Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America. - book reviews

Contemporary Review, Nov, 1993 by James Munson

As someone brought up in the American South, with ancestors who fought and died for the Confederacy, I admit that I have always found it difficult to understand why in 1861 northern Americans gave up their lives to force unwilling states to stay in a discredited union. On the other hand, I have never had difficulty understanding why Southerners flocked to the colours - to defend their homes, their states and their way of life from those who refused to let them 'depart in peace'. This invaluable book explains the why behind the North's position in 1861. It explains the relationship of America's dominant religious tradition - Evangelical Christianity - and its role in bringing on the War Between the States.

English readers are aware of the role contemporary religion plays in American politics and life: they well remember the influence of Evangelical preachers in the 1980s. Dr. Carwardine, an historian of American history who teaches in the University of Sheffield, sets out to explain the role of Evangelical religion in the 1840s and 1850s. While discussing the make-up of the leading Protestant denominations he concentrates on the presidential elections between 1840 and 1848, on the introduction of the slavery question into national politics and on the collapse of existing political parties in the 1850s. American political history has been one of evolution: a certain arrangement of political parties and issues dominate for an era and then give way to a new arrangement. Politics were more fluid and innovative than in England. If this tradition has died out it is probably due to cost. The exception, like Mr. Ross Perot, may have shot himself in the foot last year but it was a millionaire's foot. Even with his millions he could not create a new party. Realigning existing parties to stand for things which ten years earlier they eschewed is the easier, and cheaper, option both here and in America.

In the 1850s America saw a major rearrangement: the creation of a purely and openly sectional party - the Republicans in the Northwest - and with the break-up of the Democratic party in 1860, the loss of a truly national (or perhaps, better, nation-wide) party. The author has spent years in research among all the vast mountains of religious archive. What Dr. Carwardine does with great verve is to show how this new Republican party was created. In some ways it was not so much a party as a movement and the resemblance to twentieth-century fascists is interesting: there was the same emphasis on public demonstrations, torch-lit marches, distinctive dress, an appeal to young men, a high moral tone which claimed exclusive morality for its supporters and a doctrine of racial purity: the new territories to the west must be kept free of slavery, by which was often meant free of blacks. There was also the perennial American desire to kick out the corrupt establishment in Washington and replace it with a pure new man: in this case it was Lincoln, now it is Clinton. Dr. Carwardine is too kind to Abraham Lincoln: one can easily argue that he was just another time-serving, and hypocritical politician with a gift for words. His record in creating the nearest thing the United States have ever known to a military dictatorship tells us something not just of the problems he faced as President but of his own character.

The real importance of the book, however, lies in explaining what the appeal of the Republican movement was to those young men who would troop off to war. It played on their religious faith, their patriotism, their naivety and their ignorance of and fear of the South. The South was, after all expanding territorily in the 1840s and 1850s as witness the annexation of Texas and with suitable propaganda could be, and was, seen as a dangerous foe. As Dr. Carwardine writes, The Republican party may not have been in any simple sense "the Christian party in politics". But for northern antislavery evangelicals it deserved that mantle far more than any other party in the republic's history'. It was these same young antislavery evangelicals who, reared on antislavery novels and politicised religion, marched off to war in 1861. This deeply researched and well written book will undoubtedly become required reading for all who wish to understand what happened in 1861 and why.