While God Is Marching on: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers PDF
Preview While God Is Marching on: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers
WHILE GOD IS MARCHING ON MODERN WAR STUDIES Theodore A. Wilson General Editor Raymond A. Callahan J. Garry Clifford Jacob W. Kipp Jay Luvaas Allan R. Millett Carol Reardon Dennis Showalter Series Editors WHILE GOD IS MARCHING ON The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers Steven E. Woodworth UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KANSAS © 2ooi by the University Press of Kansas All rights reserved Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66049), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Woodworth, Steven E. While God is marching on : the religious world of Civil War soldiers / Steven E. Wood worth. p. cm. — (Modern war studies) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7006-1099-5 (alk. paper) 1. United States—History—Civil War, 1861-1865—Religious aspects. 2. Soldiers—Religious life—United States—History—19th century. 3. War—Religious aspects—Christianity—History—19th century. I. Title. II. Series. E635.W75 2001 973.7’78—dc2i 2001001123 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. AGAIN, FOR LEAH To God alone be the glory. CONTENTS Preface ix Part I. The Religious Heritage and Beliefs of the Civil War Soldiers 1. “In Such a Country as This” Christianity in America Before the Civil War 3 2. “A Merciful Providence” The Actions of a Sovereign God 2 7 3. “In the Light of God’s Throne and the Presence of Jesus” The Life to Come 40 4. “Peace with God” The Way of Salvation 52 5. “His Grace Is Ever Sufficient for Me” The Christian Life 67 Part IL The Civil War Soldiers, Their Religion, and the Conflict 6. “We Are the Sword in the Hand of God” No rthern Christians Vieiv the Early Stages of the War 93 vii viii WHILE GOD IS MARCHING ON 7. “God Has Favored Our Cause” Southern Christians View the Early Stages of the War 117 8. “The Boys Love Him as a Father” Civil War Chaplains 145 9. “To Labor for the Souls of Their Fellow-Men” Army Missionaries and the U.S. Christian Commission 160 10. “In the Thickest of the Fight” Religion in the Camp and on the Battlefield, 1861-1862 175 11. “A Great Revolution Has Been Wrought” Religion in the Camp and on the Battlefield, 1862-1863 199 12. “If We Fall on the Field of Strife” Religion in the Camp and on the Battlefield, 1864-1865 231 13. “God Has Chastened Us” Northern Christians View the Concluding Stages of the War 256 14. “The Lord Has Forsaken His People” Southern Christians View the Concluding Stages of the War 270 15. “We Shall Not Easily Forget” The Soldiers' Religion and the Impact of the Civil War 287 Notes 295 Bibliography 345 Index 365 PREFACE In the immensely popular and successful 1990 PBS documentary series on the Civil War, the television audience frequently heard quotes by Civil War soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes. None of those statements gave any hint that Rhodes was a devout man. Neither his religion nor that of the other soldiers seemed to matter in that series or in most other presentations of the war. The marginalized role to which religion has been relegated in modern America has made the vital faith of past generations almost in visible to students of history. Even in a field as widely studied as the Civil War, religion has been the subject of relatively few books. This is a book about the religious world of Civil War soldiers. Readers should be advised what is meant by that description and intended in this book. First of all, this is not an encyclopedia of unusual religious groups or practices. Rather, this book is concerned with the mainstream religion of the overwhelming majority of Civil War soldiers who took any inter est in religious matters. That religion happens to have been Protestant Christianity. There were, of course, a fair number of Catholics, some Jews, and even a few avowed atheists in the ranks, but their numbers together constituted a small minority of the soldiers, and their beliefs and prac tices play little role in these pages. ix X WHILE GOD IS MARCHING ON Second, this is a book about the religious world of the soldiers. That means several things. Although I did not exclude officers from consider ation, I emphasized the writings of the common soldiers. Officers’ com ments, when used, count for no more than those of any other individual soldier. In short, in this study, rank did not matter. This emphasis on the soldiers also means that I did not go out of my way to find the papers of chaplains or even particularly religious soldiers. Indeed, I tried to hold down the number of chaplains’ comments in favor of the words of the common soldiers themselves. This is not because I think the chaplains were dishonest, but rather because their view of the religious state of the army would necessarily be skewed. Chaplains’ views appear in this book, but only alongside larger numbers of ordinary soldiers’ comments. I devoted one chapter specifically to the chaplains and their relationship with the soldiers but otherwise tried to keep the focus on the common soldiers. Besides, there is a good modern book on Union chaplains.1 Casting my research net for all soldiers, rather than only those that the various research indexes or card catalogs identified as particularly religious, made my job more difficult. For one thing, it meant reading the papers of a number of soldiers who had little if anything to say that shed any light on my subject. Still, I wanted to get an overall view of what the bulk of the soldiers were thinking and writing, and it was worth the extra work. Civilians enter into this work tangentially, because they were part of the religious world the soldiers inhabited. The soldiers themselves, how ever, remain at center stage. This is a matter of expedience in two ways. First, a book about the religious world of everybody during the Civil War would simply be too big. Second, much more evidence exists on the sol diers’ views than on those of the folks back home. This is because letters from the soldiers to their families and friends survived in vastly larger numbers than did letters traveling the other way. The same principles apply even more strongly to the coverage of theo logians, denominational leaders, and members of the civilian clergy gen erally. They make their appearances in these pages, but this book is not primarily about them. Readers can and should look elsewhere for a pri mary emphasis on such topics as the wartime teachings of the Northern Protestant clergy or their Southern counterparts. PREFACE xi My goal was to let the soldiers’ own thoughts and beliefs, as expressed in their diaries, letters, and (occasionally) reminiscences, set the tone and agenda of this book. By this I do not mean to make any absurd claims about being unbiased. No one is. Rather, I mean that if the soldiers had much to say about a topic, then I included much about it in this book. If the soldiers did not address a topic, I did not either. I did my best to avoid the sort of distortion that would make the Civil War soldiers into late- twentieth-century or early-twenty-first-century postmodernists dressed up in blue and gray uniforms. The purpose of this book is to help readers understand better the Civil War soldiers and their motivations, the sectional conflict, and the shape of American society and culture in the nineteenth century. Along with all this—and part of it—comes an understanding of the vital religious component of the American tradition, a component that was a constant of American life throughout most of the nation’s first two centuries and is clearly revealed in the voluminous writings of the Civil War soldiers. Although I used far less than half of the source material I gathered for this book, I am aware that I reproduced more examples, anecdotes, and quotations than many professional historians would have in writing a book of this sort. Without implying any criticism of those who would do things differently, I believe that the relatively large amount of concrete examples makes this book more vivid, colorful, interesting, and, I hope, persuasive. I take pleasure in expressing my thanks to the many persons who helped me with this project. First of all, my friends and colleagues Profs. Mark Grimsley and Brooks D. Simpson, by whose suggestion I undertook the research and writing of this book. Brooks also read the manuscript and offered helpful advice, as did Prof. James M. McPherson. The final deci sions, however, were my own, and they cannot be blamed for any prob lems that remain. It was a pleasure to work with the always kind and helpful staff of the United States Army Military History Institute archives: Dr. Richard Sommers, David Keogh, Pamela Cheney, and James Baughman. Like wise, Nan Card of the Rutherford B. Hayes Center in Fremont, Ohio, went out of her way to help me. These people distinguished themselves
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