Protestantism in America: A Narrative History by Jerald C. Brauer
Chapter 12: War and Reconstruction
A tall, gaunt man stood before a convention of Republican delegates at Springfield, Illinois, in June, 1858. As Abraham Lincoln spoke, he uttered words of prophecy which few people understood. Everyone recognized the seriousness of the slavery crisis, and many talked of the disaster it would bring, but few seriously considered the possibility of outright war. The Republican Party was new, dedicated to the principle of keeping slavery out of all the new territories of the United States.
Ever since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the nation had been agitated by the slavery controversy. Time after time solutions were sought. In 1850 a compromise on the new territory won from Mexico was worked out. But each time a territory presented itself for statehood both sides wanted to claim it. In 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Hill was passed allowing the sovereign citizens to vote on the matter. This set aside all previous compromises, and the two sides rushed settlers into the Kansas Territory in order to get a favorable vote.
So Lincoln stood before the Springfield convention and pointed to the necessity of understanding the past in order to comprehend the gravity of the present when he said: "If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed object and confident promise of putting an end to slavery
agitation. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased but has constantly augmented. In my opinion, it will not
cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. ‘A house divided against itself cannot stand.’ I believe the government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, North as well as South."
In 1860, Lincoln was nominated to carry the Presidential banner for the youngest of the American political parties, the Republican. He
campaigned on the principle of no immediate interference with slavery in the states where it already existed and absolutely no extension of slavery into any territories. As he put it: "Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the national territories, and to overrun us here in these free states? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fearlessly and
effectively."
When the November election was over Lincoln had won, but he could not take office until March, 1861. Throughout the campaign,
Southerners had boasted that they would not accept a "black Republican" as President, and four days after the election, South Carolina called for a convention to consider withdrawing from the Union. In December it took the fateful step, and by February of 1861 five states followed in secession from the Union.
All attempts to reach a peaceful settlement were smashed by the
bombardment of Fort Sumter in April of 1861. The Civil War was on!
The Confederate States of America rallied under the leadership of Jefferson Davis. Lincoln shrewdly played to hold the border states on the Union side. Of one thing he was absolutely convinced -- the Union must be preserved.
Not only had slavery split the Churches, it had split the entire nation.
Yet there was a good deal more than slavery involved. There was the fight between state rights and the preservation of the Federal Union.
There was the competition between the cotton-growing agricultural
South and the rapidly growing industrial might of the North. There was the constant agitation over the status of new territories. Little wonder there was civil war!
All the Churches, North and South, sprang to the defense of their
respective causes. Both prayed for the blessing of God for their side, and both were certain that divine favor would bring them victory. Chaplains were provided in large numbers to accompany the blue and the gray.
Services were held on battlefield, in hospital and camp. Even while men fought they were reminded of God’s judgment and his mercy.
For some time the final outcome of the struggle was in grave doubt, but as the Union armies won victories in the west, particularly in Missouri and Louisiana, the Northern Churches were confronted with two problems. What was to happen to the Negro? What was to be done about the disloyal Southern pastors who held their pulpits or who fled and left no religious services?
The answer given to both of these questions during the war set the
pattern that prevailed during the period of reconstruction. With regard to their attitude toward the Southern Christian, many Northern churchmen looked upon the whole South as a mission field to be won from the slaveholders. As the Union armies moved into Southern territory, the Union chaplains wrote home telling of the religious needs of the South.
A number of Methodists and others responded to these letters by saying that it was the duty of missionary boards to handle the problem.
In 1862 the Methodist Bishop Ames got permission from Secretary of War Stanton to take over and use the churches of the Methodist
Episcopal Church South for Christian services. The American Baptist Home Missions Society and the Presbyterians received similar
privileges. Large numbers of Northern missionaries were sent south to occupy Southern pulpits. The Southern churchmen rightly resented the highhanded attempt to seize their churches and people under the
protection of the Union armies.
Lincoln had better sense than Stanton or the Church leaders. He clearly saw that the Government had no right to interfere with church life by giving Southern churches to the Northern "missionaries." He also saw that this would lead only to bad results for the nation and the Churches.
Many churchmen could not see it this way, and so the Churches became the forerunners of the "carpetbaggers" that descended on the postwar
South.
Again with regard to the slaves Lincoln showed better sense and truer Christian insight than many of the ministers of his day. As soon as the Union forces proved victorious anywhere the Churches demanded the immediate emancipation of all slaves. In 1862, General Fremont went directly against Lincoln’s will and declared all slaves in Missouri free.
Lincoln overrode his order because he saw the harm it would do to the Union cause in the border regions.
So clergymen began to attack Lincoln and to uphold Fremont. Many wrote to Lincoln or visited him with advice as to when to free the Negroes. Almost every minister who came thought he knew the will of God for the situation. Only Lincoln was sufficiently humble to realize that he didn’t fully know or understand God’s will.
He replied to a committee representing various Protestant
denominations asking for immediate emancipation in 1862 by saying: "I am approached with the most opposite opinion and advice, and that by religious men who are equally certain that they represent the divine will.
I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in that belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for I desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is, I will do it."
Thus Lincoln, a Christian who did not feel fully at home in any of the Churches of his day, had a fuller grasp of the will of God than the churchmen who were so positive that they knew God’s will. Lincoln was willing to say that it was possible that he did not fully know God’s will, that he always had to weigh carefully each situation to discern God’s hand in history; thus, he was more apt to find it than the
clergyman who bluntly stated that he was positive at all times what the will of God really was.
In a short meditation Lincoln revealed a deep insight into the Christian notion of the will of God, an understanding that enabled him to act with a breadth of wisdom in political matters unparalleled in American history. He said: "The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the
same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s
purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adaptation to effect his purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that, God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And, having begun, he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds."
Here was a man who understood that God works in mysterious ways to bring his will to pass. There was no attempt to hide the stark tragedy of life, no tendency to stand up and shout, "I know the will of God." There was only a humble, sincere effort of faith to discern God’s presence in every act of history and so to open himself fully to all the possible means God might be using to work out his purpose. This did not paralyze Lincoln from acting; it enabled him to act with wisdom and discernment not possible to a fanatic or a bigot.
So he watched as the war slowly dragged on. At the proper time he pronounced the emancipation of the slaves, and the Union was not
weakened by it. He attempted to work out a peaceful settlement with the South, but he recognized that the time had not yet come -- it did not yet seem to be God’s time.
It was in his second inaugural address, in 1865, that Lincoln clearly laid out the policy he hoped to follow when peace came to the nation. With his profound insight into the ways of Providence in history, he could not take a vengeful attitude toward the South. Lincoln knew that both sides read the same Bible, that both appealed to the same God, that both were under God’s judgment, and that "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
Thus he appealed to the people of the victorious North to set aside their hatred and triumph in order to face the herculean task of rebuilding the nation. "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
In that same year the most bloody war in the nation’s history ended and the life of its great leader, Abraham Lincoln, was taken by an assassin’s bullet. If only more of the Northern Churches would have breathed the same spirit of charity and mercy and would have sought to bind up the nation’s wounds! Rather, many of them pronounced blessings on those statesmen who wished the vengeance of the victors on the vanquished.
The war was over but the peace was not won. Slavery had been stamped out, but the slave was not yet really free.
During the war far-reaching changes were taking place in the nation, changes that were vitally to affect the task of the Churches. The North was composed of a combination of agricultural states in the west and industrial states in the east, and in both radical shifts occurred. The threat to the Union and the necessity of financing a huge war tended to center more attention and power in the hands of the Federal
Government. This was absolutely necessary that the Union might be preserved.
No sooner had the war ended than a swift stream of immigration again poured into the nation. Between 1860 and 1900, 14,000,000 people came to America. They fled from terrible living conditions, from
persecution, from military service, and they sought freedom and plenty.
The northern European people flocked to the midwest to the rural areas and farms. The Irish and later southern European peoples stayed in the big cities. How would the Churches reach these people?
After the war America was a nation of terrible contrasts. The rich grew richer, and the poor grew poorer. The South was prostrate, struggling to recover and attempting to relate itself to the recently freed Negro. The west was booming with excitement and expansion. Great ribbons of steel stretched across the nation tying one section to the other.
Financiers fought pitched battles for possession of the railroads. The cities were teeming with life and activity. Sprawling factories belched forth smoke and soot as they ground out a never-ending stream of products and machines.
It was a raw, raucous age which was low on morals and high on enthusiasm. Corruption and scandals were widespread. In 1872 a terrible scandal rocked the Grant Administration. Some Congressmen had gone into partnership with some financiers to milk the profit out of the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad Shares and profits were distributed among Republican Congressmen to assure co-operation.
Later one of Grant’s cabinet members was involved in a corrupt deal. In New York City the infamous Tweed Ring had fleeced the city of twenty million dollars through control of city politics. In 1869, Jay Gould and his financial associates almost got a corner on the gold in the nation and forced the closing of the banks. So the nation came through the war and entered the period of reconstruction.
During the war itself the Churches faced a problem that accompanied them until the present day -- what were they to do with the Negroes who had been so unjustly treated for almost two centuries? Before Lincoln’s emancipation act many generals had simply turned Negroes over to the Army chaplain to take care of them. Some were placed on land to till;
others were employed as cooks or orderlies. The problem became so acute that a department of Negro affairs was created in the Army.
Soon the various missionary agencies of the Church heard of the
Negroes’ plight, and they responded by forming private agencies to care for the freedmen. In March of 1865, Lincoln saw to the establishment of the Freedmen’s Bureau to assist the Negroes in making the transition from the slave to the free state. It was under the direction of General Oliver S. Howard, a Presbyterian. Churchmen were instrumental in getting it started and in urging its support on the Federal Government.
One of the most helpful things for the Negro people was the
establishment of large numbers of schools and colleges in their behalf.
Almost all the Protestant Churches, both North and South, participated in this, but the Congregationalists did the lion’s share of the work. They were the primary group in the American Missionary Society, which started such famous Negro schools as Hampton Institute, Fisk
University, Tougaloo, and Atlanta University in Georgia. Also Howard University, in Washington, D.C., was the result of Congregationalist inspiration.
The Negro people made remarkable progress from a condition of slavery to responsibility, and this against great odds. Many white folks still insisted that Negroes were inferior people doomed to second-class citizenship. The South tried to keep them under control by denying them the vote. Constitutional amendments prevented this, so they sought ways to escape the requirements of law. Northern politicians and businessmen went South and sought to use the Negro to their own advantage. But slowly and steadily the Negro people moved forward.
One of the greatest boons to them was the growth of Christianity among Negroes. Within the Churches they found freedom and responsibility, though they found this most fully within their own Churches. A huge Negro Baptist Church was developed as well as a fairly large Negro Methodist Church.
The regular denominations began to lose large numbers to the Negro Churches because within them the Negro found greater freedom. Often those most anxious to free the Negro from slavery were more reluctant to accept them as fully free members within the Church. They were willing to give money for them, willing to pray for them, but not willing to sit next to them in church. This shows the depth of the social evil produced by the slave system -- it could not be eradicated by war, sermon, or prayer. But the Churches did not surrender entirely; they kept working at the problem.
Another proof of the energy of the Church immediately after the war was to be seen in its work among the Indians. By 1870 there were only 278,000 Indians left in the entire nation, yet they presented a problem for both nation and Churches. The curse of the white man applied here as with the Negro problem -- he felt his color so superior and his
civilization so much better that he could not share it in fellowship. The land-hungry white men constantly encroached on Indian territory and pushed the Indians from place to place.
Originally the Federal Government paid for missionary societies to educate the Indian children, but this questionable practice was
abandoned during the 1880’s. Nevertheless, the Churches did not give up their work among the Indians. It was difficult to Christianize a pagan people, unsettled, always on the move, exploited by the white man, open to his vices and diseases.
But the Churches carried on bravely. The American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions undertook Indian missions as did most of the major Protestant denominations. It was exceedingly slow and painful work. How could the Indian trust the white man, who
brought disease and destruction? Yet he did, and before the First World War one third to one half of the Indians belonged to Christian groups.
As more and more people swept westward, pushing the Indians before them, the Church was one of the few forces trying to prevent their exploitation. This indicated a real vitality in the life of the Churches.