SEPTEMBER 15, 1864:
Religion played a critical role in the Civil War. To a
certain extent, religion was one of the core of the causes of the war, and to
that same extent, religion lay at the heart of the resolution of the war.
I
The
Northern and Southern religious experience during the war was rather different.
Since the passing of the generation of The Founders, most of whom were avowed
Deists, religion did and has continued
to play a strong part in American life.
By
1826, with the deaths of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams both on the fiftieth
anniversary of American independence, the secularism that underlies the
founding documents had become increasingly unpopular. The growth of religious faith paved the way
for The Second Great Awakening, an upwelling of Protestant religious fervor
that saw the establishment of many new Christian sects, including some utopian
and messianic ones, almost exclusively in the North. The “Burned-Over District” of western New York
State gave rise to Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, and other new churches.
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| The Second Great Awakening was marked by outdoor mass meetings and tent "revivals" |
Many of
the churches founded during the Second Great Awakening were dedicated to
Temperance (which targeted the tavern culture of German and Irish immigrants)
and linked these churches to the nativist movement. Nativists (mostly
Anglo-Protestant) were opposed to immigration (particularly of Catholics from
Germany and Ireland). The utopians and
messianists were broadly dedicated to “civilizing” the Indians and black
slaves.
Abolitionism
was also in its origins a religious movement. Men like Charles Finney, Arthur
and Lewis Tappan, Henry Ward Beecher, Owen Lovejoy, and his brother, Elijah P,
Lovejoy, who was killed by a pro-slavery mob, were all Protestant preachers.
The fervor
of the Second Great Awakening had subsided somewhat during the 1840s as
Sectionalism began to emerge as dominant in the American psyche. Protestantism,
in fact, suffered its own Great Schism in the 1850s as the Baptist Church and
other nationally-organized churches split into “Southern” and “Northern” wings.
The teachings of the sectional wings became increasingly divergent.
II
Religion
strengthened the Northern cause. By the time of the Civil War, the diverse
North was the home of Protestants of many sects (who made up the majority), a
significant number of Catholics, and a smaller but growing number of Jews. A
few Chinese Buddhists lived in the far west.
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| For many churchgoers the Northern cause was marked by a Manichaean worldview in which the Union represented the forces of Good and the Confederacy represented the forces of Evil |
This relative
religious diversity created an unusual dichotomy in the North. Christian
organizations and leaders frequently led the way in establishing wartime social
services and aid organizations (like the United States Sanitary Commission) but
were obligated to offer their services to all soldiers and their families
regardless of sect. Thus, overtly sectarian religious overtones among such
groups were often muted. Ecumenism was
promoted.
Spiritualist
movements, including mediums and seers who claimed to be able to speak with the
dear departed, became endemic in the North, especially after the bloodbaths at
Antietam and Fredericksburg.
Religion
in the North was a far more “public” phenomenon than in the South. Although the
North officially held to the aims of the Founders, keeping a bright dividing
line between church and state, the North, somewhat counterintuitively, effectively
created for itself an ad hoc secular
religion based on American exceptionalism.
The
Founders had stated clearly that America is not
a Christian nation:
As the Government of the United States of
America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in
itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of
Mussulmen —and as the said States never entered into any war or act of
hostility against any Mahometan nation, it is declared by the parties that no
pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of
the harmony existing between the two countries. --- Treaty
of Tripoli, 1797
John
Adams had taken his Oath of Office as President on a law book rather than on
the Bible, underscoring the nation’s separation of church and state.
Yet,
the North freely used the idioms of Biblical religion to advance its war aims.
Abolitionists pointed to the punishment of Egypt during the Exodus as a
reminder of God’s dislike of the cruelties of slavery. Anti-secessionists
divined in the division of Solomon’s Kingdom into Israel and Judah a parable
for their own times, highlighting the fact that Israel, which had strayed from
the true faith, was ultimately destroyed.
The
popular Northern tune, “The Battle Hymn
of the Republic” not only invoked religion in its very title, but also in its
words:
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming
of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the
grapes of wrath are stored
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His
terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on
In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born
across the sea
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures
you and me
As He died to make men holy, let us die to
make men free
Glory, glory, hallelujah! His truth is
marching on
American
exceptionalism found its roots in the religion of the Puritans, who believed
that they were founding a “new Israel,” “a city on the hill,” and a “new
Jerusalem” in America. All Americans inherently agreed. Despite the avowed secularism
of America, the words of the Liberty Bell are the words of Leviticus, and they
are the words that stirred hearts in the battle against the “oligarchs” and
“slaveholders” who most Northerners believed controlled the South:
"Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the
land unto all the inhabitants thereof."
The
Union therefore, was predisposed from the outset to make of the Civil War a
crusade, and a moral and ethical contest.
Northern churches pressed the point that the Union had to be preserved
because America, with its republican institutions and democratic ideals,
ensured civilization's forward march. The loss of the war meant the loss of
America and the failure of representative democracy in the world. Thus, in the
North there was a millennial, almost Manichaean, aspect to the war.
Although
most Northerners were not abolitionists at the outset of the war, abolitionism
was an organic growth and a necessary outgrowth of the religious
millennarianism espoused by most churches. The United States was not merely
fighting a war, even for the noble purposes of democracy. Its fighting men were
liberators of the oppressed, a
concept which has informed the United States military, and U.S. foreign policy,
to this day.
The
Union military grasped early on, as the Confederate military never did, that
religion could be used broadly in an organized fashion to bolster the war
effort. Southerners attended mass revival meetings set up by itinerant
preachers visiting their encampments. There were plenty of such whoop-and-holler-type
camp meetings in the North too, but the Union military preferred that its men
attend the regularly scheduled services provided by Union chaplains.
In the
carefully-orchestrated world of Union religious meetings battlefield losses
were not cast as a withdrawal of divine favor but as the natural result of
straying from the divine purpose. Missionaries
were allowed among the ranks, but the materials they distributed had to be
approved. Materials which were deemed destructive to morale were forbidden. Bibles
and pamphlets were the usual fare handed out to soldiers. The pamphlets tended
to inveigle against drinking, gambling, and fornication. (The story is told of
one hospitalized Union soldier, a dual lower amputee, who burst into laughter
at a kind missionary woman who gave him a pamphlet on the evils of
dancing.)
President
Lincoln himself was sometimes called “Father Abraham” by Administration-friendly
Northerners, and this name had been incorporated into a popular recruitment
song:
“We are coming Father Abraham, 300,000 more
. . .”
If anyone
during the Civil War, North and South, routinely embodied the cadences of the
Bible in his public pronouncements, it was President Lincoln, who, despite
belonging to no church, frequently used the language of religion in the most
unique and poetical manner, to promote Union aims:
“A house divided against itself cannot
stand.” ---
Mark 3:25, Lincoln June 16, 1858.
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the
same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that
any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from
the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully.” --- The
Second Inaugural, 1864, quoting Jesus, Matthew 7:1
“The nation shall, under God, have a new
birth of freedom” --- The
Gettysburg Address, 1863 (A.P., Hale)
After
the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, the emancipated slaves often
referred to Lincoln as “Moses,” the same name they had given to the great
conductor of the Underground Railroad, Harriet Tubman.
At
war’s end, Lincoln’s tragic, shocking death became a symbolic sacrifice for the
nation’s vast bloodletting, secularly akin to the Crucifixion.
III
Religion
among the black population served several mutually antagonistic purposes. Most
African-Americans were descended from peoples that had either been Muslim or
animist. Their native faiths had been taken from them like everything else when
they were enchained. A few elders remembered fragments of folk tales and
knowledge handed down through the generations. Overwhelmingly, however, slaves
had been forced to adopt the Christianity (and occasionally the Judaism) of
their owners.
Whites
controlled, albeit imperfectly, the slaves’ access to religion. In all Southern
States (except Tennessee) it was a serious violation of the law to educate a
slave or to allow a slave to be literate. Regardless, some slavemasters
permitted Bible study or even taught a handful of slaves to read so that they
could spread the Gospel among their people. Others led the formal services
themselves. The emphasis of “Master-approved” Christianity was on teaching
obedience and humility to slaves, with the promise of heavenly paradise if they
kept to their “place.”
One way
or another, a different form of Christianity spread through the slave cabins of
the South, a form practiced quietly and hidden from the people in the Big
House. Black religion, when practiced beyond the sight and hearing of whites,
was a Liberation Theology, focusing strongly on the lessons in the Book of
Exodus. Religion was offered for comfort, but it was also a form of civil
resistance. Gospel music and Black Spiritual music focused and focuses almost
entirely on the acquisition of freedom, both temporal and metaphysical, and
served, during Emancipation, Reconstruction, the Civil Rights Movement, and all
times in between, as a clarion call:
“Go down Moses . . . Way down to Egypt land
. . . and tell old Pharaoh . . . Let My people go!”
“We shall overcome someday!”
“Free at last, free at last . . . Thank
God almighty . . . I am free at last!”
Freeborn
blacks, freedmen, and escaped slaves often became religious leaders in the
black community. The use of Biblical idiom was perhaps greater among
African-Americans than among any other group well into the 20th
Century.
IV
Religion
ultimately weakened the Southern cause. The South was much less religiously diverse
than the North. It too had a Catholic population (much smaller than in the
North and generally not made up of new immigrants), and a tiny number of Jews (often
small businessmen) who lived in the cities. Protestantism, and overwhelmingly
the Baptist Church, was completely dominant within the culture.
When
the South seceded, many of its leaders proclaimed that their intention was to
establish a uniquely Christian, and
hence exclusivist, nation. This was
far different than the vision of the Founders they claimed to follow.
Indeed,
the Confederates called upon “Almighty God” in their new Constitution, and
Southern leaders claimed to be the “chosen people” of a new age:
“[We] recognize our dependence upon God …
[and] supplicate his merciful protection.” --- President
Jefferson Davis, 1861
Confederate
victories were seen as manifestations of God’s grace toward the South:
God has given us of the South today a fresh
and golden opportunity—and so a most solemn command—to realize that form of
government in which the just, constitutional rights of each and all are
guaranteed to each and all. … He has placed us in the front rank of the most
marked epochs of the world’s history. He has placed in our hands a commission
which we can faithfully execute only by holy, individual self-consecration to
all of God’s plans. --- Rev. William C. Butler, on the
victory of First Manassas, July 21, 1861
Although
Fundamentalist religiosity has a distinctive Southern flavor in the 21st
Century, in the 19th Century almost all religious fundamentalism in
the United States was Northern as was sectarian diversity. Church attendance in
the South had been declining in the 1850s, while it was rising in the North. Southerners were known for a more easygoing
and tolerant brand of religion. (In 1860, only 40% of Southerners claimed
membership in a congregation, though 80% admitted going to church
“periodically.”)
In
truth, the religious fervor that many people associate with the South was and is
a product of the Civil War. Christianity was one of the elements that bound
(almost) all Southerners together. It acted as a homogenizing force even as
secessionism cut away, violently, a critical element of the Southern national identity
as citizens of the United States. Religion became one of the pillars around
which Southerners could express their sectional brand of Americanism. The cross, in several forms, became a central
military symbol of the Confederacy.
The impressive
rise of Southern religious consciousness during the war was aided by the
seemingly-endless string of Confederate victories in 1861 and 1862. McClellan’s
embarrassing withdrawal from the gates of Richmond was presented in the
churches as “evidence” of God’s favor.
Religious
figures took advantage of the mass gathering of men into military camps and
moved among them seeking converts. Revivals swept the ranks. Men, horrified by
what they had seen on the battlefield, accepted Christ as their personal savior
by the tens of thousands. The Confederacy never had even an informal policy of
coopting religion for promoting its war aims, although individuals like General
Leonidas Polk, “The Fighting Bishop” imbued the war with religious meaning.
On the
whole, religious expression in the South was a more “private” matter than in
the North. It was also far more sectarian.
Military
heroes, such as Stonewall Jackson, were honored not only for their military
skill but for their faith in God. “Old Blue Light” was exceptional in this
respect, even thanking God for the gift of so many dead enemies; most Southern
military men, like Robert E. Lee, were far less extreme, praying for peace ---
through Southern victory, of course.
On the
home front, churches became central meeting places for war news, for comfort,
and for solace, among the women and youngsters left behind. Religion became the
especial province of women, who resisted Yankee invaders while carrying the old
family Bible in one hand and grandpa’s old musket in the other.
Religion
became ever more central to the Southern identity as the momentum of the war
shifted in the North’s favor. Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, though essentially secular,
had an inordinate impact on how Southerners perceived themselves. There was no Southern leader who could
enunciate the aims of the Southern cause with such lyrical ability and power. As
the South declined, many southerners began to see themselves as being on the
“wrong” side of history.
Southern
preachers began to speak of the withdrawal of God’s grace, of the sins of the
South (among which were whiskey, women, and, later, slavery). Preachers were
among the earliest Confederates to call for an end to slavery, seeing in it the
reason for God’s displeasure with the South. The war was recast by many
Confederate religious leaders as a “refining fire” through which all
Southerners had to pass in order to expiate their sins.
The
idea of the South as sinful and suffering for its sins was one that caught at
the popular imagination in the hard months leading up to the end of the war.
Although
the government in Richmond saw this type of preaching as destructive to the
Southern cause --- which it was, in the extreme --- the government dared not
attempt to discredit religion.
Preachers
who envisioned a Southern apocalypse undercut any moral basis soldiers might
feel for continuing to fight the war. Such preaching lowered further an already
lowered morale. Southern religion did much in 1864 and 1865 to convince the men
in gray and butternut that they sinned by working in opposition to the will of
God. By so doing, it contributed mightily to the defeat of the Confederacy.
