomplish His will on behalf of the North.

As the two militaries positioned themselves for their next moves during the weeks following the events at Sumter, the clergy of the two regions exercised their power of the pulpit by recruiting and encouraging young men going into battle. And so it seemed that by the end of June each side in its own way was “tempting the vengeance of God by their conduct,” just as the Wilmington (N.C.) Herald had feared eight months earlier.

“The Christian’s Best Motive for Patriotism”¹—November 1, 1860

Robert L. Dabney (1820– 1898) was a prominent Presbyterian theologian, educator, minister, and defender of the defeated South in the post– Civil War period. He served as a chaplain in the Confederate army and for a few months in 1862 as General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s chief of staff. On November 1, 1860, designated by the Presbyterian Synod of Virginia as a Day of Prayer, Fasting, and Humiliation, Dabney preached the sermon “The Christian’s Best Motive for Patriotism” at the Hampden-Sydney College Church, which he co-pastored. Coming only five days before the presidential election, Dabney anticipated the possible onset of civil war.

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But civil feud has ever been known as the most bitter of all. “A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle.” The very tenderness of brothers’ love makes them more tender to the injury. The strength of the mutual obligations, which should have bound them to kindness, enhances the hot indignation at mutual outrage. When the twin lands which now lie so intimately side by side, parted by a line so long, so faint, so invisible, that it does not separate, begin to strike each other, the very nearness and intimacy make each more naked to the other’s blows. How dire, then, would be the conflagration of battle which would rage along this narrow line across the whole breadth of a continent? How deadly the struggle, when the republican hardihood and chivalry, the young, giant strength, and teeming wealth, which begin to make the mightiest despots respectful, are turned against each other. Some seem to delight in placing the relative prowess of the North and South in odious comparison. Should we not, my brethren, rather weep tears of blood at the wretched and wicked thought, that the common prowess with which the North and South have so often side by side carried dismay and rout into the ranks of common enemies—that terrible prowess which, in North and South alike, withstood the force of the British Lion while we were yet in the gristle of our youth, and which ever since has overthrown and broken every enemy, with the lion’s force and the eagle’s swiftness combined—should hereafter be expended in fratricidal blows? And, then, this vast frontier must be forted and guarded. This hostile neighborhood, so dangerous because so intimate, must be watched on either hand by armies; and these armies become, as among the unhappy and suspicious nations of Europe, as much the machines of internal oppression as of outward defence. Our future growth of men and wealth would be swallowed up by the devouring maw of strife. These teeming fields, whose increase fills the granaries of the famishing nations, and makes their owners’ bosoms to overflow with wealth, must go to feed the barren waste of warlike preparation and labor. The source of half the missionary activities which now gladden the waste places of the earth would be dried up. Farewell to the benign career of imperial Peace, by which we had hoped the Empire Republic would teach the angry nations nobler triumphs than those of war. A long farewell to that dream we had indulged—dream not unworthy surely to have been inspired by the Prince of Peace—that here a nation was to grow up on this soil, which God had kept till “the fullness of time was come,” wrapped in the mysteries of pathless seas, and untainted by the steps of civilized despots, or organized crime; a nation composed of the strong, the free, the bold, the oppressed of every people, and, like the Corinthian brass, more precious than any that composed it; which should come, by the righteous arts of peace, to a greatness such as at last to shame and frighten war away from the family of kingdoms; which should work out the great experiment of equal laws and a free conscience, for the first time, for the imitation of the world; and from whose bosom a free Church, unstained by the guilt of persecution, and unburdened by the leaden protection of the State, should send forth her light and salvation to the ends of the earth to bring the millenial morning. This cunning machine of law, which now regulates our rights, would be wrecked amidst the storms of revolution. The stern exigencies of danger, would compel both the rivals, perhaps, to substitute the strong, but harsh will of the soldier, for the mild protection of constitutions. And the oppressors of soul and body, from every stronghold of absolutism throughout the earth, would utter their jubilant and scornful triumph: “Lo! the vain experiment of man’s self government has drowned itself in its own blood and ruin!” The movement of the world’s redemption might be put back for ages, and the enthroning of the Prince of Peace over his promised dominion, so long ravaged by sin and woe, would be postponed, while eternal death preyed upon yet more of the teeming generations.

Now, in view of this tremendous picture of possible crime and misery, would to God that I could reach the ear of every professed servant of Jesus Christ in the whole land! I would cry to them: Christians of America—Brothers—Shall all this be? Shall this Church of thirty thousand evangelical ministers, and four millions of Christian adults—this Church, so boastful of its influence and power; so respected and reverenced by nearly all; so crowned with the honors of literature, of station, of secular office, of riches; this Church, which moulds the thought of three-fourths of our educated men through her schools, and of all, by her pulpit and her press, this Church; which glories in having just received a fresh baptism of the Spirit of Heaven in a national revival—permit the tremendous picture to become reality? Nay, shall they aid in precipitating the dreaded consummation, by traitorously inflaming the animosities which they should have allayed, and thus leave the work of their Master to do the Devil’s? Then, how burning the sarcasm, which this result will contain upon your Christianity in the eyes of posterity! Why, they will say, was there not enough of the majesty of moral weight in these four millions of Christians, to say to the angry waves, “Peace: be still?” Why did not these four millions rise, with a Love so Christ-like, so beautiful, so strong, that strife should be paralyzed by it into reverential admiration? Why did they not speak for their country, and for the House of the Lord their God which was in it, with a wisdom before whose firm moderation, righteousness, and clear light, passion and folly should scatter like the mist? Were not all these strong enough to throw the arms of their loving mediation around their fellow citizens, and keep down the weapons that sought each other’s hearts; or rather to receive them into their own bosoms than permit our mother-country to be slain? Did this mighty Church stand idly by, and see phrensy immolate so many of the dearest hopes of man, and of the rights of the Redeemer, on her hellish altar? And this Church knew too, that the fiend had borrowed the torch of discord from the altar of Christianity, and that therefore Christians were bound, by a peculiar tie, to arrest her insane hand, before the precious sacrifice was wrapped in flames. Then, shame on the boasted Christianity of America, and of the nineteenth century! With all its parade of evangelism, power, and light, wherein has it been less impotent and spurious than the effete religion of declining Rome, which betrayed Christendom into the dark ages; or than the baptized superstitions which, in those ages, sanctioned the Crusades and the Inquisition? In the sight of Heaven’s righteous Judge, I believe that if the Christianity of America now betrays the interest of man and God to the criminal hands which threaten them, its guilt will be second only to that of the apostate Church which betrayed the Saviour of the world; and its judgment will be rendered in calamities second only to those which avenged the Divine blood invoked by Jerusalem on herself and her children.

“A Few Reflections on Secession”²—November 9, 1860

With the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency of the United States on November 6, 1860, the clouds of secession grew more ominous for the entire nation. Was South Carolina’s promise to secede from the Union if Lincoln were elected now to be carried out? On November 9 the Wilmington (N.C.) Herald published “A Few Reflections on Secession” by an anonymous writer who expressed great apprehension about the meaning of a possible South Carolina secession for North Carolina. “It does seem as if our people are tempting the vengeance of God by the madness of their [South Carolina’s] conduct.”

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It is thought by some persons that a dismemberment of our government is imminent, and almost inevitable; others a...