Recent Historiography on Religion and the American Civil War
by
Bruce T. Gourley
2002
1
Religion and the American Civil War is an underdeveloped field of study which has received
relatively little attention until recent years. Previously considered a peripheral issue by most Civil War
historians, religion emerged as a significant factor of the Civil War experience with the publication of
Religion and the American Civil War (1998), a collection of essays edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S.
Stout and George Reagan Wilson. Well-known historians such as Eugene D. Genovese, Daniel W.
Stowell, Drew Gilpin Faust, Bertram Wyatt-Brown and Samuel S. Hill contributed to the groundbreaking volume.1
The 1994 religion and Civil War symposium in Louisville that led to the Religion and the
American Civil War volume stands as a watershed event in terms of religion and Civil War
historiography.2 However, a survey of Civil War historiography from the mid-1970s to the present
provides the larger context in terms of recent historical attention given to religion and the Civil War.
Modern historians have approached the theme of religion and the Civil War in at least seven distinct,
albeit sometimes overlapping, subcategories: 1) Religion in general during the Civil War, 2) Northern
religion and the Civil War, 3) Southern religion and the Civil War, 4) Religion among the soldiers, 5)
Civil War chaplains, 6) African-American religion and the Civil War, 7) Women and religion during the
Civil War, and 8) Religious denominations and the Civil War. 3
Any discussion of the American Civil War must take into account the issue of slavery, the
underlying cause of the War. The sectional debates over slavery were frequently couched in religious
language. Modern historians addressing the relationship of religion and the Civil War typically focus on
slavery as the one defining issue of antebellum religion. As such, an important question begs our
attention: should historical literature pertaining to the larger antebellum and Reconstruction eras, but not
the Civil War itself, be included in a historiography of religion and the Civil War?
The editors of Religion and the American Civil War focus on the period of the late antebellum era
to early Reconstruction.4 The same timeline will be utilized in this paper.5 Nonetheless, the earlier
antebellum era shaped the religious beliefs which would impact the Civil War. Religion, especially of the
Protestant variety, was an important factor in antebellum culture. The Second Great Awakening of the
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early 19th century in particular greatly impacted American society. This renewed interest in matters of
faith led northerners to embrace a view of Christian perfection for individuals, a theology which in turn
was applied to society in an effort to eradicate social ills. Southerners, on the other hand, reacted to the
revivals by assuming a faith of personal piety which focused on a literal reading of the Bible, but
expressed little concern for addressing society’s problems.6 Historians are increasingly identifying these
differing approaches to religious faith, and the actions resulting from these views, as playing a
foundational role in the Civil War. However, historians are only slowly recognizing the contributions of
Catholics and minority religions in relation to the Civil War.7
In analyzing the historiography of religion and the Civil War, this essay will follow the order
outlined in the seven subcategories previously introduced. Accordingly, an analysis of religion in general
is of first concern.
Religion in General and the Civil War
In Broken Churches, Broken Nation (1985), C. C. Goen was among the first modern historians to
place primacy upon the influence of religion as a significant factor of the Civil War.8 Goen examines the
themes of unity and separation, arguing that Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist divisions along North
and South lines in 1837, 1844 and 1845, respectively, over the issue of slavery, along with the ensuing
activities of the three denominations prior to the Civil War, both signaled and sealed the inevitably of
war. According to Goen, the church splits broke the bond of national unity (as expressed in Protestant
hegemony), established a model for sectional independence, reinforced alienation between sections via
distorted images, and progressively elevated the level of moral outrage each section felt towards the other.
American churches’ overemphasis on individualism, inadequate social theory and world-rejecting
ecclesiology, according to Goen, failed to provide adequate leadership on the question of slavery, thus
leading the nation to turn to politics in an effort to confront the slavery issue, which in turn led to war.9
Richard J. Carwardine further examines the relationship between religion and politics in
Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (1993). Carwardine posits that evangelical Protestants
3
were among the principle shapers of American political culture in the decades prior to the Civil War.
According to Carwardine, the waning of revivalist fervor led evangelical Protestants to ally with national
political parties to further their social agendas. The political parties, in turn, made concentrated efforts to
win the evangelical Protestant vote. Carwardine maintains that evangelical Protestants gave birth to
ecclesiastical sectionalism, steered political discourse, and pressured politicians, thus leaving their mark
on Whig and Republican politics. Carwardine roots the Republican Party ethic in a moderated Calvinism
(emerging from the Second Great Awakening), optimistic postmillennialism, and an urgent appeal to
action. The Republican Party drew heavily from evangelical Protestants of the North, even borrowing
their language. Southern evangelicals, however, resisted the infusion of religion into politics, and fearful
of northern evangelical attempts to equate the Kingdom of God with the Republican Party, lent their
support to the Confederacy, following the perception of Republican impositions upon the Southern states.
In short, Carwardine makes a compelling argument that religious language and imagery, as adopted by
the nation’s political parties, contributed significantly to the coming of the Civil War.10
Marty G. Bell contributes to this interplay between religion and politics in “The Civil War:
Presidents and Religion,” Baptist History and Heritage (July / October 1997), concluding that the Civil
War led the nominally religious Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis both to offer individual certitudes
of God’s divine favor, and led to their enshrinement as “mythic figures in the history of American
religion.”11
Other scholars have also identified religion, as expressed in morality in particular, as a significant
factor leading to the Civil War. Phillip Shaw Paludan, contributor to the Religion and the American Civil
War volume with an essay of the same name, examines the inability of American churches to collectively
address the issue of slavery because of polarizing concepts of holiness (expressed in social action in the
North and in personal piety in the South) as a significant factor leading to the war. The Civil War,
Paludan asserts, clothed in religious imagery, witnessed the sacrifice of death by both northerners and
southerners to make men holy, even while the participants disagreed “over God’s views on making men
free.”12
4
In “Religion in the Collapse of the American Union” (Religion and the American Civil War),
Eugene D. Genovese takes a somewhat similar approach, positing the struggle to define Christian society
and morals, and the cosmic scope attached to this struggle by Christian leaders, as crucial to
understanding the Civil War. The language of cosmic struggle was adapted by politicians and couched
(by both North and South) in the terminology of the Kingdoms of Heaven and Satan warring with one
another. Each side appealed to the “Higher Law” for ultimate authority in defining the issue of slavery,
language which in turn contributed to secession and war.13 Terrie D. Aamodt, in Righteous Armies, Holy
Causes: Apocalyptic Imagery in the Civil War (2002), demonstrates how the theme of cosmic struggle
was embraced by North and South, free and slave, conservative and liberal, and religious and secular, in
an effort to legitimate their respective causes, slavery and otherwise. Apocalyptic images were attached
to the war’s horrors in song, poem, oral history, tracts and sermons. After the war, however, expectations
concerning the end of the world became increasingly divergent.14
Finally, in “The Bible and Slavery” (Religion and the American Civil War), Mark Noll asserts
that the availability and widespread, unhindered use of the Bible in a fragmented, individualistic society
framed the conflict – slavery – that led to war. Both North and South championed the Bible in answering
the dilemma of slavery, but in radically opposite manners. Northerners appealed to the spirit of the Bible
(liberalism) in opposing slavery, whereas southerners appealed to the letter of the Bible (literalism) in
defending slavery. These competing biblical claims helped shape public perceptions that led to secession
and war.15
Northern Religion and the Civil War
Revivalist fervor swept the northern United States in the early 19th century. In North Star
Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom (2002), Milton C. Sernett
focuses on “The Burned Over District of New York” (so named because of repeated revivals that swept
through the area in the 1820s and 1830s) as a significant contributor to northern religious and political
activism which precipitated the Civil War. Sernett credits the revivalist Charles G. Finney as providing
5
the initial religious fervor against slavery in the region, and Beriah Green (1795-1874), a theologian and
abolitionist educator who transformed Oneida Institute into a school for both whites and blacks, as
spearheading the “comeouter” movement (Christian abolitionists who separated from the established
churches and formed abolitionist-only congregations). The comeouter movement transformed religious
opposition to slavery into the realm of politics, and the creation of the Liberty Party. From this
movement Stephen Douglass rose as a spokesperson for African-Americans. The contributions of upstate
New York led to the battlefields of the Civil War and into Reconstruction. Sernett’s contribution to the
discussion of religion and the Civil War is found in his successful demonstration of how religious
convictions on a local level contributed to the abolitionist movement and, ultimately, the framing of war
rationale.16
In War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830-1865
(1985), John R. McKivigan examines on a larger scale the efforts of American abolitionists to persuade
northern churches to endorse immediate emancipation. McKivigan concludes that the rise of the
comeouter churches, which were few in number, signaled only limited success of abolitionists to recruit
northern churches. The overall failure of abolitionists to convince the churches is attributed to theological
undertones (emphasis on personal responsibility and suspicion of abolitionist religious principles),
organizational structures (the decentralization of Congregationalists, Baptists and Unitarians was a
hindrance, while Roman Catholic and Episcopal hierarchies quelled debate), demographics (religious
immigrants found abolitionism foreign to their heritage), and traditional attitudes towards social order.
Abolitionists failed to convince northern churches to discipline slave holders prior to the war, yet the
presence of war and continued abolitionist agitation did finally lead all northern denominations, other
than the hierarchical Catholics and Episcopalians, to embrace emancipation by war’s end. Abolitionists
in turn used church endorsements to further influence public officials. McKivigan ultimately faults the
northern churches, not abolitionists, for their own failure to embrace the abolitionist movement.17
George M. Fredrickson, in “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the
Civil War Crisis” (Religion and the American Civil War), broadly examines northern Protestant clergy,
6
concluding that by the 1850s militant clerical opposition to slavery was significant. Fredrickson argues
that although northern society turned to the leadership of clergy in the antislavery campaign and in
legitimizing the war, the rise in clerical prestige was at the expense of embracing politics and secular
methodology. Clerical popularity in the North after the Civil War waned as prophetic voices were
indistinguishable from political, secular voices.18 James Moorhead, in American Apocalypse: Yankee
Protestants and the Civil War (1978), also examines northern clergy, revealing the divines’ invocation of
heavenly imagery in the nationalistic crusade against slavery and the South.19
In “Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount: The Second Inaugural” (Religion and the American Civil
War), Ronald C. White Jr., locates “the finest presentation of the relationship between religion and the
Civil War.”20 White equates the address to a sermon, rather than a state speech. In the wake of
impending Union victory over the Confederacy, the public expected to hear victorious words, rather than
words of reconciliation and Lincoln’s struggle to identify the hand of God in the darkest of times.21
Interestingly, White does not offer even a cursory glimpse of clergy reaction to Lincoln’s second
inaugural. However, in No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow: Northern Protestant Ministers and the
Assassination of Lincoln (1994), David Chesebrough examines 340 northern Protestant sermons delivered
in the seven weeks following Lincoln’s murder, concluding that the clergy, by this point, had embraced
the northern political structure as their own. Chesebrough notes that the sermons collectively
immortalized Lincoln’s character22 while blaming the South (not Booth) for his assassination, and angrily
demanding that the South be harshly punished for Lincoln’s death. Chesebrough hints that this may have
signaled the height of the influence of northern clergy. Yet, the angry cries of the clergy were oftentimes
so extreme that even the Radical Republicans found them too offensive.23
In short, a common theme found in many analyses of the Northern Church during the Civil War
era is that of the Puritan and Calvinistic notion of Providence, i.e., the belief that God had a special plan
for America, and that the United States, and the North in particular, was the crucible of that hope. This
understanding was not unique to white Protestants. In Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in
Jubilee (1989), David W. Blight shows that Douglass also echoed this belief.24 James H. Moorhead
7
demonstrates in “Between Progress and Apocalypse,” that Postmillennial hope in the North, united with
Republicanism, symbolized the marriage of the sacred and the secular in northern society.25
Southern Religion and the Civil War
Civil War historians have long pointed to pro-slavery views as central to southern religion of the
Civil War era. In recent works, David Chesebrough (Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1996) points to the
Nat Turner rebellion and William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator in 1831 as cementing the nexus of proslavery sentiment among southern Christians.26 Goen identifies slavery as the principle issue which led
Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists to split North and South by 1845.27 Genovese (The Slaveholders’
Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860, 1992) provides irony,
demonstrating that religious conservatives North and South were in agreement over most significant
issues, other than slavery.28
Slavery was rooted in a religiously-oriented, sectionalist southern culture. In Southern
Evangelicals and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), Edward R. Crowther examines the intellectual and
cultural history of the white, antebellum South and weaves together the themes of religion molding
culture and culture shaping religion. Religion and culture were mutually reinforcing, with religious
sentiments paralleling states’ rights ideology, collectively resulting in separation, secession and Civil
War.29
Modern historians differ somewhat on the relationship between religion and southern
sectionalism, however. Some historians focus on sectionalism defining religion. Christine Leigh
Heyrman, in Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997), utilizing journals of late 18th and
early 19th century Baptist and Methodist ministers, concludes that religious leaders accommodated slavery
in order to gain ground in the South.30
In Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause (1980), Charles Reagan Wilson concludes
that by the antebellum era, southern religion had embraced the South and its customs as holy. Defeat in
the Civil War led to the creation of a civil religion (the Lost Cause) based on antebellum culture and
8
incorporated into southern evangelical churches.31 Mark Noll, in “The Bible and Slavery” (Religion and
the American Civil War) meanwhile argues that inherent southern racism provided the framework within
which southern Christians were immersed. The pro-slavery biblical exegesis that emerged served to
accommodate and legitimize culture.32
On the other hand, Mitchell Snay, in Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the
Antebellum South (1993), argues that southern religion helped shape antebellum southern separatism by
transferring the caretaking of southern evangelical ideals onto the culture, in the process creating a moral
consensus for slavery. The denominational schisms legitimized the emergence of southern nationalism.
From that point onward into the war years, the churches reinforced and sustained nationalistic fervor.33
Drew Gilpin Faust, in The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the
Civil War South (1988), argues that religion played a central role in the shaping of a southern nationalism
which both defended and criticized the South. Faust identifies the southern ruling class as planters,
clergy, politicians and intellectuals, noting that “the authority of the clergy at least rivaled that of the new
Confederate state,” while Christianity was the “most fundamental source of legitimation” and the “central
foundation” of the Confederacy.34 Southerners were certain God was on their side; they were His chosen
people.35
In “Civil War, Religion, and Communications: The Case of Richmond” (Religion and the
American Civil War), Harry S. Stout and Christopher Grasso, in an examination of religious jeremiads
emitting from Richmond, point to religion as “the most powerful cultural system in the Old South,”
concluding that secession and war would never have happened without the “clergy’s active
endorsement.”36
Yet, not all southern clergy automatically embraced secession and war. Some historians have
examined southern religious dissent and dissenters of the Civil War era. David B. Chesebrough, in
Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1830-1865 (1996), concludes that most non-conformist clergy left the
South between 1830 and 1861. Those who remained were oftentimes persecuted and sometimes killed.37
On the other hand, in “Church, Honor and Secession” (Religion and the American Civil War), Bertram
9
Wyatt-Brown determines that most southern clergy reluctantly embraced secession, a situation attributed
to long-standing ties to northern conservatives, a tradition of speaking softly on controversial public
issues, and a hesitation to embrace southern manliness and honor. Not until early 1861 did most clergy
whole-heartedly rally to the secession cause out of a sense of honor.38
Preston D. Graham, in A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinsons’ Struggle to Distinguish
the Sacred from the Secular During the Civil War (2002), examines dissent in the border states, where
some clergy maintained a confessional theology and an apolitical church, reflecting the sentiments of
Baptists in Revolutionary-era Virginia.39 On the other hand, John B. Boles, in The Irony of Southern
Religion (1994), argues that the South as a whole disavowed its religious dissenter heritage in embracing
the Confederate State during the Civil War.40
Championing the southern institution of slavery did not necessarily imply unquestioned
acceptance of the practice of slavery. Eugene D. Genovese explores the theme of doubt in A Consuming
Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (1999), noting that some
southern clergy long struggled, in the face of abolitionist onslaughts, to justify the trust of slavery which
God had placed upon them. By the 1850s, the South’s defense of slavery as Biblical and God-ordained
rested upon the success of fulfilling certain Christian obligations to slaves (i.e., humane treatment and
religious instruction). Yet, clerical calls for slave reforms via moral suasion failed, and legislatures and
most southerners showed little interest in the matter through the 1850s and into the Civil War, expressing
public guilt only when military defeat was visited upon the South.41
As early Confederate victories on the battlefield gave way to a pattern of defeats, southerners
were forced to ask why God was punishing them. Perhaps the essence of southern religion’s fears in
relation to the institution of slavery is summed up by Daniel Stowell in, “‘We Have Sinned and God Has
Smitten Us!’: John H. Caldwell and the Religious Meaning of Confederate Defeat,” Georgia Historical
Quarterly, 78 (Spring 1994). Stowell sees Caldwell, a southern Methodist minister who had a change of
heart about slavery in 1865, as the object of both derision and fear among southerners who were grappling
with the concept of God’s judgment. 42 Genovese (Consuming Fire) turns to Civil War era Baptist
10
theologian John L. Dagg, who compared Israel’s violation of God’s covenant in the Old Testament with
that of the South’s violation of God’s entrusted institution of slavery.43 Faust (Confederate Nationalism)
portrays the envisioning of God’s plan as transcending defeat in calling for corporate repentance and
return to morality and purity, at which time God’s chastisement would cease.44
Daniel Stowell, in “Stonewall Jackson and the Providence of God” (Religion and the American
Civil War), makes the important distinction between judgment and chastisement. Jackson’s sudden and
surprising death was attributed to the providence of God and served notice that a displeased God was
chastising His people for their unrighteouness. In turn this lesson prepared the South for the judgment of
wholesale defeat in 1865, and the ensuing task of defining the painful loss.45
Even when the war ended in defeat, signifying the failure of southerners to meet God’s test of
slavery, admitting that slavery was wrong was unthinkable; both Faust and Genovese see southerners
perceiving northern economic interests as the unholy rationale for Emancipation, with Faust expounding
on the theme of extortion.46
Genovese argues that southerners viewed their slave system as a valid system of bond-labor
which created conditions favorable to Christian behavior and advancement, whereas demands of the
northern capitalistic market forced people to choose between Christian ethics and materialism. In
response to charges of racism from northerners, southerners replied that northerners were “scientific
racists” (i.e., unbiblical evolutionists).47
Kenneth Moore Startup, in The Root of all Evil: The Protestant Clergy and the Economic Mind of
the Old South (1997), further develops the economic theme. Moore surveys the economic mind of the
Civil War era South solely through the writings and sermons of southern preachers, presenting the
divines, who frequently preached anti-materialistic sermons from a rigid biblicist perspective, as defining
sin and evil in terms of greed. Slavery was championed but materialism was railed against as a national
sin, putting clergy at odds with gentry initially, but later establishing an acceptable rationale for southern
defeat in the Civil War.48
11
Finally, David E. Harrell, in “The Evolution of Plain-Folk Religion in the South: 1835-1920,”
Varieties of Southern Religious Experience (1988), examines southern religion as social history, arguing
that the Civil War “blurred” developing class divisions and delayed further fragmentation by bringing
temporary equalitarianism to southern white churches.49
Religion Among the Soldiers
Within the armed ranks during the Civil War, religion expressed itself in the form of revivalism.
Steven E. Woodworth, in While God is Marching On: the Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (2001),
concludes that although religion permeated the lives of many ordinary soldiers, providing both assurance
and chastisement, ultimately the War did not change sectional religious sentiments.50 Drew Gilpin Faust,
in “Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army,” (Journal of Southern
History 53, no. 1, February 1987), explores the theme of Confederate army revivalism expressed in both
personal piety and as a vehicle for corporate understanding of God’s plan in the midst of death,
destruction, and defeat.51 Reid Mitchell, in “Christian Soldiers?: Perfecting the Confederacy” (Religion
and the American Civil War), questions whether Confederate soldiers were more religious than Union
soldiers.52 Philip Paludan, in “A People’s Contest:” The Union and the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1988),
examines religion among Union soldiers and also concludes that Union revivals were common, albeit less
publicized at the time.53
Kurt O. Berends (“’Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man:’ The Religious Military
Press in the Confederacy,” Religion and the American Civil War), examines the religious life of
Confederate soldiers through the pages of the southern religious military press. Berends concludes that by
the second half of the Civil War, southern ministers were convinced that the key to sectional victory was
a converted army. Christian denominations in the South proclaimed that the soldier was fighting for God
and that manliness and commitment to the Confederate Cause were Christian virtues. Maintaining faith
in the primacy of personal salvation, southern churches, through the religious military press, rallied for
sectional victory, while at the same time providing rational for the possibility of defeat. Berends
12
concludes that this message conveyed social implications far beyond the war itself, shaping the religion of
the Lost Cause as a civil religion, but also perpetuating a manly Christianity.54
Sidney J. Romero, in Religion in the Rebel Ranks (1983), explores the religious life of the
Confederate soldier as portrayed through 20,000 plus letters, diaries and manuscripts. Romero’s sources
discuss religion in terms of revivals, chaplains, officers, soldiers and daily army life. He concludes that
religion was the greatest weapon of the otherwise disadvantaged South, providing the will to fight even
against impossible odds. “There seems little doubt that the church was the single greatest institution in
the maintenance of moral in the Confederate army.”55
Civil War Chaplains
Military chaplains were commonplace in the armies of the North and South, particularly of the
Protestant variety. Warren B. Armstrong, in For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union
Chaplains in the Civil War (1998), utilizes original documents (manuals, letters, diaries, reports, etc.) in
arguing that the influence of Union chaplains extended beyond the realm of the spiritual as they
advocated preservation of the Union, focused on slavery as the central issue of the war, and preached a
pro-abolition message.56 James A. Fuller, in Chaplain to the Confederacy: Basil Manly and Baptist Life
in the Old South (2000), examines the life of a prominent Southern Baptist, slave-owning minister and
Old South apologist who served as a Confederate chaplain.57 Phillip T. Tucker, in The Confederacy’s
Fighting Chaplain: Father John B. Bannon (1992), and William B. Faherty, in Exile in Erin: A
Confederate Chaplain’s Story: The Life of Father John B. Bannon (2002), explore the influence of an
Irish Catholic Confederate chaplain in Missouri who championed the cause of the South, influenced Irish
perceptions of the Civil War, and served as a personal emissary from President Davis to Pope Pius IX.58
Looking through a broader lens, William E. Dickens, Jr., in Answering the Call: The Story of the U.S.
Military Chaplaincy from the Revolution through the Civil War (1999), argues that the Civil War served
to standardize the role and functions of military chaplains.59
13
In addition, autobiographies of a number of Civil War chaplains have been republished in recent
years.60
African-American Religion and the Civil War
The study of African-American religion during the antebellum and Civil War eras has been a
fertile field in recent decades. Many such studies have focused on abolitionism and / or slave life in the
antebellum era, with fewer works directly relating to the Civil War itself, despite the fact that AfricanAmerican participation in and contributions to religious life of the Civil War era were substantial.
In Major Themes in Northern Black Religious Thought, 1800-1860 (1975), Monroe Fordham
identifies the essence of the social gospel of African-American religion in the North as it related to the
coming Civil War: the call to moral improvement in order to escape bondage; acts of charity and
benevolence in order to help one another; focus on peace, hope and tranquility in order to deal with
uncertainty and despair and to find strength and courage in the face of persecution; opposition to slavery
and racism; and the universal equality of humankind.61 Eugene D. Genovese, in similar fashion,
examines the role Afro-American religion in the South played in shaping an independent-minded slave
community prior to and during the Civil War.62
Some authors have focused on individual African-American leaders, such as Frederick C.
Douglass. In Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1989), David W. Blight shows
that Douglass was certain of God’s divine favor for the abolitionist cause and acted with that certitude
prior to and during the Civil War.63 In Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the
Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction (1982), David W. Wills and Richard Newman
offer biographical sketches of lesser known African-American leaders, including Samuel Harrison (a
Congregationalist who served as a chaplain during the Civil War), Rebecca Cox Johnson (a woman who
established a black Shaker Church immediately prior to the Civil War), and James Lynch (a missionary to
the South during the Civil War and a civil rights advocate following the war).64
14
In Be Jubilant My Feet: African American Abolitionists in the American Missionary Association,
1839-1861 (1994) and His Truth is Marching On: African Americans Who Taught the Freedmen for the
American Missionary Association, 1861-1877 (1994), Clara Merritt DeBoer examines African-American
leadership in the abolitionist American Missionary Association. African-Americans played crucial roles
in mission enterprises at home and abroad and in educating freedmen during and after the Civil War.65
When the Civil War ended, African-Americans in the South established their own autonomous
churches. In Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 18651890 (1993), William E. Montgomery traces the story of the founding and growth of black churches in
the South, starting with the efforts of northern missionaries to organize churches in the South immediately
following the Civil War, to the point of the establishment and prospering of distinct black denominations
in the decades after the war.66 Church and Community Among Black Southerners, 1865-1900 (1994),
edited by Donald G. Nieman, is a collection of essays which explore the theme of the growth and
development of black churches in the South in more localized detail.67
Samuel Hill, in “Religion and the Results of the Civil War” (Religion and the American Civil
War), points to African-Americans’ religious experiences prior to the Civil War as contributing to the
rapid rise and growth of African-American churches afterwards. Hill concludes that, “the formation of
independent black congregations and denominations … proved to be the most profound religious change
brought on by the Civil War.”68 Janet Duitsman Cornelius reaches a similar conclusion in Slave Missions
and the Black Church in the Antebellum South (1999), pointing to the significance of antebellum slave
mission efforts in particular as preparing the way for the growth of independent African-American
churches following the Civil War.69
Women and Religion During the Civil War
The subject of women and religion during the Civil War has been partially addressed by historians
within the larger context of women reformers, or referred to occasionally against the backdrop of larger
Civil War themes.70 Drew Gilpin Faust, in Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the
15
Civil War (1996), directly addresses the subject, examining the relationship of Southern women’s faith
and action. In the absence of men at home, women’s faith sustained them in difficult times, resulted in
new spiritual leadership roles in the household, and ultimately led to greater leadership roles within the
church.71
Two essays in the Religion and the American Civil War volume shed further light on this
underdeveloped subject: “Days of Judgment, Days of Wrath: The Civil War and the Religious
Imagination of Women Writers” by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and “’Without Pilot or Compass’: Elite
Women and Religion in the Civil War South,” by Drew Gilpin Faust.72 A third essay, “’From It Begins a
New Era: Women and the Civil War” (Baptist History and Heritage 32, 3-4, July / October 1997) by
Marlene H. Rikard and Elizabeth C. Wells, provides an overview of women in the Civil War era with an
emphasis on religion.73 More work is needed in this field of study.
Denominational Histories
Little has been written in terms of specific denominational histories of the Civil War era.
Historians have paid scant attention to the subject, while in-house denominational historians have treated
the Civil War as a brief, unfortunate event within the larger history of their respective denominations.74
Nonetheless, a few works do exist.75
Ed Crowther, in his dissertation, “Southern Protestants, Slavery and Secession: A Study in
Religious Ideology, 1830-1861” (1986), concludes that the Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian
denominations significantly influenced the culture and society of the South in terms of championing
slavery and embracing secession.76 Daniel W. Stowell, in Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction
of the South, 1863-1877 (1998), traces the post-war growth of Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in
Tennessee and Georgia.77 Samuel S. Hill’s, “Religion and the Results of the Civil War” (Religion and the
American Civil War), examines the post-war activism of Methodists, retrenchment of Southern Baptists,
and birth of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements.78
16
Baptists North and South were prominent in the Civil War era. Paul Harvey, in “’Yankee Faith’
and Southern Redemption: White Southern Baptist Ministers from 1850-1890” (Religion and the
American Civil War), traces the rise of white supremacy among Southern Baptists during the Civil War
and Reconstruction in correlation with Baptist activity in the political arena, contrasted to political
reticence prior to the war.79 On the other hand, Martin Lyndon McMahone, in Liberty More than
Separation: The Multiple Streams of Baptist Thought on Church State Issues, 1830-1900 (2001), argues
that Baptists in the Civil War era were willing to allow the state to recognize Christianity if no preference
were shown for a specific denomination.80 James Fuller, in the aforementioned Chaplain to the
Confederacy: Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South, examines the immense contributions of
Baptist minister, slave owner, and Confederate chaplain Basil Manly.81 Finally, Daniel W. Stowell
explores the theme of Baptists, God’s Providence and competing nationalisms in “The Ways of
Providence: Baptist Nationalism and Dissent in the Civil War” (Baptist History and Heritage 32, nos. 34, July / October, 1997).82
Methodist contributions are examined by Gerald J. Smith in Smite Them Hip and Thigh!: Georgia
Methodist Ministers in the Confederate Military (1993),83 and in an essay by Richard Carwardine
(“Methodists, Politics and the Coming of the Civil War,” Methodism and the Shaping of American
Culture, 2001) which explores Methodist willingness to use politics to perfect society.”84 Clarence E.
Walker, in A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and
Reconstruction, chronicles the black Methodist experience.85
Presbyterian views of the Civil War are examined by James O. Farmer Jr., in The Metaphysical
Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (1999). Thornwell was an
influential, outspoken Presbyterian minister and pro-slavery apologist from South Carolina whose views
represented much of the southern mindset concerning slavery and secession.86
The Catholic faith and the Civil War is explored by Randall M. Miller in, “Catholic Religion,
Irish Ethnicity and the Civil War” (Religion and the American Civil War),87 and “Catholics in a Protestant
World: The Old South Example” (Varieties of Southern Religious Experience, 1988).88 Stephen J. Ochs,
17
in A Black Patriot and a White Priest: Andre’ Cailloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New
Orleans (2000), examines a Catholic priest’s ministry to blacks in and southern racial and social
dimensions in Louisiana.89 William B. Faherty and Phillip T. Tucker, in their aforementioned volumes
(Exile in Erin and The Confederacy’s Fighting Chaplain, respectively), explored the extraordinary
contributions of Irish Catholic Confederate Chaplain John B. Bannon, Jefferson Davis’ personal emissary
to Pope Piux IX.90
In conclusion, religion and the American Civil War is a field of study which has recently begun to
bear increased scholarly fruit. The publication of Religion and the American Civil War in 1998 reflected
this growing interest that has led to many new works. In terms of publishing houses, Mercer University
Press (Macon, Georgia) and Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge) are currently leading the
way in this field of study.91
Although no aspects of this field have yet reached full maturity, several areas are notably lacking.
Foremost among these are women and religion during the Civil War era, as well as denominational
histories of the Civil War era. Regarding the later, Civil War-related histories of minority religious
groups (such as Unitarians, Quakers and Jews) and minority sects of large denominations (such as
Primitive Baptists), as well as Civil War era social histories of denominations in general, are
conspicuously lacking in terms of recent historiography.
18
1
Randall M. Miller and others, Religion and the American Civil War (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998).
2
Miller, Religion, v-vi.
3
In instances where one work fits into multiple categories, I have determined which one(s) is more relevant.
4
Randall Miller also reinforced this definition of the Civil War era in terms of religion in an email received on
10/22/02.
5
Many works which explore religious themes of the larger era have focused on early abolition, the institution of
slavery, the religious revivals of the 1820s and 1830s, or Reconstruction, rather than the Civil War per se. These
studies are important, but, with few exceptions, will not be utilized for the purposes of this paper.
6
This brief sketch represents commonly accepted interpretations of the revivals which preceded the Civil War
era.
7
Miller, Religion and the American Civil War, 286. Miller notes that Catholics and minority religions tend to
be ignored or given “short thrift.”
8
Martin E. Marty, “American Ecumenism: Separatism, Separation and Schism,” Christian Century 106, no. 1
(October 25, 1989): 959. Marty, a renowned American religious historian, hails Goen’s work as “pioneering.”
9
C. C. Goen, Broken Churches, Broken Nation (Macon, GA: Mercer University, 1985).
10
Richard J. Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993).
11
Marty G. Bell, “The Civil War: Presidents and Religion,” Baptist History and Heritage 32, nos. 3-4 (July /
October 1997): 112. Lincoln had a Baptist background and Davis a Catholic background.
12
Phillip Shaw Paludan, “Religion and the American Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed.
Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 36. Also see, Phillip Shaw Paludan, “A
People’s Contest”: The Union and the Civil War, 1861-1865 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996).
13
Eugene D. Genovese, “Religion in the Collapse of the American Union,” in Religion and the American Civil
War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 43-73.
14
Aamodt, Terrie D., Righteous Armies, Holy Causes: Apocalyptic Imagery and the Civil War. Macon, GA:
Mercer University Press, 2002.
15
Mark A. Noll, “The Bible and Slavery,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 74-88.
16
Milton C. Sernett, North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom
(Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2002).
17
John R. McKivigan, War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830-1865
(Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1984).
18
George M. Frederickson, “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the Civil War
Crisis,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998), 110-130.
19
James H. Moorhead, American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War, 1860-1869 (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1978).
20
Ronald C. White, Jr., “Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount: The Second Inaugural,” in Religion and the American
Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 223.
21
Ibid., 208-225.
22
Some clergy did question Lincoln’s personal avoidance of religion. For further study see Hans J. Morgenthau
and David Hein, “Lincoln’s Theology and Political Ethics,” Essays on Lincoln’s Faith and Politics, ed. Kenneth W.
Thompson (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983).
23
David B. Chesebrough, No Sorry Like Our Sorrow: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of
Lincoln (Kent: Kent State University Press, 1994). Also see Victor B. Howard, Religion and the Radical
Republican Movement, 1860-1870 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990.
24
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in the Jubilee (Baton Rogue: Louisiana
State University Press, 1989).
25
James Moorhead, “Between Progress and Apocalypse,” Journal of American History 71, no. 3 (December
1984): 524-542.
26
David Chesebrough, Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1830-1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1999), 8.
27
Goen, Broken Churches, Broken Nation, chapter 3.
19
Eugene D. Genovese, The Slaveholders’ Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative
Thought, 1820-1860 (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1992), 36-38.
29
Edward R. Crowther, Southern Evangelicals and the Coming of the Civil War (Lewiston, New York: Edwin
Mellen Press, 2000). Also see Genovese, Slaveholders’ Dilemma.
30
Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1997). Although Heyrman’s focus predates the actual Civil War era, her work, based on journals of Methodist and
Baptist preachers from the South, is significant in terms of understanding how Southern Christians came to embrace
slavery. Heyrman shows how anti-slavery Baptist and Methodist unmarried itinerants met with resistance from
married white males, who were the dominant force in the late 18 th and early 19th century South. In order to gain
acceptance in the rural, largely unchurched South, Baptists and Methodists preachers sought to identify with the
white, married, Southern male by compromising on slavery.
31
Charles Reagan Wilson, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause (Athens: University of Georgia
Press, 1980). Wilson examines the far-reaching effects of the religion of the Lost Cause, a cultural faith dependent
upon memories of the antebellum South. In Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence
of the New South , Gaines M. Foster rejects “civil religion” as a descriptor of the Lost Cause, arguing that the
cultural aspect of the Lost Cause served to ease the transition to the New South by giving southerners a means of
venting despair and anger after the Civil War.
32
Noll, The Bible and Slavery.
33
Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1993).
34
Drew Gilpin Faust, Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South
(Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 22,23.
35
Faust, Confederate Nationalism, 26.
36
Harry S. Stout and Christopher Grasso, “Civil War, Religion, and Communications: The Case for
Richmond,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 318-319.
37
David B. Chesebrough, Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1830-1865 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1996), 72-79, 114-115.
38
Bertram Wyatt-Brown, “Church, Honor and Secession,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall
M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 89-109.
39
Preston D. Graham, A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinson’s Struggle to Distinguish the Sacred
from the Secular During the Civil War (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002).
40
John B. Boles, The Irony of Southern Religion (New York: P. Lang, 1994).
41
Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian
South (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1999), 14-47. The slave reforms some Southern clergy called for
included the recognition of slave marriages, respecting the intactness of slave families, and the repeal of literacy
laws which forbid slaves to read.
42
Daniel W. Stowell. “’We Have Sinned and God Has Smitten Us!’: John H. Caldwell and the Religious
Meaning of Confederate Defeat.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 78, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 1-38.
43
Genovese, Consuming Fire, 67-68.
44
Faust, Confederate Nationalism, 26-33.
45
Daniel W. Stowell, “Stonewall Jackson and the Providence of God,” in Religion and the American Civil War,
ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 187-207. Also see Richard E.
Beringer, The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims and Religion (Athens: University of
Georgia Press, 1989). For a discussion of the spiritual significance of Robert E. Lee, see Robert R. Brown, And One
Was a Soldier: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Robert E. Lee (Shippensburg: White Mane Books, 1998).
46
Genovese, Consuming Fire, 98; Faust, Confederate Nationalism, 41-57.
47
Genovese, Consuming Fire, 81-88, 117-118. The Old South’s resistance to industrial capitalism has long
been a central theme of Genovese’ writings.
48
Kenneth Moore Startup, The Root of All Evil: The Protestant Clergy and the Economic Mind of the Old South
(Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997). Also see John Patrick Daly, When Slavery Was Called Freedom:
Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002.
49
David E. Harrell, Jr., “The Evolution of Plain-Folk Religion in the South, 1835-1900,” in Varieties of
Southern Religious Experience, ed. Samuel S. Hill (Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 24-51.
28
20
Also see Daniel W. Stowell, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 (New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998).
50
Steven E. Woodworth, While God is Marching On: The Religious World of the Civil War Soldiers
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001).
51
Drew Gilpin Faust, “Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army,” Journal of
Southern History 53, no. 1 (February 1987): 63-90.
52
Reid Mitchell, “Christian Soldiers?: Perfecting the Confederacy,” in Religion and the American Civil War,
ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 297-309. Mitchell questions
longstanding conclusions drawn by J. William Jones in, Christ in the Camp (Richmond: B. J. Johnson & Company,
1887).
53
Paludan, “A People’s Contest”: The Union and the Civil War, 1861-1865, 39-374.
54
Kurt O. Berends, “’Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man’: The Religious Military Press in the
Confederacy,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 131-166. See also Peter S. Carmichael, Lee’s Young Artillerist: William R. J. Pegram
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995). Carmichael examines the young Confederate soldier William
Pegram in portraying how Confederate soldiers were certain they were fighting for a holy cause.
55
Sidney J. Romero, Religion in the Rebel Ranks (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 129.
56
Warren B. Armstrong, For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998).
57
James Fuller, Chaplain to the Confederacy: Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South (Baton Rogue:
Louisiana State University Press, 2000.
58
Phillip T. Tucker, The Confederacy’s Fighting Chaplain: Father John B. Bannon (Tuscaloosa: University of
Alabama Press, 1992). William B. Faherty, Exile in Erin: A Confederate Chaplain’s Story: The Life of Father John
B. Bannon (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2002).
59
William E. Dickens, Jr., Answering the Call: The Story of the U. S. Military Chaplaincy from the Revolution
through the Civil War (Dissertation.com, 1999). Based on my research, Dickens’ work is the only recent
dissertation concerning chaplains in the Civil War which has been published in book form.
60
Numerous journals / autobiographies of Civil War chaplains exist, a number of which have been republished
in the past five years, which appears to be indicative of the growing interest in religion and the Civil War.
61
Monroe Fordham, Major Themes in Northern Black Religious Thought, 1800-1860 (Hicksville, New York:
Exposition Press, 1975). For a summary of Fordham’s conclusions regarding these themes, see pages 153-158.
62
Eugene D. Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Pantheon Books, 1974),
161-284. Also see John B. Boles, ed., Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the
American South, 1740-1870 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988).
63
David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rogue: Louisiana State
University Press, 1989).
64
David W. Wills and Richard Newman, eds., Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the
Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction (Boston: G. K. Hull and Company, 1982). Wills and
Newman sketch short biographies of many African-Americans, but Rebecca Cox Johnson (1795-1871), Samuel
Harrison (1818-1900) and James Lynch (1839-1872) are the three directly related to the Civil War era.
65
Clara Merritt DeBoer, Be Jubilant My Feet: African American Abolitionists in the American Missionary
Association, 1839-1861 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994). Clara Merritt DeBoer, His Truth is Marching On:
African Americans Who Taught the Freedmen for the American Missionary Association, 1861-1877 (New York:
Garland Publishing, 1994). Also see Joe Martin Richardson, Christian Reconstruction: The American Missionary
Association and Southern Blacks, 1861-1890 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1986).
66
William E. Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South,
1865-1900 (Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1993).
67
Donald G. Nieman, ed., Church and Community Among Black Southerners, 1865-1900 (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1994).
68
Samuel S. Hill, “Religion and the Results of the Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed.
Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 366.
69
Janet Duitsman Cornelius, Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South (Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press, 1999).
21
70
See the bibliographical listings in Miller, Religion, 245-249, 258-260. Much has been written concerning
religion and women in the earlier revival era, but significantly less in terms of the Civil War years.
71
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the Civil War (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 181-187.
72
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, “Days of Judgment, Days of Wrath: The Civil War and the Religious Imagination
of Women Writers,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1998), 229-249. Drew Gilpin Faust, “’Without Pilot or Compass’: Elite Women and Religion in
the Civil War South,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 250-560.
73
Marlene H. Rikard and Elizabeth C. Wells, “’From It Begins a New Era’: Women and the Civil War,” Baptist
History and Heritage 32, nos. 3-4 (July / October 1997): 59-73.
74
One Baptist historian, Robert Gardner, commented that the notable lack of material from a Baptist
perspective left one to wonder if the Civil War had actually happened (Baptist History and Heritage 32, nos. 3-4,
July / October 1997, 4). This journal edition, containing eight Civil War-related articles, is the most comprehensive
in-house Baptist work on the subject.
75
A survey of Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian denominational journals and other denominationallypublished literature from 1980-2002 revealed few Civil War-related works. Space constraints do not allow
discussion of those or similar denominationally-produced works, although a survey of such works would shed
additional light on religion and the Civil War.
76
Edward R. Crowther, “Southern Protestants, Slavery and Secession: A Study in Religions Ideology, 18301861” (Ph.D. diss., Auburn University, 1986).
77
Daniel W. Stowell, Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998).
78
Samuel S. Hill, “Religion and the Results of the Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed.
Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 368-375.
79
Paul Harvey, “’Yankee Faith’ and Southern Redemption: White Southern Baptist Ministers, 1850-1890, in
Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Publishing,
1998), 167-186. Also see Paul Harvey, Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities Among
Southern Baptists, 1865-1925 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
80
Martin L. McMahone, “Liberty More than Separation: The Multiple Streams of Baptist Thought on Church
State Issues, 1830-1900” (Ph.D. diss.,, Baylor University, 2001). See chapter five.
81
Fuller, Chaplain to the Confederacy. Manly, a minister and a slave owner, was a high-profile spokesperson
and a leading theologian among Southern Baptists.
82
Daniel W. Stowell, “The Ways of Providence: Baptist Nationalism and Dissent in the Civil War,” Baptist
History and Heritage 32, nos. 3-4 (July/October 1997): 7-17. For a survey of Southern Baptists in the
Reconstruction era, see Joe Wright Burton, Road to Recovery: Southern Baptist Renewal Following the Civil War,
as Seen Especially in the Work of I. T. Tichenor (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1977).
83
Gerald J. Smith, Smite Them Hip and High!: Georgia Methodist Ministers in the Confederate Military
(Murfreesboro, TN: Ambassador Press, 1993).
84
Richard J. Carwardine, “Methodists, Politics and the Coming of the Civil War,” In Methodism and the
Shaping of American Culture, eds. Nathan O. Hatch and John H. Wigger (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2001), 309342.
85
Clarence Earl Walker, A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil
War and Reconstruction. Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.
86
James O. Farmer, Jr., The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern
Values (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1999).
87
Randall M. Miller, “Catholic Religion, Irish Ethnicity and the Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil
War, ed. Randall M. Miller (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 261-296.
88
Randall M. Miller, “Catholics in a Protestant World: The Old South Example,” Varieties of Southern
Religious Experience, ed. Samuel S. Hill (Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 115-134.
89
Stephen J. Ochs, A Black Patriot and a White Priest: Andre Cailloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil
War New Orleans (Baton Rogue: Louisiana State University Press, 2000).
90
See endnote #58.
91
Other publishing houses at the forefront in the field of religion and the Civil War include University Press of
North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Syracuse University Press (New York) and University Press of Kentucky (Lexington).
22
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Aamodt, Terrie D. Righteous Armies, Holy Causes: Apocalyptic Imagery and the Civil War. Macon,
GA: Mercer University Press, 2002.
23
Armstrong, Warren B. For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil
War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998.
Bell, Marty G. “The Civil War: Presidents and Religion.” Baptist History and Heritage 32, nos. 3-4
(July / October 1997): 101-115.
Berends, Kurt O. “’Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man’: The Religious Military Press in
The Confederacy.” In Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, 131-166. New
York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Beringer, Richard E. The Elements of Confederate Defeat: Nationalism, War Aims and Religion. Athens:
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“Baptists and the Civil War.” Baptist History and Heritage 32, nos. 3-4 (July / October 1997).
Blight, David W. Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
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Boles, John B. The Irony of Southern Religion. New York: P. Lang, 1994.
Boles, John B. Masters and Slaves in the House of the Lord: Race and Religion in the American South,
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Brown, Robert R. And One Was a Soldier: The Spiritual Pilgrimage of Robert E. Lee. Shippensburg,
PA: White Mane Books, 1998.
Burton, Joe Wright. Road to Recovery: Southern Baptist Renewal Following the Civil War, as Seen
Especially in the Work of I. T. Tichenor. Nashville: Broadman Press, 1977.
Carwardine, Richard J. Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993.
Carwardine, Richard J. “Methodists, Politics and the Coming of the Civil War.” In Methodism and the
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Kingswood Books, 2001.
Chesebrough, David B. Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1830-1865. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1996.
Chesebrough, David B. “God Ordained This War”: Sermons on the Sectional Crisis, 1830-1865.
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Chesebrough, David B. No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow: Northern Protestant Ministers and the
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Cornelius, Janet Duitsman. Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South. Columbia:
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Crowther, Edward R. Southern Evangelicals and the Coming of the Civil War. Lewiston, New York:
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Crowther, Edward R. Southern Protestants, Slavery and Secession: A Study in Religious Ideology, 1830
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Daly, John Patrick. When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of
24
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DeBoer, Clara Merritt. His Truth is Marching On: African Americans Who Taught the Freedmen for the
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Farmer, James O., Jr. The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of
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Faherty, William B. Exile in Erin: A Confederate Chaplain’s Story: The Life of Father John B. Bannon.
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25
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Graham, Preston D. A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinson’s Struggle to Distinguish the Sacred
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Harrell, David E., Jr. “The Evolution of Plain-Folk Religion in the South, 1835-1920.” In Varieties of
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Harvey, Paul. Redeeming the South: Religious Cultures and Racial Identities Among Southern Baptists,
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