The Struggles of Secession

Religious views on Christianity differed between the North and South before and during the Civil War. These differences on Theological matters clearly helped fuel Secession.

The North was clearly more progressive and liberal in their religious views. These views driven by an influx of many non-Reformed, German immigrants. Thus diluting the previously Reformed views. In the North, 15% were active in the church versus the 25% in the South.

“The largely rural South that maintained traditional, orthodox doctrines aligned with the teachings of John Calvin.”3

The South tended to follow the traditions and faith of family, rooted in the land and along the Protestant Reformation views. Their views of family placed the white male at the top of the social ladder in his household over women and slaves. So it seems clear that many men in the South may have felt their status in the family and their powerful status quo was at stake. Southern spirituality was private and personal. Thus they were stricter adherents to the literal word of God.

“They believed the Bible was God’s authoritative word, and that was all there was to it.”3

The South also looked down on the U.S. Constitution as it did not specifically name “God”. Thus, the Confederate Constitution calls the nation a “Christian nation”. The pulpit used this fact as a higher cause for Secession. They further to say that the North was a den of iniquity. Christians throughout the South justified the war on spiritual sanction.

“Like the saved sinner, the South could experience a new birth with secession by walking away from evil company and breaking the connection with ‘vice, crime and mob rule that [was] everywhere rampant’ in the North”4

Southerners felt that the North had become ‘evil’ and a ‘terror to good’ and it was their duty to separate. The South was viewed as being wantonly attacked by the North. While many Southerners admitted that slavery was an issue in the war, but defended it as being a benevolent institution as brought blacks to God and that God also sanctioned slavery in the Bible.

“The South fights for the preservation of the purity of religious truth”

Episcopal Bishop – Confederate General Leonidas Polk

Some Biblical views cited by ministers to defend slavery came from these Biblical references:

Genesis 9:18-27 speaks of the curse that falls upon Canaan and he ends up being slave to Shem and Japheth.

Genesis 17:12-13 talks about God’s covenant with man where He sanctions slaveholding as those ‘bought with money’ and are thus are part of masters household.

Exodus 20-21 includes laws about Hebrew servants.

Leviticus 25:44-46 states that God ordains the purchase of ‘heathens’ to serve the Israelites and extends ownership to their children.

I Corinthians 7:21 “Art thou called being a servant? Care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.”

Colossians 3:21, 4:1 speaks about the Apostle Paul regulating the relationship between Master and slave.

The most popular one was from one of Paul’s letters that commanded Onesimus, a runaway slave to return to his master. This was also used as a way to defend the Fugitive Slave Act.

Northern ministers viewed things quite differently as indicated by one Congregationalist.

“Congregationalist minister Horace Bushnell, believed God would use the war to complete the process of molding America into ‘God’s own nation’, and he thanked God, ‘I have been allowed to see this day’.”3

The North’s Biblical attempts to uphold anti-slavery views were usually weak and relied on common sense readings of specific texts. The utilized Exodus 21:16 and Acts 17:26.

“To say that everything [in] the Bible is divinely inspired…is to give utterance to bold fiction.”

William Lloyd Garrison – Anti-slave leader

Garrison’s viewpoints clearly would fly in the face of the Southerners Reformed views.

Many Abolitionists believed that any Bible that would sanction slavery was the ‘Devils Book and not Gods’.

“These heresies espoused by Northerners removed any doubt in the Southern mind that Abolitionists were atheists.”3

Most Southerners also viewed all Northerners as Abolitionists. This could not be further from the truth. Abolitionists made a very small, vocal minority in the North. But, even in the South anti-slavery viewpoints had grown since the 1850s. Ironically, slaveholders made up a small, vocal minority as well!

Sources:

3. Young, Elizabeth D., North & South: The Religious Divide, North & South Magazine, Vol II, No. 6, Curtis Circulation Company, Milford, NJ. Dec. 2009.

4. Mary A. Bushnell Cheney, Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell. New York:Scribner, 1905, 474. In the internet Archive Digital Library, http://www.archive.org///////details/bushnellslife00unknoft

Sept 28, 2008.

5 Williams, David, A People’s History of The Civil War – Struggles for the Meaning of Freedom, The New Press, New York, NY 2005.