The
Civil War affected the way of life in America in many areas – political,
economic and religious. The way Americans viewed each other and life in general
changed after 1865. The fact that it was a war of Christians against
Christians was nothing new. The colonists Christians had fought the
English, French and Spanish Christians to gain their freedom. The thing that
was different in this case was that the Christians on both sides were Americans
before and after the Civil War. During the Civil War, both sides believed in
the same Jesus and prayed to same God for victory. Northern and Southern
Christians were assured from their respective pulpits that their cause was just
and righteous. How would the religious leaders of the South explain the loss to
their members?
There
were 1,094,453 casualties in the Civil War and the 1879 final official report placed the total cost
at $6,190,000,000. The Confederacy
spent perhaps $2,099,808,707. By
1906 another $3.3 billion already
had been spent by the U.S. government on Northerners' pensions and other
veterans' benefits for former Federal soldiers. The physical devastation,
almost all of it in the South, was enormous: burned or plundered homes,
pillaged countryside, untold losses in crops and farm animals, ruined buildings
and bridges, devastated college campuses, and neglected roads all left the
South in ruins.[1]
Before
we examine the religious changes that took place in the South, it is important
to understand the economic implications of the war. In the South the African
slaves were items listed on the balance sheets of companies, along with
machinery and equipment. They were valued at almost three billion dollars. In order to grasp what their value
meant to the economy of the Southern states, it must be understood that the value of African slaves represented
a sum greater than the value of all manufacturing and railroads in the United
States combined.[2]
Therefore, in the South an additional three billion dollars must be added to
the other costs, plus the cost of replacing the slaves.
How did the African slaves become
part of America?
The events that led up to the first African slaves being shipped to America
began when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain commissioned Columbus to
discover a new trade route to India to tap into the extraordinarily lucrative
spice trade. Instead he discovered a new source of gold and silver for the
Spanish monarchy. Between the years 1500 and 1540 the
amount of gold that passed through the House of Trade in Spain each year averaged
between 2,205 and 3,307 pounds. At today’s prices the annual value
of the gold would be $52,920,000.00
and $79,368,000.00.
Spain
also received an upsurge of silver output from Mexico and Peru, which amounted
to around 300 tons per years in the best years.[3]
Today the value of that much silver would be another $454,000,000.00. With the riches from the New World flowing into Spain a golden age
of wealth and development began. Rarely
have such great riches fallen into the laps of rulers with so little effort on
their part and the new wealth promoted extravagant royal habits. In both
Portugal and Spain taxes were high, and the distribution of wealth followed the
traditional pattern in which the few indulged their taste for grandeur and many
penurious peasants and workers struggled to survive.[4]
Unbelievably,
the extravagant appetites of the Spanish monarchs and the costs of the wars they
waged to acquire even greater sources of wealth led them to the Dutch to borrow
money. As time passed the Spanish monarchy became so indebted to the Dutch bankers
that the famous Spanish silver fleet sailed across the Atlantic directly to
Amsterdam to deliver their valuable cargoes as payments on the loans. However,
as time passed they exhausted the gold and silver deposits and needed to find
something new. It was then that they discovered an even greater source of
wealth -- sugar.
Sugar’s
desirability and rarity did for the islands of the West Indies what oil later
did for the Middle East.
It gave them a virtual monopoly on a commodity whose demand would continue to
climb for two centuries.[5]
The imported sugar was instantly popular in Europe. Soon the English, Dutch,
and French seized other Caribbean islands during the 17th century to
exploit this new and lucrative crop. Sugar did more than furnish calories and
sweetness; it made possible storing fruits and vegetables throughout the year.
There were only three ways to keep food before artificial refrigeration:
salting it, preserving it, or drying it. Sugar was the essential ingredient for
preserves.[6]
As the
demand for sugar increased plantations were operated as “factories in the
fields.” The plantations were very different from the farms of Europe and are
the first examples of highly capitalized agriculture. Agricultural work was
always drudgery, but it became brutal when the workers were enslaved and beaten
to work harder. The gender ratio in the sugar plantations was often as high as
13 men to 1 woman. The native inhabitants of the islands were treated cruelly
by their plantation owners, many of whom were Christians, One thing is very
clear -- when they were far from home they shed their manners and morality. But,
when they returned home to live in the luxury made possible by such cruelty, they
never questioned the way their great wealth was produced.[7]
The fact
that the native peoples were abused in the sugar fields came to the attention
of Bartolme de Las Casas, bishop of
Chiapas and he became their greatest defender.[8]
He made a decision that would help save
the local natives, but would have unintended consequences that the bishop could
have never imagined. His suggestion would ultimately set the stage for the
Civil War in a nation that did not exist at that time. He proposed that the Spanish import African slaves as a way to
protect the native peoples. He argued that Africans were better prepared to
work on the plantations. From his suggestion came one of the most
lucrative capitalist’s plums of Caribbean commerce, the asiento, a contract that Spanish officials awarded for an annual
supply of slaves and European goods. The first one, signed in 1595, gave the
Portuguese the exclusive rights to land 4,250 slaves annually at Cartagena. [9]
The
Virginia Company established an outpost in America in 1607 and quickly used all
of its cash up. The company turned to a lottery to raise more money and began
distributing the one asset it had, land.[10]
At first the work in the fields was done by English indentured servants, but as
time passed the use of slave labor became an alluring alternative for the
wealthier planters. Initially, when a Dutch vessel brought a score of slaves to
Virginia in 1619, investing in slaves was not attractive.
A few
decades later settlers arrived with sufficient cash to establish themselves on
larger plots of land. The English king began to promote slaves trade from
English suppliers, in part to keep the freewheeling Dutch out of their North
American colonies. Soon English slavers supplied Virginia with slaves shipped directly
from Africa at a good price. A final
inducement to switching from English indentured servants to African slaves came
from the fact that servants, after completing their labor contracts, threatened
to become an unruly underclass.[11]
The development of tobacco and cotton as major incoming producing crops spread
slavery throughout the South. It should be noted that not every Southerner
owned slaves -- only 1 in 11 owned slaves. However, the major molders of public
opinion were often holders of slaves. This was true of educators, doctors, politicians,
and preachers. In some states 40% of the
preachers of certain denominations owned slaves. [12]
Leaders in the South turned a blind eye to evils of the lucrative system that
produced their wealth. Over a decade
before the Southern states officially withdrew from the United States of
America, secession had already began in American Christianity.
The General Conference of the Methodist
Episcopal Church met in New York City in 1844 during the intense national
debate over whether Texas would be admitted as slave or free state to the
Union. Delegates from Northern states introduced the issue when they questioned
whether James Andrew, Bishop of Georgia,
could own slaves and still remain a bishop of the church. It did not matter that he offered to renounce any ownership interest by
transferring their ownership to his wife with a deed of trust. Northerners believed any association with
such an evil, necessary or otherwise, precluded his continued service to the
church.[13]
Andrews wanted to resign rather than risk the division of the church, but the Southern delegates would not permit it
because that would acknowledge slavery to be a sin. After a hot debate,
delegates from both regions voted to separate the church, and by May, 1845, the
Southern conferences withdrew and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.[14]
Baptists,
the second largest denomination at the time, also experienced the same fate.
Northern Baptists raised the issue of whether slaveholders could be accepted as
missionaries. They believed that the willful participation in such a sinful
institution was an impediment to appointment, and refused to take any step that
might imply they were blessing the holding of slaves. The South was equally
determined not to acquiesce in this stigmatization of slaveholding, or to take
any action that suggests that holding slaves was immoral. As a result, in 1845 the Southerners withdrew to form
the Southern Baptist Convention.[15]
There
was no rush for the powerful denominations to reunite immediately following the
war. Southern preachers declared that the South was fighting to preserve the
divine economy and protect the “true religion,” in opposition to the North
where churches had grown corrupt, liberal and denied the very word of God. The Southern churches saw themselves as
"Christian soldiers marching off as to war" to fight a battle against
Satan and his “Northern demons.” Many Southern Christians heard one message
repeatedly -- they were the ones with the righteous cause.[16]
The
Southern Christians faced a difficult situation when the war ended. It appeared
that God had been on side of the North all along. Southern religious leaders
faced some difficult questions. Why had such a terrible thing happened to such
a religious people? Was God still on his throne? Were the horrors of defeat the
result of some sin on the part of the South? Slowly, a new belief system formed
that provided an answer as to why God had chosen not to answer the prayers of
the South. A new message emerged from Southern pulpits -- God refused to answer their prayers because of the region's collective
sin -- but that sin was not slavery.[17]
The core
idea that would become the foundation of the new belief had been laid during
the pre-war years with the doctrine called the "spirituality of the church."
John Holt Rice stated this doctrine
succinctly when he wrote that the church should "confine itself to making
good Christians and avoid speaking out on matters beyond its competence."
That is to say, it should focus solely on issues of personal morality,
rather than trying to address such social evils as slavery.[18]
As
the course of the war turned against the South after 1863, and during the post
war years, the South slowly came to believe that its defeat was the result of
the prevalence of drunkenness, card
playing, and dancing among Confederate troops and civilians. Such vices had brought the wrath
of God down on their heads. No less an illustrious leader as Robert E. Lee gave
this view currency. Confederate military set-backs had not been the result of
overwhelming numbers of enemy troops, or any ill-advised strategic decisions by
him and his generals. They were the result of "drinking, gambling and
profanity."[19]
Instead
of seeing the nation's baptism of blood as a divine act sweeping away slavery,
many Southern religious leaders began to preach that defeat had really been an
effort on the part of God to get the South's attention, and to bring it to its
collective knees in repentance for the drunkenness, card-playing, and swearing
that had gone on during the war years.
God had allowed the South to taste defeat as part of a larger plan to purify
the region, and to insure that its people were the most religious and its
churches the purest anywhere.[20]
At the
time the North was embarking on a process of reconstruction to bring the South
back into the Union, there was also an effort on the part of the South to
re-establish what many had come to believe was the divine order of the races.
Under the system of slavery, the African-American had a clear place in the
pecking order. He was "the bottom rail" in the social fence while the
white planter was the "top rail." But to many Southerners, it seemed
as if political reconstruction had inverted that social order, placing the
newly freed slaves in positions of political and economic power, while
disenfranchising the former Confederates. And so they searched desperately for
a way to put African-Americans in their place. The Klu Klux Klan was founded by Nathan Bedford Forrest to intimidate
blacks who had risen to positions of power in the Reconstruction governments,
and to insure that every black knew their place in the larger society. Cross
burnings, lynchings, and other such methods proved to be useful tools of social
control in the hands of the Klan. [21]
Share-cropping
was established to keep newly freed blacks working for their old masters on the
old plantations. A loan would be made at the beginning of the planting season
for tools, seed, fertilizer, food and clothing. That loan had to be paid back
when the sharecropper sold their crops. If there were profits, the sharecopper
got to keep a share. The problem was that with the land owner's creative
financing and high interest rates, rarely would a sharecropper break even, much
less earn a profit. Since the terms of their lease required them to work till
any indebtedness was paid off, freedmen soon found themselves as bound to their
former masters as they had been during the days of slavery. The use of debt to
keep people in the new form of American slavery would become the tool used by
the next generation of profit first capitalists.
As the fervor in the Southern
pulpits heated up a new wave of revivalism was ignited. A number of Southern denominations
came to see themself as the new children of Israel -- God's chosen people. They
believed they were the righteous remnant and had been charged with the task of
saving the nation from the immorality of the North. Southern preachers taught
that slavery was a political and cultural institution that belonged to the
secular world, which was beyond their ability to control. They declared that one's personal faith was what God cared about and
every individual was responsible for determining their own eternal destiny.
What mattered to the Christian God more than slavery, according to the
revivalists that preached throughout the South, was drinking, card-playing,
dancing, sex – and tithing![22]
A wall
of separation was being built in the American culture that separated
Christianity not only from politics, but also from business. Many Christians
felt perfectly free to engage in work or indulge activities that were contrary
to the teachings of the Bible and the church during the week, but then purge
their consciences on Sunday morning in a spiritual catharsis. This led to a
binge-purge cycle in which individuals binge during the week on the fruits of
sin, and then on Sunday purge themselves in an emotional outpouring.[23]
During the period 1865-1930, Christians in America embarked on three major crusades to address
the rapidly expanding problems of society. The roots of two of these crusades
predated the Civil War, and only came into their own in the post-war period: temperance and Sabbath observance.
The
temperance movement was brought
about when the State of Maine passed a law imposing prohibition in 1851. In
1869, a National Prohibition Party was formed, and the Women's Christian
Temperance Union was organized in 1874. Eventually this crusade was successful
in passing the Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution. But it's lasting significance
comes from the fact that this movement provided a place for women to begin
to take an active role in society. Many of the earliest prominent figures
in the feminist movement got their start in the Temperance Crusade.
A
second crusade was centered around Sabbath
observance. The idea of compelling everyone to honor the Sabbath was one
that received much attention from the churches. This was a reaction to the
"Continental Sundays" of many immigrants. Among the measures that
were pursued by this crusade was the prevention of streetcars from running on
Sunday, and the reading of Sunday newspapers. Despite countless sermons on this
topic and repeated editorials in church newspapers, and resolutions from a host
of religious bodies, the mores of an
industrial and urban society had changed, and no "blue law" could
alter that.
The
third, and final crusade, concerned missions.
The idea that "Anglo-Saxons" were a superior breed, had entered
American intellectual circles, where it supplied the rationale for American
dreams of imperialism. James M. King a Methodist minister in New York made the
case for this crusade in painfully clear terms when he wrote:
"Christianized Anglo-Saxon blood, with its love of liberty, its thrift,
its intense and persistent energy and personal independence, is the regnant
force in this country; and that is a most pregnant fact, because the concededly
most important lesson in the history of modern civilization is that God is
using the Anglo-Saxon to conquer the world for Christ by dispossessing feeble
races, and assimilating and molding others."[24]
A new
way of viewing the world and Christianity emerged in the South, but for many of
us who were born after World War II, we believed that the messages we heard
from the pulpits came from Jesus – nothing was said about the Civil War. ●
[2] Ibid, p.
136.
[3] A
History of Money By Glyn Davies; p. 187
[4] The
Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism By Joyce Appleby; p. 35.
[5] Ibid, p.
63.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid, p.
130.
[8] Ibid, p.
126.
[9] ibid
[10] Ibid,
p. 48
[11] Ibid,
p. 131.
[12] RELIGION 166: Religious Life in the United States; Dr.
Terry Matthews. Lecture 11.
[13] ibid
[14] ibid
[15] ibid
[16] Ibid;
Lecture 13
[17] ibid
[18] ibid
[19] ibid
[20] ibid
[21] ibid
[22] ibid
[23] ibid
[24] Ibid;
Lecture 20.
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