God's Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War

A Religious History of the American Civil War

The title of George Rable's new book on the Civil War, "God's Almost Chosen Peoples" (2010) derives from a speech that Lincoln gave on February 21, 1861 to the New Jersey Senate en route to his inauguration in Washington, D.C. Lincoln said: "I shall be a humble instrument in the hands of the Almighty and of this, his almost chosen people."

During the Civil War, religious Americans, North and South, had a strong sense of divine providence. They read the same Bible and prayed to the same God. They tended to think that God had a special providence for the United States which they analogized loosely to the ancient Israelites of the Old Testament.

Rable's book examines how people of faith tried to understand the Civil War in the years leading up to and including the conflict. He offers a complex, detailed, and thoughtful account of a subject that his received relatively little sustained attention in Civil War studies. Rable holds the Charles Summersell Chair in Southern History at the University of Alabama. He is best-known for his book, "Fredericksburg, Fredericksburg!" which was awarded the Lincoln Prize. His new book on Civil War religious history is dense and difficult. He offers important theological background for examining how people of faith viewed religion during the Civil War era. Rable has read an extraordinary range of original source material and religious texts, including sermons, denominational papers and statements, religious newsletters, diaries, among other sources. The bibliography and the end notes are massive. Rable examines both the Union and the Confederacy. He considers a variety of religious denominations, even though his focus is on American evangelical Protestantism. He considers the writings of ministers and theologians, of religious lay individuals, and of the soldiers in the field who fought the War.

As Rable points, out, the story of religion in the Civil War has many "zig-zags" and resists easy summarization. His study has the virtue of exploring the many divergent viewpoints that surfaced in both North and South. But much of the book concerns America's "Civil Religion", a term Rable might have considered more thoroughly. Religious Americans saw themselves within God's providence. They tended to read the Bible literally and as a blue print of sorts for the extremities in which they found themselves. Although they understood that American government (and the Confederate government as well) separated Church and State, many Americans tended to view their history and the Civil War in Biblically religious terms. The pervasiveness of religion was large but should not be over-estimated. Rable points out that between one American in six or seven was a church member during the Civil War Era, although the number of people who attended church with some regularity was considerably larger.

The book begins with a consideration of how various religious denominations responded to slavery prior to the outbreak of the War. Some individuals thought formal religion should take no position in an essentially political matter but focus instead on questions of personal salvation. Other people used religious beliefs to support strong commitments to slavery or anti-slavery positions. This particular question about the role of religion in civil life remains, of course, much with us. Then Rable considers responses to Lincoln's election and shows a broad spectrum of religious views in both North and South, with some voices in both sections advocating conciliation. With the firing on Fort Sumter, religious views in both North and South hardened as denominational leaders on both sides urged the conflict forward and perhaps conflated patriotism with religious belief.

The larger portion of this lengthy book examines religion in the camps -- where there were a minority of strong religious believers even taking account of religious revivalism -- and on the political and on the home front. Religious leaders in both North and South seemed to move too quickly to the conclusion that God was on their side. Leaders in both sections proclaimed numerous fast days and days of Thanksgiving. Religious providential interpretations varied as respective battles were won or lost. Ultimately, many but not all religious leaders in the North became strong supporters of Emancipation as a religious end of the Union's war efforts. As the war dragged on and bloodshed increased alarmingly, the urgings of people of faith probably became increasingly important in keeping the commitment of both sides to battle to the last.

In the last chapter of the book, Rable examines closely Lincoln's Second Inaugural address which spoke in a more nuanced, complex manner than did the learned clergymen on either side of the difficulties of the conflict and of the ambiguities of providence. Over the years, Lincoln's Second Inaugural has become a primary text of what many scholars see as an American secular civil religion. Rable also examines the many responses of religious people to Lincoln's assassination.

Although it sometimes gets mired down in detail, Rable's book examines reflectively how many Americans in the mid-nineteenth Century understood religion together with the many different impacts of religion and religious believers on the Civil War.

Robin Friedman