Equally certain was the culpability of the North. In his fast sermon to the Centenary Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, the Reverend Leroy Lee pointed toward the enemy’s intention to “exterminate the white population of these states.” But, he insisted, this would not come to pass because “we have strong grounds to trust that God will hear our prayers, and interpose for our deliverance.”
17
With some exceptions, the secular press concurred. A writer for the
Richmond Daily Whig
pointed out: “No man or woman in the Confederacy who is familiar with the doctrines or commandments of the Inspired Word can be greatly surprised at the present state of affairs. Have not the people everywhere devoted themselves to the worship of Mammon? Have they not all practiced extortion?”
18
Fast-day preaching might be losing “its good effect through repetition” among many observers in the government and the secular press, yet a flood of religious print continued to drape the carnage with spiritual significance. Denominational newspapers trumpeted the “Christian heroism” of generals like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee, effectively fusing patriotism with the same Christian legitimation that prevailed in the North. By August 1863 the war had created and consecrated two American civil religions, mortally opposed, but both Christian and both “American.”
In a letter to the
Houston Tri-Weehly
Telegraph, written on August 23, 1863, Chaplain Bunting described the scene at a fast-day church service in Rome, Georgia, led by the Confederate firebrand Benjamin Palmer of New Orleans. Midway through the service, Union artillery began bombarding “hundreds of non-combatants [who] were in the different houses of God for worship.” For Bunting, this bombardment bore a dual significance. It underscored both the unjust tactics of the “fiendish” enemy in attacking innocents, and the bravery of the worshippers who refused to leave despite the bombardment:
Yet the mass remained in their places, and the man of God continued in his prayer. There he stood, this noble Ambassador of Christ from the far South, with eyes and hands raised to Heaven, not a note altered, not a sign of confusion, excitement or alarm, naught but the calm, Christian face, uplifted and full of the unconsciousness to all save its devotions, which beam from the soul of true piety.
19
Eventually, as the shelling continued, services concluded and congregations dispersed, having learned the lesson that “[t]he enemy may burn our churches; he may exile our people, with his cannon pointed against the place of prayer ... but he cannot seal the lips of the believer, nor yet prevent the heart from sending forth its petitions to the ‘Father of Mercies.’ ”
20
To clergymen and religious publishers who recognized the power of the press to mold opinion, however, a more immediate danger than the bombardment appeared as the war continued. The shifting tone they detected in the mainstream secular press and the increasingly harsh criticism of the Davis administration in the opposition papers threatened a disillusionment that could very well erode the faith of the people in both their cause and their prospects for success. Here too an evolving civil war within a civil war appeared, as journalists criticized leadership and clergy criticized journalists for bad faith. To counter what they perceived as a more secular nationalism promoted in some newspapers, religious editors identified patriotism without piety as the “defective patriotism” that was drawing God’s chastisement.
21
In one soldier’s tract, a Virginia chaplain wondered why this patriotism seemed more motivating than the cause of Christ.
22
In fact, not all secular newspapers were critical of the war effort; some stood resolutely beside a virtually unanimous religious press. A few even succumbed to pure blood revenge. The
Richmond Daily Dispatch
recognized with a sort of helpless resignation that “the taste for blood grows with the indulgence, and men become every day more like wolves, as they give way to the growing appetite.... We are getting savage, with the rest of our countrymen, and we confess to a special delight in hearing of Yankee corpses.” In such a mentality, no contradiction existed between revenge and just war: “Adversity will bring out only in bolder relief the virtues of the people of the South—the virtues of courage, constancy, and faith in a Just Cause and a Just Providence.”
23
But the political and military leadership was another matter. Following the defeat at Gettysburg, the
Richmond Daily Whig
continued to invoke religion, but turned from Israel to place a far greater emphasis on secular history and antiquity:
The glory of Athens and the strength of Sparta were acquired by making every man a soldier, and considering non-combatants as drones in the national hive.... No nobler principle, no dearer homes, no fairer land were ever fought for, bled for, died for than hang upon the issue of this conflict. Natal rights and native land, hereditary titles to property, the immunities of free citizenship, the sanctities of the hearthstone, the appealing voice of innocent and helpless womanhood—all that can touch the heart or nerve the arm, cry trumpet tongued to all brave and true men to fight this fight out to victory or death.
24
The point was clear. Religion might be enough to justify the war, but the bracing tonic of ancient warriors made victory sweeter.
As pro-Davis “political preaching” escalated in the churches, secular criticism of the clergy’s preaching grew fierce in some corners. The
Richmond
Examiner gave very clear advice to the clergy that reflected a return to the antebellum doctrine of “the spirituality of the church.” It was time for the clergy to preach Christ and, by implication, get out of politics where they were doing no good: “[I]t is rather their duty to soften the passions aroused in the contests of the world, and withdraw our thoughts from their fevered excitement, than to stimulate them by passionate discourse.”
25
The North and South were now headed in opposite directions, the
Examiner
claimed: the North was rapidly becoming more radical, the South more conservative and more attached to its institutions.
26
The South’s unique social organization made it special: “We are the only religious and conservative people in Christendom.... It is nothing but our social institutions and our domestic slavery that distinguishes us from the rest of the nations of Europe.”
Because
of slavery, the South escaped “the moral and political evils that afflict other countries.” Christian morality was natural to a slave society but impracticable in a free land, “where all men are equals, [and therefore] all must be competitors.”
27
Clearly, if it was left to the South, slavery would not disappear anytime soon.
On August 6, 1863, after the humiliations of Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the Richmond Examiner bitterly declared that defeat came in no small part because of the persistence of the “Southern Government” in fighting a just war: “There is neither Christianity nor religion of any kind in this war. We prosecute it in self-defense, for the preservation of our liberty, our homes and our Negroes.” This statement grew as much out of frustration with Davis’s policies and his outspoken clerical defenders as from philosophical commitment. If the conduct of Confederates at war was more just and humane (and Lee’s orders in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, reinforced that image), it was time to change and grow more savage, like the North.
The
Examiner
never denied that Christianity was at the core of Southern society (hence its moral superiority), only that religion—and its gentle ethics—had no place in war. The paper’s editors had no further patience with religion being mixed up with politics, public occasions, or national policy. This, despite the blatant fact that Southern religious leaders were anything but gentle.
The paper’s editor, John Moncure Daniel, mercilessly criticized Davis’s government for “what might be called the white-cravat policy; the practice, in a deadly struggle with the devil’s own brood, of the Christian precept of doing good for evil, of turning another cheek when smitten.”
28
Politicians, in their public and political capacities, should stay away from religion, and clergymen, like women, should avoid politics. “That in times of high excitement the clergy should share the feelings of the community, is natural; and it may be difficult to prevent all confusion of earthly and heavenly considerations in pious discourse; yet the nature of our Government, widely adverse to the union of the secular and the sacred arm, forbids it.”
29
For the Examiner, separation of church and state also meant a more rigid separation of religion and politics than Davis, his generals, and many other journalists were willing to employ. While Confederate advocates of the jeremiad could not see the contradictions between their fast days and jeremiads and the antebellum tradition of the spirituality of the church, Daniel saw it all too clearly. The Confederate nation under Davis was becoming dangerously “Puritan,” thus subverting the very cause of separation:
Fast days and Thanksgiving days strike the Southern ear with a puritanical sound, always disagreeable, and, now, pre-eminently hateful. They smack of Latter Day sanctity; savor of the nasal twang and recall disagreeable reminiscences of Praise-God-Barebones, the Pilgrim Fathers, and their Yankee descendants.
Public trust in “Divine aid” was one thing, Daniels continued, but still,
it is to be regretted that the phraseology we use should be unfortunately associated with all that is repugnant to our taste and our feelings.... This revolution should secure us social as well as political independence. We should get rid of Yankee manners as well as of Puritan laws; and one of the most obnoxious is the vice of political preaching. Let the Southern clergy, then, be assured that they will win more lasting respect, and exert more legitimate influence, in abstaining from a custom discordant to our manners.
30
For all of his fulmination against churches and fasts, Daniel never attacked the religious press nor did he criticize denominational statements supporting the Confederacy. Nor did he question the cause. He attacked fast-day preaching and the president who called for it. And he questioned a military ethic of just conduct that placed the unjust conduct of Northern troops at an advantage. Indeed, for a Christian republic, these were all good, pure traditions. His criticisms were reserved for political sermons and, in particular, fast-day sermons uttered from the ashes of defeat. These departures from the rigid separation of church and state, he believed, promoted a supernatural fatalism that placed the chief burden for victory on God rather than Confederate guns.
In words bristling with bitter irony, Daniel observed that the North—the originator of fasts—had itself outgrown them, while the South foolishly picked them up: “They by the way do not seem now to rely on fasts and humiliation. They have recently indulged in thanksgiving for victory, but their panacea for defeat seems to be fresh levies of men, more ironclad and addi
tional
fifteen-inch guns.”
31
The implications of Daniel’s perspective were obvious. Only by duplicating the North’s civil religion, at the expense of traditional Christianity, could the Confederacy adopt a tough-minded, patriotic savagery capable of defeating the North on its own terms. But this would not happen. Confederate Christianity was simply too powerful a cultural system to discard. Instead, Confederate Christians would grow even tougher and embrace the savagery.
CHAPTER 27
“THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA”
T
hroughout the war, Jefferson Davis took the high moral ground regarding the conduct of soldiers in the field. Despite the heavy destruction wrought on Federal armies at Gettysburg, no widespread pillaging occurred, nor destruction of Pennsylvania towns. Neither were civilians harassed with a view toward destroying their morale. This, he asserted, was in sharp contrast to the hard-war policy condoned by the North.
In a letter to President Lincoln, drafted on July 2, 1863, Davis addressed himself to the issue of just conduct: “I have to complain of the conduct of your officers and troops in many parts of the country, who violate all the rules of war by carrying on hostilities not only against armed foes but against noncombatants, aged men, women, and children.” Assaults on property were not solely to support armies in the field but also to destroy civilian life. Union soldiers “not only seize such property as is required for the use of your forces, but destroy all private property within their reach, even agricultural implements.” Furthermore, Northern armies sought “to subdue the population of the districts where they are operating by the starvation that must result from the destruction of standing crops and agricultural tools.”
1
Davis did not mention particulars (implying they were too universal to be itemized), but examples of unjust conduct multiplied. One, reported in a letter by Robert Gould Shaw, commander of the first Northern black regiment, the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, described the actions of Colonel Montgomery in the abandoned town of Darien, Georgia, in June 1863. After bombarding the town with artillery, Montgomery landed boats and confiscated all the furniture and movable property. Then, “in a very low tone, and ... [with] a sweet smile,” he informed Shaw, “I shall burn this town.”
Though “not a shot had been fired at us,” Montgomery ordered Shaw and other officers to burn the town. When Shaw asked for an explanation, “the reasons he gave me ... were, that the Southerners must be made to feel that this was a real war, and that they were to be swept away by the hand of God, like the Jews of old.” Personally, Shaw did not like “being made the instrument of the Lord’s vengeance,” but fearing that if he reported the destruction it would do more harm to the reputation of his black soldiers than to Montgomery, Shaw said nothing, while conceding “this makes me very much ashamed of myself.”
2