Religion’s place in American life has become a rich subject of Civil War Era research in recent decades. Josh Waddell, a scholar at the University of Georgia, has a new article in the journal Civil War History for September 2022 on the writing and circulation of religious tracts by white Protestant preachers to Confederate soldiers. The ministers, who were often tied to the economic elite in the South, played a role in the creation and nurturing of Confederate nationalism
Southern Protestant ministers had an important role in forming Confederate identity “due to the unique relationship the ministry developed with the planter class. In short, the Southern ministry used the Bible to justify a hierarchical society despite the seeming contradiction between Southern society and the egalitarian evangelical doctrine.,” says Josh Waddell.
In the tracts that he examined, Waddell says, only one dealt with slavery. The other pamphlets and booklets assured the soldier that he was fighting for a just cause and offered advice for keeping his morale high and enduring military setbacks and the loss of friends. They also wrote that it was a moral good to develop a Confederate identity.
In his essay, Waddell writes that:
the ministers used the tracts to contribute to the Confederate war effort. In the selection of pamphlets examined in this study, the authors, preachers of various denominations, advanced a Confederate-favored religious worldview in which soldier conversions would secure God’s approval and contribute to the South’s victory. The tracts shared three common themes. First, the writers explained to the soldiers that the Southern cause contained religious significance and that God was deeply involved in the war’s outcome. In this providential narrative, the writers argued that the religious devotion of soldiers could sway God’s will toward the Confederacy. With this came the second theme, in which ministers made significant efforts to convince soldiers to be baptized and live holy lives. While the ministers cared about the soldiers’ souls, they also believed that the legitimacy of their cause depended on a deeply religious army. God, in other words, favored the side that had the more pious soldiers. The writers offered emotional appeals about the fear of hell and the promises of a better life, hoping this would influence men to convert. Finally, many pamphlets attempted to boost soldiers’ morale by focusing on the necessity and importance of their sacrifice. The writers warned them of the tyranny and slavery that would befall them and their families if the Confederacy fell. [p. 271]
When Confederate recruits went to a sermon in Petersburg in 1861, Rev. Robert Newton Sledd told them that “You go to avenge no merely private injuries. Your country’s freedom, her dearest privileges, and richest blessings, her God-given rights are in danger.” Their service to their country also served God’s providence for the South. God was directly involved in the new war, the Methodist reverend told them, saying that “is not an idle and uninterested spectator of the events that are transpiring in our land.” [p. 272]
The tracts reassured soldiers that they were engaged in a religiously sanctified mission. One tract quoted by Waddell said “You go to aid in the glorious enterprise of rearing in our sunny South a temple to constitutional liberty and Bible Christianity.” [p. 286]
The tracts even tried to persuade wounded Confederate soldiers to return to the firing line. Here is what one minister wrote:
It may be you are sometimes tempted to feel a disgust with the work which you have undertaken–to regret it, and to wish you could leave it. If so, let me beg you to recall the feelings which animated you when first you enlisted. Doubtless you then were persuaded of the justice of the cause, and freely offered yourself, aware of its dangers, and willing to run all the fearful risks of wounds, disease and death itself. If then, you thus entered the service, and if the cause is still the same, I appeal to you to bear with cheerful fortitude your present sufferings and privations.
The North, and perhaps the world, thought at the outset, that the Southern soldiery might indeed be brave, but were not possessed of endurance. They have begun to see their mistake, and to realize that our men, with a courage superior, have also a fortitude at least equal to that of our enemies.
God Bless…
Note: The article I drew from is:
“Silent but Powerful Preachers”
Southern Religious Pamphlet Literature during the Civil War
by Josh Waddell
This is a good post and very well-written.
It draws on the somewhat-mystical, but well-identified, sense of religious purpose that was felt to a great, if by no means absolute, that imbued the Confederacy, particularly in the Army of Northern Virginia.
In James I. Robertson Jr’s. massive biography of SWJ, he quoted a source that said trying to understand Jackson apart from his religion was like tying to explain Switzerland while keeping out the Alps from the chat! And while this post makes formal Protestantism a focal point, the same well happened with formal Roman Catholicism, one particular priest in Stonewall’s army stands out in my memory from the research, (he told Jackson words to the effect that the Army was both a military one and a religious one and that HE outranked JACKSON in the latter and thereby, could at times or more often, give orders to himself and others for the Army to achieve its purpose! LOL) I’m sure there were Jewish pastors and other formal religious leaders who likewise actioned.
The North felt its own version of this ‘God-Given’ sense of religious purpose, (as is often seen by religious literation in Abraham Lincoln’s writings, speeches, etc. For example, ‘the better angels of our nature.’) Not to mention the heavy comparison symbolically of Lincoln, Lee, Grant, etc, to such figures as Jesus, Moses and even Oliver Cromwell.
And I like how Admin points out that the placement of nationalism, separate from patriotism, that developed out of a partial result. Nationalism is about depicting something, some group, etc, etc, in emotional manner so you don’t have to square with how that something, etc, actually rationally is.
A terrific article!
Thanks