Homogeneity in the Making

The quarter century before the War Between The States must be judged as one of the most enigmatic and tragic periods in American history. What made it enigmatic was that both North and South shared so many common values, they were--in many respects--nearly indistinguishable. And yet the level animosity and antagonism between the two regions was steadily building. The period was tragic in that it foreshadowed the bloodiest and most divisive period in American history. How this uniting and dividing came about, the role religion played in these occurrences, and what happened to the religious views of Southerners during this period will be the focus of this lecture.

As we have already seen, the Missouri Crisis helped make slavery the basis of Southern identity, and give the region a feeling of somehow being different from the rest of the nation. Alexis de Tocqueville put it this way: "Were I inclined to continue this parallel, I could easily prove that almost all the differences which may be noticed between the characters of the Americans in the southern and northern states have originated in slavery." Slavery became the axis upon which the two poles (North and South) began to align themselves. By 1835, the formulation of the ideological defense and advocacy of slavery was far advanced, and would need to harden only a little further before becoming the total system that would lead to the secession of 11 states in the fall and winter of 1860-61.

There were few indicators that were more revealing of what was occurring in the nation than religion. Religion was a powerful force, and did much to shape the "Mind of the South." The religious world view had gained a firm hold on the southern imagination, and it served to explain to Southerners the seemingly inevitable flow of events around them, events that seemed to be leading inexorably to conflict and war.

As slavery came under increasing attack, the South rallied to defend it's peculiar institution. And as these attacks escalated, dissent became a luxury few were willing to afford. Slowly but surely slavery's status went through a fairly rapid evolution, graduating from a necessary evil--to simply being a necessity--to this is our business--to a positive good--and finally to an issue that was worth fighting a war over.

These views were not limited to slave holders. They were held throughout the society of the South. Carl Degler has argued that "the overwhelming majority of white Southerners accepted slavery and the values that surrounded it, because that kind of slavery served their interests as well as the slave holders. Those who did not own human property aspired to do so, and to perpetuate the world slavery had made. Indeed, slavery became as much a part of Southern life as Thomas Jefferson, the city of Charleston, a rural way of life, and evangelical Christianity."

This social homogeneity is seen also in the religious life of the Southern people. By 1830, as Clement Eaton has noted, "the southern people had become thoroughly converted to orthodoxy in religion." On the eve of the Civil War, they were "a deeply religious people." The South had fallen under the rule of an evangelical hegemony. Virtually everybody believed in the Bible, and Christianity's message of personal salvation from sin, and hope for heaven. Indeed, these beliefs were as likely to be held by unchurched persons as churched. A consensus prevailed throughout the region on these matters, oppressing those groups that dared express an unorthodox opinion.

The Interweaving of the Social Fabric

This interweaving of the society's attitudes toward slavery with the evangelical religion of the region helped create a strong social fabric that was virtually indestructible. Not only did it help to firmly establish Southern society in the economic and social realities of its day, it also grounded it in Ultimate Reality as well.

An example of this intertwining of slavery and religion can be found in the slave codes. These codes were designed to do more than to simply regulate behavior. They were a reaction to Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner, and David Walker, and had as their purpose controlling the flow of information to blacks by prohibiting them from learning to read or write, even for religious purposes. Because religion played a key role in motivating all three men, slave owners wished to certain that the gospel heard by slaves be carefully controlled. Fearful, that "simple minded" slaves might take literally such Biblical texts as the Exodus, they wanted to be assured that everyone understood that the message of the church was in support of the existing social system.

The mission to the Slaves was an example of how the church sought to demonstrate that the sharing of Christianity with slaves did not have to be a threat to the social order, but could in fact serve as a bulwark for the South's peculiar institution. The mission to the slaves had as its stated purpose the ameliorating of the harsh aspects of slavery, and in this, it paralleled a similar development in the North. There, an effort was mounted to ease the pain being inflicted on the working classes by a capitalist system that was often exploitative. The reform effort in both regions was rooted in the religion of the Second Great Awakening, and taken together represent one of the first manifestations of what would come to be known as the Social Gospel.

In both North and South, the effort to limit the exploitation of labor (slave and free) was viewed as a way to "make American holy by means of home...missionary societies". Certainly, the South was not unfamiliar with such reform efforts. The region had played an impressive role to play in the early period of the Second Great Awakening, and was participated enthusiastically in the evangelical efforts to abolish imprisonment for debt, to work for temperance, and to expand suffrage. Public higher education had been better supported in the South than the North, and as I have mentioned earlier, even the number of anti-slavery societies were greater in the South than in the North.

But these reform efforts did not represent a rejection of society. In both regions, the effort to transform society was viewed as a way to smooth the harsh edges of the new social order, and to lessen criticism by more radical elements. Again, the fact that both regions took similar steps is but a reflection of their shared social and political values.

The Fabric of American Society Begins to Unravel

In many ways, then, North and South were very much alike. Most Northerners and Southerners were farmers who cultivated their own land, and cherished personal independence and believed in social equalitarianism. They shared a common pride in the nation and its Revolutionary heritage, and a commitment to hard work, acquisition, and success. They saw the nation as a source of pride, and were convinced that the Millennium would arrive soon.

Looking back from a post-Civil War perspective, we might be inclined to believe that a deep chasm existed between the two regions in the antebellum period, but in fact there was a great deal of intercourse between the two regions. The Mason-Dixon line was not a Berlin Wall. As one of my professors at Duke--John Hope Franklin--points out in his book, A Southern Odyssey, the interaction between the people of the two regions was rather significant. Train fares were low, and Southerners often traveled to Northern cities to enjoy the culture. Going to schools like Harvard, Yale and Princeton for one's post-secondary education was a common practice for most Southern men of wealth, and many of the physicians in the South were trained in the North. Nor was the traffic one way. Many Yankees came South. By one estimate, 500,000 persons immigrated from the North to the South during the years 1776-1860. Indeed, many of those who were leaders among the Southern clergy were not natives of the region, but immigrants from the North. Richard Furman was such carpet-bagger long before the term took on a pejorative meaning. Like many of these immigrants, Furman came to feel at home in the South, and quickly adopted it's ways. That he could so easily make this transition points to the essential social unity of the nation. All Furman needed to do to shed his alien identity in the South was to accept complicity in the institution of slavery: something which he seems to have done with little or no trouble.

As slavery and religion grew more intertwined in the South, however, stress was placed on these various family ties uniting the nation. Subtle changes began to take place, and reform of any sort quickly came to be seen as a threat in the South. Southerners became quite concerned that the arguments for reforming any part of society--prisons for instance--could be applied to other institutions that might need to be changed, institutions like slavery.

By the 1840's, suggestions for reform of any kind had become highly problematic in the South. By this time, Southerners are well on their way to affirming Southern perfection, and were saying in essence, "our own age is a golden age," and we have no need for reform or change. At the same time, in the North the last thirty years before the war were an era of vigorous reform. By 1830, the effort to purify the region of such evils as slavery had been largely successful. According to census records from that year, for instance, only 3600 slaves are left in the entire North.

Contrary to popular mythology, most Northerners were not preoccupied with slavery. There were simply to few slaves in their midst for them to be overly concerned. As long as slavery did not pose a threat to their economic well-being, most were content to let sleeping dogmas lie where slavery was concerned. But there was a significant minority who were not content to leave the issue of slavery alone, and they spoke the language of the revivals. They attacked slavery almost solely in religious terms. Slavery was evil, they said, and contrary to the will of God. (The South had argued precisely the opposite: it was an institution ordained by God in Scripture) Slavery, these Northerners reasoned, "must be purged from the land, and it's perpetrators converted from their evil ways."

Such attacks rubbed the South raw. They were particularly galling to Southerners because they were well on their way to affirming their own perfection. And few Southerners were willing to remain passive in the face of these assaults.

The Denominations Divide

The first signs of a fraying social fabric occurred in the nation's extended religious families: the denominations. Like much of the surrounding culture, they shared a heritage, a culture, and a language of faith that was largely homogeneous. It was this fact, that made their divergence on the question of slavery so traumatic.

The largest denomination in the nation was the first to experience the divisive power of slavery. The General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church met in New York City in 1844 amidst an intense national debate over the admission of Texas to the Union. At issue was whether it would be admitted as slave or free. Not surprisingly given the political environment, the issue of slavery quickly came to dominate the proceedings. Delegates from Northern states introduced the issue when they questioned whether James Andrew, Bishop of Georgia, could own slaves and still remain a bishop of the church. It did not matter that these slaves belonged technically to his wife, or that manumission was against the law in Georgia. Nor did it matter that Andrews offered to renounce any ownership interest by securing them to his wife with a deed of trust. Northerners believed any association with such an evil, necessary or otherwise, precluded his continued service to the church. But they were not alone in pushing the issue. Although Andrews himself wanted to resign rather than risk the division of the church, the Southern delegates would not permit it. Such an outcome would acknowledge slavery to be a sin, something few Southerners were now willing to do publicly. After a hot debate, delegates from both regions voted to separate the church, and by May, 1845, the Southern conferences in a declaration of independence had seceded and formed the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.

Baptists, the second largest denomination at the time, also underwent a similar division over the same issue. Northern Baptists raised the issue of whether slave holders could be accepted as missionaries. They believed that the willful participation in such a sinful institution was an impediment to appointment, and refused to take any step that might imply they were blessing the holding of slaves. The South was equally determined not to acquiesce in this stigmatization of slave holding, or to take any action that suggest that holding slaves was immoral. As a result, in 1845, dissident Southerners withdrew to form the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845.

These two events, along with similar events in other communions, did more than separate a million and a half Methodists and a similar number of Baptists. This splintering of denominations also helped add to the sectional antagonism that was weighing on the bonds of national union. Where the co-religionists of the two regions had moderated their views somewhat to avoid alienating their brothers and sisters, after the denominations separated the argument over slavery intensified as partisans on both sides were less constrained by counterweight of opposition.

The Regions Separate

Christians, both North and South, shared a common belief in a strong conversion experience. The belief that a sinner needed to repent and be converted was no respecter of regions. But despite these commonalities, the two regions quickly began to move in different directions where religious faith was concerned.

The South, for instance, came to disdain social activism out of the fear that it could lead to an unwanted intrusiveness where slavery was concerned. At the same time, Northern revivalism came to view social activism in a very different light. Social reform was seen as being fundamental to the task of a Christian, along with the political means to achieve it. In the South, preaching tended to focus on sin and guilt, whereas in the North there was a growing emphasis on the doctrines of sanctification and perfection. Where the North saw the general state of society getting better through the revivals, and believed society was moving progressively toward the Kingdom of God, the South developed a fixation on the individual and the ravages of sin. In the North, the evangelical hegemony was challenged by growing numbers of Unitarians, Transcendentalists, Mormons, and Roman Catholics, whereas none of these groups had any strong presence in the South. Beginning in 1835, the immigration of large numbers of Irish, Germans, Lutherans, Jews, and Catholics, meant that Northern Evangelicalism was but one of many religious currents, while the absence of immigration to any significant degree in the South, meant that evangelicalism was the only religious option.

Gradually, the regions even showed divergence in their ideas about conversion. In the South, conversion became more uniform and controlled, a development that reflected the tightening of social convention. In the North, the struggle with the self gave way to a struggle for the reform of society.

The result was the emergence of a distinctively Southern Christianity. In the homogeneous society that existed in the South, an intense introspection set in that led to a focus on the self, and the evil that might be lurking in one's soul. Religion came to be seen as essentially private, a matter of the individual standing in judgement before a Holy God. As a result, Southern Christians claimed no responsibility for public order (a claim laced with irony given the Church's support of slavery).

Put another way, Religion in the South became private in an effort to preserve a public order. Southern Evangelicalism quickly backed away from the reform tradition to which it was heir, and sought to fashion a gospel which emphasized two kinds of virtue: personal holiness and acceptance of one's lot in life. One virtue made for a morally pure and upright society, and the other helped foster a divinely ordained order where black people and whites each had their place.

Far from rejecting this world then, Southern Christianity actually embraced it. It identified itself with the social institutions of the South, and sought to baptize them into the faith. The posture of the church in the South was to support and defend, to shore up and bolster. Such a view of reality is not the soil in which creativity or responsiveness grow, and so it should come as no surprise that the Southern Church became the very epitome of reactionary behavior.

Some Concluding Remarks

Although North and South were near and close in many ways during the period 1835-1850, they were diverging in terms of their views of slavery, religion, society and much more. By 1850, the South had crystallized into a unique culture, although it was not yet a separate nation. But as Emory Thomas has pointed out, the glue that held this region together was religion.

Unlike the North, the South shared a common faith and common theological convictions. Southerners were united by the conviction that human beings were profoundly sinful, a dark self- assessment that was relieved only by the hope of ultimate perfection. But again there is an irony in all this. In many ways, the Southern life style was hedonistic, and there was a great deal of sloth and lust, along with a fondness for drinking hard liquor. Hedonism and fundamentalism came to co-exist in the Southern soul, making confession, purgation, and the going out to sin some more all apart of the southern religious scene.

And so it was that when the Confederate States of America was born in the spring of 1861, Protestant orthodoxy prevailed. Everybody knew that the Bible was the exclusive authority for all truth that really mattered, that life is made up of a few years and an eternity for which the former is a critical preparation period, and that the Southern cause was of great importance to the Almighty. The South's cause was not just it's own; it was God's, hence it was a righteous one. The teachings of the Bible, the preservation of the Southern way of life, and the region's convictions about the good society were closely linked. It was God's will that the South and the Southern way of life survive.

When Southerners learned otherwise, the result would be a great crisis of faith.