THAT NONE SHOULD BE LOST: WAR AND GOSPEL IN

THE CHRISTIAN INDEX, 1860-1865

by

THOMAS LEE DREWRY

Under the direction of Emory Thomas

ABSTRACT

Human tragedy breeds certain questions. Loss and grief expose dark recesses of the human spirit, those fears and feelings often hidden from life’s mundane routines that persist, unsuspecting of pending crisis or mortality. Prompted by questions of life, death, and tragedy, many turn to individual frameworks of belief, often religious in nature and in form, in order to heal, to find answers, and simply to do something. During the Civil War, many Confederates sought religion for the sustenance, direction, and motivation necessary for individual and collective survival. For many Americans on both sides of conflict, religion and war were partners. For Confederates, evangelical Christianity proved influential in the daily practices of individual faith and the formation of a national identity. Historians have not adequately examined this relationship, and such inadequacies inspired this study.

INDEX WORDS: Civil War, Confederate States of America, religion, Evangelicalism, religious newspapers, Baptists, Georgia Baptists

THAT NONE SHOULD BE LOST: WAR AND GOSPEL IN

THE CHRISTIAN INDEX, 1860-1865

by

THOMAS LEE DREWRY

A.B., The University of Georgia, 2000

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF ARTS

ATHENS, GEORGIA

2002

© 2002

Thomas Lee Drewry

All Rights Reserved.

THAT NONE SHOULD BE LOST: WAR AND GOSPEL IN

THE CHRISTIAN INDEX, 1860-1865

by

THOMAS LEE DREWRY

Approved:

Major Professor: Emory Thomas

Committee: John Inscoe Sandy Martin

Electronic Version Approved:

Gordhan L. Patel Dean of the Graduate School The University of Georgia May 2002

DEDICATION

This work is dedicated to my grandfather, Robert D. Poole, whose passions for life, for the past, and for orderliness, I share. Thoroughness and faithfulness have guided his entire life, and such qualities proved essential in the completion of this thesis. Some deem us perfectionists, but we know 110 percent is far more than a catchy phrase for the faint of heart.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Pride and accomplishment prove worthy and often justifiable competitors, ably restricting thankfulness from fruition. Despite this, I heartily recognize that my efforts here reflect not talents I have created, nor abilities born solely from within. My words on this page cannot truly account for the many sacrifices, encouraging words, and prayers that so many have offered over the course of this work. Perhaps, though, this attempt will at least suffice on paper what can only be satisfied in spirit.

Emory Thomas has been the constant friend of me and of my work. He has mentored me as a student, graciously commented on my work as a scholar, and provided diligent encouragement of my ideas and thoughts. John Inscoe and Sandy Martin, two of the busiest professors on campus, have undoubtedly served as faithful committee members of this venture and integral components of my scholarly career thus far. Many thanks to Mary Ella Engel, for her constant smile, support and care; to Eric Millen and

John Hayes, for their attentive ears; and to my fellow graduate students for their wise words, their review of my ideas, and their willingness to impart their wisdom. My parents, Hayden and Linda, have been tremendously involved in caretaking my spirit and monitoring my efforts throughout all of my work. Undoubtedly, they have exuded consistency, even when they forget what exactly it is that I am writing. I am earnestly appreciative to my family, John and Jennifer Walker, Trenton and Mary Katherine Cloer,

Heather Eaves O’Dell, Stanton Porter, and Stephen Floyd. And most importantly, thanks to my Lord, the Giver of all good things, for his gracious touch and loving intimacy that alone make every day abundant. Soli Deo Gloria.

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... v

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2 GUARDING THE GATE...... 20

3 FIGHTING THE WOLVES ...... 56

4 TENDING THE FLOCK...... 90

5 CONCLUSION...... 122

REFERENCES ...... 128

vi

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

“If a shepherd has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly tell you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of your Father in heaven that one of these little ones should be lost.” Matthew 18:12-14 NRSV

"Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, for all the multitudes that is with him: for there be more with us than with him: with him is an arm of flesh; but with us is the Lord our God to help us, and to fight our battles." Second Chronicles 32:7-8 KJV

In Religion in the Old South, historian Donald Mathews examined the radicalism of eighteenth-century Virginia preacher Samuel Davies. Leader among the New Lights,

Davies preached to individuals, demanding his flock not simply ideologically concur with good Christian morality or the Divine arrangement, but rather cleanse sinful stain of their hearts to prepare for salvation. Davies precisely and passionately elucidated the line separating the saved and the damned, the evangelical community and the fallen world that was Virginia. None could straddle the fence of God’s favor; either one was marked by holiness and belief or by eternal fire and torture.1 During the French and Indian War,

Davies served as a publicist and recruitment officer, though, as Mathews noted, he spoke as the leader of a community uniquely and unmistakably separated from Virginia society.

Davies separated the cause of liberty and the worldly British who fought for that cause, doubting whether God’s judgment of his country could be thwarted even with the most capable of armies. Even still, Davies determined that in war evangelicals should “repent their sins, do their best, and trust in the Lord.” Mathews rendered Davies a “loyal 2

Britisher to be sure, and intensely patriotic, but he knew that he and his people were

different from other Virginians and thankful to God for it!”2

Southern evangelicals during the Civil War were not entirely estranged from

Davies’ sentiment. Offering “A Word in Season,” Samuel Boykin, editor of The

Christian Index of Georgia, noted that the Confederate nation “[seemed] to be in danger

from the ebullitions of fanaticism at the North, and, perhaps, a too highly excited

patriotism at the South.” Boykin encouraged Southerners to “stand fast,” to continue

their Christian duties, and embrace a “wrestling prayer” for the country.3 Boykin too

noted that “this world is not the home of man. Place him how you will, he feels in

captivity. He has longings for the infinite world which cannot be gratified here.”4

Though separated by generation and denomination, Boykin and Davies would have understood each other’s messages, quite probably in agreement, offering similar advice to determine evangelicals’ perceptions of and actions amid war. Granted, Boykin’s separation from society, though similarly acknowledged, engendered not thanksgiving for dissent, but hope for societal reformation through those committed to Christ’s cause.

Boykin and Davies, though, delineated the differences between their nations and the heavenly realm, clearly outlining their duties as citizens of this world and the one to come.

Historians like Mathews, Christine Leigh Heyrman, and Rhys Isaac portray the evangelicalism as rooted in social disorder in which believers, upon conversion, exchanged proper decorum for piety and flaunted a “zealous defiance” before family and friend, as their new identity entailed a rejection of patriarchy and Anglican frivolity.5

Isaac states that evangelicalism in the eighteenth century was the “popular response to 3

mounting social disorder” and in individual conversion, sin a “metaphor” for larger social

problems.6 Though Davies and his contemporaries challenged planter authority and

often criticized the peculiar institution of slavery, evangelicalism, once a religion of

dissenters, eventually flourished, waded into the establishment, and proved a “critical

ingredient” in the region’s decision to secede.7 The story of religion from Revolution to

Civil War thus becomes a tale of how evangelicals, who shed their radicalism and early

egalitarian notions, became masters. Intent on securing the good graces of white men in

the South, evangelical leaders became the patriarchs, whom Davies and his early

“brothers” threatened, and supported the peculiar institution for which evangelicals

initially had no use.8 This historical analysis thus illuminates the pulpit as a political

stage, church leaders as little different from political firebrands, and faith in Southern

order as synonymous with faith in God himself.

In sectional crisis, the proslavery South heavily depended upon religion to justify the institution and to thwart the attacks of Northern abolitionists. The denominational splits of the Methodists and Baptists certainly attest to the sectional thinking of the clergy and the belief of many that religious divisions would have political consequences.9 In

Gospel of Disunion, Mitchell Snay argues that the influence of religion created a

Southern distinctiveness through its centrality to Southern culture, the religious character of the sectional controversy, and its active participation in the formation of Southern national identity.10 Indeed proslavery Christianity “involved a dynamic exchange

between religious and political discourse.”11 Church leaders and preachers thus became

“almost as vocal as politicians from the stump in warning of the danger to the South, 4

exhorting the people to declare their independence, and keeping emotions at a high

pitch.”12

Seemingly with ease and divine inspiration, many southern evangelicals “marched

to war behind their Lord of Hosts, convinced that their struggle was to uphold a

scripturally sanctioned slavery and to claim their right to national self-determination.”13

Historian Drew Faust, in The Creation of Confederate Nationalism, contends that

Confederate nationalism prescribed “significant shifts in the southern definition of

Christian duty.”14 As leaders of Southern religious culture, Faust argues, Confederate

evangelicals supported the national cause, Southern institutions, and their own ventures

along the pathway to Heaven. The overhaul of message in the name of Confederate

accommodation, though, seems hardly congruent with the totality of the evangelical

message, even amid the fires of fraternal war. Faust explicitly states that evangelical

Christianity was not merely the “servant of the Confederate state,” but rather faith had

“an inescapable logic” of its own.15 Such logic, though, seems quite escapable and

insignificant, if indeed politics and religion became one.16 Ultimately, if one only examines the preachers’ sermons before political meetings and pastors’ recommendations to congressional bodies, Faust’s line makes for conclusive analysis. Confederate evangelical pulpits, though littered with the defense of slavery and the hope of Southern independence, sounded a refrain of repentance and dependence upon God, encouraging ventures unmistakably evangelical in nature in order to profit religious ends.

In Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda, historian James Silver highlights the prominent positions of Southern clergy and their essential voice, whether in pulpit or pen, in the formation of Confederate identity and the continuation of the 5

war.17 Silver acknowledges the ability of the evangelical faith to reach into the hearts of

Confederate men and women, adorning them with faith and hope while solidifying a

distinct worldview.18 Evangelical culture and doctrine intertwined with the economic and

political landscapes that dominated the South. War forced laypeople “increasingly into

an active religiosity” and encouraged evangelicals to reconsider the human role within

God’s design and to reexamine the relationship between individual faith and world

events.19 Through disappointment and loss, preachers “did a remarkable job of bolstering

morale during the worst of times and holding out hopes of Confederate victory.”20

In addition, Silver describes an “infallible formula” developed by Southern clerics to explain the Divine hand in victory and the necessity of social purification in defeat.21

As God’s Chosen, Confederates deemed the battlefield a reflection of the Confederacy’s

position before God. Accordingly, victories adorned God with thanksgiving, while

defeat imparted upon evangelicals the chastening rod. For most, according to Silver, it

was “a matter of simple semantics to identify religion with politics and patriotism.”22

Perhaps this relationship was nothing more than mere semantics, or perhaps, in secession,

the convergence of faith and patriotism was much more tenuous than historians have

implied. Snay contends that “lurking just beneath the surface of both secular and sacred

writings in the 1840’s was the perception that religion and politics occupied distinct—and

in some ways incompatible—spheres.”23 Despite the overt appearance of Silver’s notion

of convergence, this hidden uneasiness notably crept into the worldview of Confederate

evangelicals as well.

According to Silver and Faust, war provoked a change in mission and a

transformation of Southern church life. Evangelical churches increasingly awakened to 6

social and political reform, and war propelled them into “corporate ministry,” in which

the centrality of individual conversion diminished in importance. In The Confederate

Nation, historian Emory Thomas contends that more that any other social institution in the South, the church “usually remained constant and seemed to thrive on the emotional and physical sacrifices of wartime.”24 According to Thomas, most Confederate churches

“promoted the cause militant.”25 Social sins, such as greed and covetousness, overshadowed traditional transgressions and attracted evangelical scorn.26 Evangelicals

abandoned their inward, private faith that prompted the lonely sinner’s return to God and

“experimented with a corporate vision.”27 Efforts to encourage Confederate nationalism,

to defend slavery, and to evangelize the army reflect Confederate evangelicals’ single and foremost desire—the preservation of Southern order.28 Many historians would agree that

the “identification of the cause of God with the cause of the Confederacy is an indelible

ingredient of Southern religious literature of the war years.29 Such historical conclusions

about the spirit and character of these people, though, are frankly too simplistic and, even

alongside the acknowledgement of diversity among evangelicals, these assumptions

somewhat problematic. While this convolution of faith and national identity as well as a

new corporate vision may have indeed sanctified the Confederacy, the faith and religious

expressions of Confederate evangelicals diverged little from the essential peacetime

evangelical world-view.

Examining this relationship between religion and morale in “Religion and Combat

Motivation in the Confederate Armies,” historian Samuel Watson contends that “faith

was intimately connected with the national cause at all levels and at all times,” especially

because the evangelical Christian worldview dominated Southern society.30 Though 7

“morale was definitely a thing of the spirit,”31 this union between the Confederate and religious activity may possibly be overstated at best and too simplistic at worst. Certainly the church supported the Confederate cause and encouraged all to endure through the trials of war; but careful analysis of religious dialogue and debate reveals a much more complex landscape littered with Confederates, faithful evangelicals, and invading enemies. As defeat forced many Confederates into despair and victory proved elusive, the dual nature of the Confederate evangelical worldview became discernible. As

Confederates, Southern evangelicals defended slavery, the purity of their cause, and the significance of their scriptural stand before the world’s watchful eye. As evangelicals,

Confederate church people understood the omnipotence of God, his propensity to fulfill promises and bless his “children,” more specifically to exalt those who committed themselves in obedience. While these identities often reinforced each other, neither identity entirely dominated the other. Silver contends that the clergy led Southerners into the secession and into war, and by 1864, religious leaders “called for a return to Christ as the means of putting the Confederacy back on the road to victory.”32 This conclusion, though certainly acknowledging the persistent optimism of Confederate religious leaders to Appomattox, overlooks the ambivalence of evangelical faith in interpreting Divine

Providence and evaluating earthly events. Though generally confident, religious

Confederates often did, however, ignore the uncertainty hidden beneath their optimism.

In his recent essay “Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man,” Kurt

Berands examines the union of God and the Confederacy within the discourse of the religious military press and potentially in readers’ worldviews. Through journalistic efforts, the message of salvation was “fused with the hope of Confederate triumph.”33 8

For Berands, the ease with which southern evangelicals “blurred distinctions between

Christianity and civic liberty” demonstrates that the Confederate cause and Christian

mission became synonymous.34 While this may adequately describe the evangelical

press’ new political discourse and enthusiastic support among church leaders in favor of

Confederate independence, such unity between religion and faith was not as comfortably

orthodox as Berands implies. Though the clergy, editors, and lay people fostered

Confederate nationalism and their leadership confirms their support of slavery and

secession, it is disingenuous to assume that this active role merely displays “a

manifestation of [their] desire to preserve the Southern way of life” for its own sake.35

Evangelical churches, always cognizant of death and its weighty implications, might simply have responded to the needs of their members, whether in battle or at home. In his analysis of revivalism in the Confederate camps, historian Reid Mitchell accurately observed that “little doctrine was peculiarly Confederate” in religious expressions of the army.36 Certainly they encouraged morale and reminded Confederates of their importance to a loving God; but does such encouragement differ from the churches’ fundamental message of life and spirit?

In determining the relationship between religion and the Confederate experience,

historians generally have contented themselves with the most obvious of evidence.37

They rightfully identify the Confederate motto, “Deo Vindice,” the evocation of God in

Confederate congressional halls, and the words of fighting bishops, such as Episcopalians

Stephen Elliot or Leonidas Polk, as evidence that Confederate nationalism absorbed religion and the two became one.38 But in order to understand the complexity of this relationship and more accurately to recapture the uncertainty that plagued evangelical 9

understanding of Providence, one must, though acknowledging surface level convergence

of religious and national desires, peruse the depths of religious discourse, examining the

players and dialogue behind the formalities of symbols, politician's fast-day sermons, and

gratification amendments.

For many years, The Christian Index was the weekly organ and voice of the

Georgia Baptist Convention, and its columns, though sometimes contradictory and most often controversial, reveal a much more complex crisis of religion, politics, and identity among Confederate evangelicals. Throughout the sectional discord, its editors generally defended slavery, though some more vigorously than others.39 Purchasing the Index from

the Convention in 1860, Samuel Boykin of Macon and C. M. Irwin of Albany became the

owners of the paper. Outlining their goals, Irwin and Boykin wrote

We enter upon out duties with misgiving lest we be not able to attain the mark at which we aim; but we have taken hold of the Christian Index [sic] with the firm resolve and lofty purpose of making it an instrument for good, a means of elevating the churches, where possible, and with the hope that we may advance the cause of our blessed redeemer. And if energy, perseverance, untiring industry and a due regard to the wants and feelings of our brethren and of our denomination can bring us success, success shall be ours.40

Despite this joint ownership, Boykin assumed most of the editorial duties, and

presumably most of the unsigned content of the paper proceeded from his pen. Boykin

welcomed correspondence and frequently published letters from across the state and both

countries.

Son of a Georgia planter-doctor, Samuel Boykin edited the Index throughout the

war, and in 1862 published the Child’s Index, which was “widely appreciated within the

Baptist denomination.”41 Eventually he sold the children’s periodical to the Southern

Baptist Convention and remained its editor, following it to Memphis and eventually 10

Nashville. Boykin edited several Sunday-school quarterlies and served as the pastor of the Second Baptist Church in Macon for one year. Educated in Pennsylvania,

Connecticut, and at the University of Georgia, he later edited and co-edited the memoirs of Howell Cobb and Adiel Sherwood, and compiled the extensive History of the Baptist

Denomination in Georgia, with Biographical Compendium and Portrait Gallery of

Baptist Ministers and Other Georgia Baptists. Standing five feet ten inches in height,

Boykin presumably wrote of himself:

He is a man of decided convictions; of firm purpose and resolute in action, while at the same time he has that true simplicity of character which worldly associations have never impaired. While his whole nature is softened by religion, it is brightened by a coloring of humor, that make him the life of the social circle. His wit and repartee give zest to his conversation, without any mixture of coarse or vulgar elements.42

Though he died in Nashville in 1899, Samuel Boykin was “Georgian to the core.”43

Boykin published the paper in Macon with little interruption throughout the war, except for prolonged suspensions between October 1861 and February in 1862 and between April and November in 1865. Yankee raids on Macon forced Boykin to cease publication for two weeks in August of 1864: “The confusion in the city owing to the nearness of the enemy, and the necessity of defending the city, stopped all work on the paper.”44 Similar circumstances may have prevented the compilation and printing of issues from November 18 through December 22 of 1864. Boykin reported the details of his business infrequently and inconsistently, but inflation and Sherman certainly tested his resolve and his pocketbook.

Subscriptions fluctuated throughout the war, but the rise and fall of numbers followed a marked pattern. In December of 1860, Index subscribers totaled 4,900; but the excitement of war reduced the number of subscribers to 2,100 within two years.45 11

Circulation recovered, especially because of the popularity of The Index among anxious

soldiers, awaiting both the Lord’s gospel and their impending deaths. In October of

1863, Boykin reported about 5,500 subscribers, half of whom were soldiers. The Index

community increased to about 6000 by the end of the year.46 The advent of war into

Georgia and ever-increasing inflation strained Boykin and his efforts, forcing him by

1864 to have “long abandoned the idea of making money by the Index, during the war—it

is rather losing business, but we feel that in our position, we can do good.”47 Though paper shortages and decreasing subscriptions forced many religious periodicals to fold,

Boykin and the Index survived, through strategies such as reducing of the cost of the

Index for those willing to supply sufficient poundage of rags and calling on homefront readers for donations to send the newspaper to the army.48

Even amid these troubles, the “large circulation of church papers augured well for

their influence in shaping opinion and sentiment in the Confederacy.”49 Subscription

statistics probably underestimate the influence of the paper.50 For example, one writer

stated that the Index is a “necessity to Georgia Baptists, and we cannot do without it.”51

Another contributor, Mrs. Stribling, complained that Boykin began printing only a half-

sheet as opposed to the normal full, stating that she passed her copy on to her husband

and his entire company.52 The newspaper thus reached a significant audience and offered a community of writers and contributors, whose discourse illuminated the nature of religion and religious people during the war.

The Index did not speak for all Georgia Baptists, much less all Confederate

evangelicals; but certainly Boykin and his medium was influential and representative.

The paper provided denominational communication that connected churchpeople, 12

hampered by Baptist contentiousness and the sparsely populated rural terrain. Detailing

religious revivals across the nation, the Index described the religious life of towns and

their respective Baptist churches, reported the births and deaths of Baptists in the state,

and outlined the major and most contentious tenets of Baptist doctrine. Some

information, though, was entirely secular in nature. For example, the Index reviewed the

new Webster’s Dictionary, complained that Georgians used Tennessee hay, and reported

the astonishment of one North Georgia traveler who was baffled by the number of pine trees below Macon.53 Readers pondered how sea birds got drinking water, the safety

report of New Jersey railroad company whose rails begot no fatalities, and the glorious

afternoon at a Sabbath School picnic in Greenville, South Carolina.54 The Index included

poems by Scott and Byron, feasible substitutes for coffee, and a two columned discussion

of the Magi’s home.55 Advertisements, obituaries, and minor religious asides, such as

whether or not friends and family members on earth would recognize each other in

heaven, filled Index columns throughout the war.56

In While God is Marching On, historian Steven E. Woodworth notes that “the vast majority of Southern Christians enthusiastically supported the Confederacy and its war, proclaimed the righteous cause of the South, and blessed gray-clad soldiers on their way to fight against the hated forces of abolitionism.”57 The Index confirms such enthusiasm,

providing ample space to not only “Notes” on the Confederate experience, but

“Correspondence” from the various battlefields as well. Of these Notes, which increased

in breadth over the course of the war, Boykin proclaimed that they alone made the

subscription worthwhile, “[reverting] to them as the chief attraction of our paper.”58 In

September of 1861, he complained that the Confederate generals kept information from 13

the press and that he would begin using Yankee sources.59 Often his reporting was

difficult and accurate sources thin:

Though important events are transpiring with great rapidity, yet our information is, in general, meager and unsatisfactory, and always to be received with more or less suspicion. But as far as we can see at present, the war horizon grows bright for the South.60

Silver contends that the Southerners’ religious dependence “made possible the use of the

church as the most effective means of arousing a sustaining morale of a people hardly

conscious of the pressing need for an all-out effort.”61 Notes in the Index, though

comprising only a portion of the paper, confirm such use of religion to bolster patriotism

and morale, or at least more specifically, traditionally religious medium to inform a

religious readership.

Silver observes that “the South never again approached the delirious enthusiasm

of the days after Fort Sumter, although it did experience several periods of steady

confidence and even exultation.”62 Though the paper acknowledged Sumter with

patriotic fervor, defeat prompted Index writers’ passions as much as, if not more than,

patriotic victory. Indeed, the losses in the winter and spring of 1862 offered Southerners

a “dreary prospect; but they were told that sooner of later God ‘will work out our

deliverance.’”63 One reporter from Richmond echoed this attitude, stating that “this is a

dark day, but let us trust in the Lord.”64 The following week the Notes lamented the loss

at Fort Donelson and the capture of Nashville.65 Earlier capture of Port Royal was deemed the “climax of Yankee cowardice and brutality.”66 Though these details were

segregated as “secular” and apart from religious content, Boykin never hesitated to report

the events of the war in an unduly Confederate and hopeful light. After Northern

victories in the West and at Roanoke Island and subsequent excitement in “Lincolndom,” 14

Boykin reassured Southerners: “Let [the Yankees] drink. We feel at the bottom will be

found bitter dregs.”67 The Index proclaimed:

We cannot stop now short of success or utter ruin. Our losses must be redeemed. We have the men, we have the spirit, we have the means of commands; let them be employed. Better that our land be depopulated and every stream flow red with the blood of millions, than that we now become slaves of the North. Let us rise with emergency.68

Though he had earlier claimed that the Notes would not consist of blind back-patting of the Confederate cause, Boykin proclaimed that if the “victory at Richmond” was “with reference to the skill of our generals—the valor of our troops—and the magnitude of the its results, it must be recorded as not less glorious than that of Waterloo.”69 Writers occasionally indulged in exaggeration with little or no hesitation.

Often Boykin’s information was inaccurate or incomplete; therefore any hopeful reports proclaiming Confederate victory, however grounded in the reality of martial circumstances, substituted nicely. On Gettysburg, Boykin reported “the first reliable and cheering news” from the Richmond Examiner:

From a gentleman who left Gettysburg on Sunday, 5th, that paper learns that our army had suffered no defeat up to that time. The men were in as good spirits as ever, and as confident of success. The President has also received a dispatch from the commandant of the post at Martinsburg, stating that General Lee had been victorious in every engagement, and that he had fallen back to Hagerstown simply that he might sent his wounded and prisoners, both of who were numerous, across the Potomac.70

Such misinformation, though not wholly uncommon, was not the rule in the Index’s

reporting of the war. More consistently, Boykin clutched any hope of victory until defeat

loomed with clarity and definitiveness. Regarding Vicksburg, whose weekly travails

comprised much attention, the Index proclaimed its encouragement “in regard to the

position of the affairs in the West, notwithstanding in the fall of Vicksburg has been 15

rumored. We shall not be surprised if it happens, but we shall not believe it until it is

strongly confirmed.”71

The reporting of the war was not merely a strategic assessment of battles and forces, not a mapping of Confederate weal and woe, in effort to dismiss or overlook the latter. One writer in his “Army Correspondence” reported

Since my last letter we have marched up to the wilderness and drove the Yankee Army from their fortified positions back to the North side of the Rappahannock. The destruction of human life especially among the Yankees was most appalling. We too, lost some noble souls whose places cannot be easily filled. War and disease have decimated the ranks of both armies to a fearful extent. Virginia may safely be called the graveyard of two powerful nations. Their bones lie bleaching her soul.72

Objectivity, though certainly of little concern to many Index writers, was not completely

lost within the newspaper’s columns. For example, Boykin included an entire series of

biographical sketches of the Confederate generals,73 and once rank and file readership

increased, he proclaimed the gospel message “to the soldiers.” Rarely hesitant to inspect

national debates, many writers disagreed over the various aspects of slavery, notably

whether or not to arm slaves and allow them to preach.74 Though victory was “trembling

in the balance,” the Index exuded confidence in the Confederate cause, and no writers significantly challenged the foundations of the Confederacy’s existence.

Though the reporting of the war proved attractive to readers’ patriotic concerns

and solidified their financial support of the paper, Boykin constantly affirmed the paper’s

predominant purpose as the promotion of religion.75 Reporting the war and discussions of national affairs never consumed the Index’s columns, as such topics emerged

underneath the title “Secular” and rarely comprised more than one page of the four-page

document. The Index chronicled denominational life, debated theological arguments, and 16 reported routine church business. Boykin stated that more and more “we are convinced that it is our duty as editors of a religious paper, to which our readers go for soul- nourishment, not only to urge all classes to be faithful, but to impress upon every individual reader of the Index [sic], that double diligence, in those exciting times is requisite to procure soul prosperity.”76

Routine evangelical subject matter attuned the reader to various associational meetings, techniques of spiritual discipline, and columns of obituaries and announcements. Whether in response to or in spite of the war, the Index continued to fulfill its communally informative and instructive role. In Southern Evangelicals and the

Coming of the Civil War, historian Edward Crowther contends that “if one too literally the laments of church leaders about the numbers of non-churchmembers, one might readily conclude that the generation that fought the Civil War was a brood of heathen.”77

This reality solidified Boykin’s charge. Though supporting the Confederacy, the “Urgent

Appeal” was for the reader’s repentance, and the highest concern of the paper and presumably its readership, to varying degrees, was still salvation. Writers lamented the

“lukewarmness” of the various churches, defended adult baptism, and extensively defined the steps to faith. Rather than bowing to patriotism and buttressing a network of

Confederate nationalism, the newspaper and its readers assumed dual identities: one as

Confederate, committed to Southern independence and hopeful for military victory, and the other as evangelical, dependent upon an omnipotent God who governed the earth, granted provisions, and most assuredly cared about human life.

1 Donald Mathews, Religion in the Old South (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 17-21. 2 Mathews, Religion, 22. 3 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 May 1860. 4 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 January 1860. 17

5 Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 166. Isaac, Transformation, 193. According to Mathews, evangelicals separated themselves and developed their own “families,” originating from a spiritual, not physical birth. Mathews, Religion, 38. 6 Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists’ Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765 to 1775.” William and Mary Quarterly 31 (July 1974): 358-359. Though social tensions may have made possible converts more susceptible to the message of the evangelical proselytizers, it hardly seems sensible that converts would have understood their sin as a “metaphor.” Perhaps their experiences reveal not the converts’ acknowledgement of mounting social unrest, but a personal response to an inward disorder. More feasible explanations must account for both. 7 John B. Boles, The Irony of Southern Religion (New York: Peter Lang, 1994), 75. 8 Christine Leigh Heyrman, Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 205. 9 Mitchell Snay, Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 114. Snay, Gospel, 140. 10 Snay, Gospel, 2-6. 11 Snay, Gospel, 73. 12 David Potter, The Impending Crisis 1848-1861 (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 501. 13 Eugene D. Genovese, A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 3. 14 Faust, Creation, 30. 15 Faust, Creation, 23. 16 Faust, Creation, 32. 17 Silver, Morale, 23. Silver, Morale, 58. 18 Silver, Morale, 93. 19 Randall M Miller, Harry S Stout, and Charles Regan Wilson, Religion and the American Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 11. 20 Genovese, Consuming Fire, 49. 21 Silver, Morale, 31. 22 Silver, Morale, 42. 23 Snay, Gospel, 142-43. 24 Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate Nation: 1861-1865 (New York: Harper and Row, 1979), 246. 25 Thomas, Nation, 246. 26 Faust, Creation, 88. Faust, Creation, 86. Boles, Irony, 88. 27 Faust, Creation, 100. 28 Michael Thomas Justus, “The Impact of the Civil War on Georgia Baptists” (M.A. thesis, University of Georgia, 1984), 83. 29 Silver, Morale, 30 30 Samuel J. Watson, “Religion and Combat Motivation in the Confederate Armies,” Journal of Military History 58, no. 1 (January 1994): 53. 31 Silver, Morale, 42. 32 Silver, Morale, 53. 33 Kurt O. Berands, “Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man” in Religion and the American Civil War eds. Randall M Miller, Harry S Stout, and Charles Regan Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 153. 34 Berands, “Wholesome Reading,”142. 35 Justus, “Impact,” v. 36 Reid Mitchell, “Christian Soldiers?: Perfecting the Confederacy,” in Religion and the American Civil War eds. Randall M Miller, Harry S Stout, and Charles Regan Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 307. 37 More broadly, other problems with historical analysis of Southern religion are outlined by Ernest Kurtz, “The Tragedy of Southern Religion,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 66, No. 2 (1982). Specifically, “most historical explorations of theology, and especially of southern religion, begin—and end—with the cultural. The cultural approach is justifiable and even necessary: religion is a social phenomenon. Yet religious belief and practice are not merely cultural artifacts.” Kurtz “assumes that religion also has some hind of ‘independent variable’ status, that it can be and has been a force in its own right. What people think and 18

believe about God and about themselves and others in relationship to God does make a difference in their lives, and it is valid and even useful to study these ideas on their own terms.” Kurtz, “Tragedy,” 220. 38 Faust, Creation, 24-26. Silver, Morale, 60. 39 Wesley Norton, “The Role of a Religious Newspaper in Georgia During the Civil War.” Georgia Historical Quarterly 48, No. 2 (1964), 125. 40 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 May 1861. 41 Kenneth Coleman and Christopher Gurr, eds., Dictionary of Georgia Biography Vol.1 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 107. 42 Samuel Boykin, History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia, with Biographical Compendium and Portrait Gallery of Baptist Ministers and Other Georgia Baptists (Atlanta: Jas. P. Harrison and Co., 1881), 45. 43 Jack U. Harwell, An Old Friend with New Credentials: A History of The Christian Index (Atlanta: Executive Committee of the Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia, 1972), 114. 44 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 August 1864. 45 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 December 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 November 1862. 46 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 October 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 December 1865. 47 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 June 1864. 48 Beginning in the summer of 1863, Boykin continued to print this appeal and reward consistently throughout the course of the war. 49 Silver, Morale, 58. 50 For the trials and tribulations of analyzing church membership data, see John B. Boles, The Great Revival: Beginnings of the Bible Belt (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1972), 184-186. 51 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. 52 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 November 1863. Boykin explained this change 53 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 October 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 October 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 March 1860. 54 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 January 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 June 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 October 1861. 55 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 May 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 August 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 April 1864. 56 One writer, “Primitivissimus,” challenged Boykin’s inconsistency: “you repudiate Pedoes as you ought in the pulpit of affiliations; but then you sing hymns composed by Presbyterians, Methodists, and Episcopalians. . . You say you don’t make the make the Index a purely religious paper, but because advertisements help sustain. . . [you are] cringing to wealth and mingling the church and the world together.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 April 1861. 57 Steven E. Woodworth, While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2001), 118. 58 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 January 1863. 59 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 September 1861. 60 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 September 1862. 61 Silver, Morale, 8. 62 Silver, Morale, 82. 63 Silver, Morale, 33. 64 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. 65 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. 66 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 February 1862. 67 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. 68 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 May 1862. 69 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 July 1862. 70 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 July 1863. 71 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 July 1863. 72 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 June 1863. 19

73 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 October 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 November 1864. 74 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 November 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 February 1863. 75 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 March 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1865. 76 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1861. 77 Edward R. Crowther, Southern Evangelicals and the Coming of the Civil War (Lewiston, NY: Edward Mellen Press, 2000), 2.

CHAPTER 2

GUARDING THE GATE

“My people have been lost sheep: their shepherd have caused them to go astray, they have turned them away on the mountains: they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their restingplace.” Jeremiah 50:6 KJV

According to many nineteenth century evangelical Baptists, whiskey paraded

through society donned with horns and bifurcated tale, mocking the godliness and divine

instruction that girded the Baptist worldview. The proclaimed “worst enemy” of

Baptists, especially those of a Southern and distinctly fundamental nature, alcohol and

drunkenness were the worst of evils, for they demeaned the spirit, ushered corruption into

individual souls, and destroyed the foundation of good society and Christian community.1

In 1862 Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia concurred and took significant action to

“suppress the distilleries,” specifically those from which the whiskey flowed freely into the Georgia’s Confederate army camps. One would assume that all Georgia Baptists would cheer and applaud this decision, for the government was finally “throttling” this despised enemy of old. The members of the state Baptist convention in LaGrange, upon discussing the recommendation of a formal gratification to Governor Brown, however, refrained from hasty praise for their governor. One member even attempted to table the amendment for fear that such a resolution was “not germane” to the convention’s spiritual focus and would “open the door for action on many of a similar character,” a character markedly political in nature.2 While most members acknowledged such

hesitation as valid and proceeded with careful steps into this political arena, the

21 convention stood firmly against this evil, proclaiming that in such “extraordinary times,” an endorsement of this kind was indeed proper.

Clearly, the support of this gratification amendment revealed the willingness of some Baptist clergy not only to acknowledge and to participate, no matter how directly or indirectly, in politics, but also to encourage the achievement of common goals that benefited the collective state and the individual spirit. Indeed, as historian Drew Gilpin

Faust has stated in The Creation of Confederate Nationalism, such amendments revealed that “in times of national crisis, doctrines of ‘spirituality’ that had restricted engagement in terrestrial affairs could be justifiably set aside.”3 However, the dialogue that preceded the passage of this formal gratification reveals much more about the relationship between evangelicals and the Confederacy. In the minds of these Baptist laymen and preachers, did whiskey remain a great evil as the constant antagonist of Baptist fundamentals or a drug that duped defenders of Confederate liberty? Or did their religious duties to destroy this evil and the political responsibilities to make good soldiers become “all but inseparable?”4

Born again in a society that demanded deference, eighteenth-century southern

Baptists had cast their lots with religious freedom, hoping to evade the vulgarity and dispassion of their Anglican friends. In Virginia, Baptist disestablishment and support of

Thomas Jefferson’s bill for religious freedom stemmed from their strong conviction that worldly institutions and religion remain distinctly separate.5 Historian Donald Mathews stated that most early Baptists deemed state influence “unnecessary, irrelevant, and possibly dangerous.” 6 Though existing alongside the church, civil government derived its power solely from man’s inevitable propensity for evil, and thus should refrain from 22 the legislation of faith. In The Rights of Conscience Inalienable, Virginia Baptist John

Leland stated that “government has no more to so with the religious opinions of men, than it has to do with the principles of mathematics.”7

Certainly these Baptists, collectively young and full of dissent, needed to define their own boundaries and distinctions in order to survive. Religious freedom thus became one rallying cry for and the protection of Baptist existence. Baptists’ understanding of the demarcation of religious and secular authority, though, “tended to leave civil society a spiritual desert without its own life-giving well-springs of true morality.”8 On the eve of war, Confederate Baptists would have clearly understood these boundaries and the true source of spiritual nourishment, and by the war’s end, they seemingly stared at extermination, not wholly unlike the precarious existence of early Virginia Baptists.

None, however, when faced with secession and independence could deny the patriotism that showered their souls, leaving them open to political excitement. Though their radicalism hid, wholly transformed and unseen, behind the peculiar institution and the generations that separated them from their forefathers, Confederate Baptists embraced this ideological heritage. Though their civil government was perhaps the issue most pressing on the forefront of the Confederate mind, the line separating politics and religion remained, no matter how it wavered. Though victory on the battlefield demanded utmost attention, the necessity of salvation presided over all earthly concerns.

To understand the relationship between Confederate politics and evangelical religion, one must consider the efforts of Southern churches to support their government, while acknowledging the superceding goals of faith. This chapter purports that political and religious duties could indeed converge in the achievement of shared goals, but 23

evangelical support of the government was not synonymous with religious zeal. Though

churches seemingly stood behind their earthly authorities and encouraged their members

to support the political cause, church leaders most emphatically distinguished sacred and

secular, challenging the flock to buttress the church even more willingly than the state

and to hold high a pure Gospel undiluted by patriotism.

Rendering Unto Caesar

Responding to the pressing need for artillery, the Index reported that communities

across the state lowered their church bells to contribute to the Confederate cause. One

such bell “replied” in song: “Loosen the bolts, lower me down / Cannon must be made; /

From hill and vale and leaguered town, / A nation calls for aid.”9 This bell, once reserved

to remind all of impending eternal judgment, now readied itself for battle in order to help

speed along such a process. For all Confederates, the war constituted sacrifice, and few

successfully shunned war’s mortal implications. From bells to battlefields, the Index

writers monitored sacrifices. Proffering a sense of duty bounded by church and state

separation, the Index bolstered morale for both the Confederate and evangelical causes.

Laymen W. D. Gowdrey stated that the paper should not only “tell us of the struggle Zion

is engaged in both subjugation of the world to her great and blessed King Emmanuel,”

but also “how our people are getting along in their struggles for independence.”10

Under the heading “Secular,” one Index writer, presumably Boykin himself,

called all to recognize that “the cause of the country is the cause of God,” that the

sentiment of the country must be consolidated and the Church lead efforts toward unity.11

Here Boykin deemed religious and political affections synonymous, and the highest

Christian duty was the sanctification of their political cause. The Index most certainly 24 called Confederate evangelicals to the faithful fulfillment of duty, political and religious, but exactly how much this conception of dual duty became one remained unclear.

Sentiment that implied the divinity of the Confederate cause may have exhibited more rhetorical convenience than ideological indulgence. D. G. Daniell, an agent for the

Baptist Mission Board, stated that

It will not do to say or think, that the cause of Christ is less important than the cause of our country—that our obligations to the latter are greater than they are to the former. Nor will it do to think that we are doing well for our country by devoting all of our care and sacrifice to it while we ignore the cause of Jesus, Let us in heart and in act acknowledge that, however strong the obligations we are under to our country, those which bind us to Him and His cause are stronger still! God is a ‘jealous God.’12

Granted, Daniell obviously calls upon the Index’s readers to continue their support of mission work, but his emphasis clearly resides in this spiritual domain and forces one to reconsider the extent to which political and religious duty were truly indecipherable. If the cause of country and religion were truly synonymous, God certainly had no grounds for jealousy. Civil war, more than any previous experience, compelled southern evangelicals to examine their role as people in the world but not of the world. In 1864, the Ebenezer Baptist Association convening in Pulaski County stated that “while we would make no effort to blend the Church and State, we believe that our final success depends on the will of God,” requesting all Baptists to “be ever vigilant in the discharge of duty, both in the field and at home.”13 Exactly how one would balance these multiple responsibilities without injuring either cause guided almost all patriotic comments in the

Index and presumably the minds of Confederate evangelicals.

While politicians battled within the government and soldiers campaigned on the fields of battle, politics and patriotism often collided with religious sentiment and 25

responsibilities. Indeterminate was the appropriate duty of faithful Christians in the

fraternal conflict. The Index assisted its readers to understand their role in the war,

extolling them to pray for their country and to proceed with religious duties. In his

opening salutatory of 1861, Boykin stated that in

the alarming condition of the political world, as well as the disordered state of business affairs, let us remind you as Christians, we have much to do. The interests if our beloved Church, and the honor and glory of God, are in our hands; use the true standard of the word of God to correct errors that have crept into our churches. . . . now who is safe as a christian [sic]? If God be for Him, who shall prevail against him? Not all the principalities and powers of the earth and hell. He is safe in body and mind. . . . If infidelity poisons the sources of social happiness or the passions of bad men and the rage of fanaticism engender anarchy—or convulsions of any kinds shake the moral world; he is, not withstanding, safe.14

No matter the political crisis or the threat of war, Index readers could be confident that

safety was theirs and that safety complete. Such assurance enabled them to complete

with marked consistency and conscientious effort their duties, both religious and

political.

Patriotism increasingly emerged as a legitimate theme throughout the Index’s

wartime columns, and Boykin uplifted the spirits of his readers. Borrowing from

Keatean song, Boykin assured the Confederacy that

“should it become necessary, in these troubles to defend her liberties, that the Baptists will flock to the standard of right and each sing for himself: ‘In the long vistas of years to roll / Let me not see my country’s honor fade; / Oh! Let me see our land retain its soul, / Her pride in freedom and not in freedom’s shade.’”15

In 1862 one writer demanded that “the patriotic fervor that smolders in our bosoms must be fanned into a flame.”16 Later, after the failure at Gettysburg and the surrender of

Vicksburg, an “Appeal to Southerners” questioned whether the patriotism of southerners

had disappeared. Are they “so stunned by their late reverses as to lose all spirit, all hope, 26

all courage? Do they not know that fortune favors the brave, and that our affairs are far

from desperate?”17 Contributors praised the valor of Confederate soldiers and applauded those who sacrificed their lives for the Confederate cause, the defense of their beloved land.18 Even in moments when patriotism seemed so real, relevant, and just, some writers

reminded readers of higher sentiments.

Below these higher passions, though, the paper and its Baptist community

supported secession, the Confederate government, and persistence toward victory. In

March of 1861, an infrequent writer, “Rambler,” spoke of the Montgomery Convention

as comprised of “serious, earnest men. They bear no mark of conspirators. They have

the air of wise, law-abiding, self-radiant, liberty-loving, God-fearing [statesmen]” who

have “staked estate, family, and life, upon the issue of revolution.”19 Following

Lincoln’s inauguration, articles in the Index encouraged readers to abandon foreign

(Yankee) religious periodicals, reject Lincoln’s despotism, and give no support for

Virginia until it seceded as well.20 The Index reassured the readership that theirs was “an

organized Government” born from “both political and moral necessities, justified by the great principles of natural right and the law of God.”21

The Index surely resembled a “secular” paper in the column that bore such a title.

One writer proclaimed the war solely as the “blockheaded blundering of a Black

Republican Cabinet,” and Southerners as mere defenders of hearth, home, and family.

According to this author, Southerners would “show [Lincoln] that not only do we know

our rights but that we can fully maintain them.”22 Manassas seemingly confirmed such sentiment:

Let the late victory over such fearful odds and against such numerous weapons of death, and the wonderful preservation of the lives of our solders, and the vast 27

number of our enemies who were slain, teach us the fact that God is everywhere, interested in every event of life, raising up and putting down who He will—that we commit our ways to Him, He will direct our steps.23

Later the Index would confirm the government’s decision to destroy Southern crops rather than allowing Yankees to confiscate them, would include speeches and commentary on speeches of Brown and Davis, and would affirm the “necessity” of

“whipping the North.”24

The Index praised the new government suited to their wants and the “peculiar

social condition” of the Southern people. Rev E.R. Carswell of Jefferson County, though

exposing the criminality of the North for waging an unnecessary war upon the South,

encouraged all “to battle until Southern independence has been secured, and until our

enemies shall have yielded the full measure of our rights.”25 At the 1862 Georgia Baptist

Convention, the members affirmed their desire to support the cause of independence. But

even among this group, some protested the distribution of tracts that reminded soldiers

the importance of honoring the Sabbath. According to the dissident writer, this action

affirmed members’ desire to “memorialize the Government,” thus outstretching the

confines of the Convention.26 The majority of members probably concurred with “Bro

Campbell”:

We are citizens of this country, and we ought to renew our assurances to our fellow citizens, that we are still determined to stand with them. But we speak here not only as citizens, but as Christian men. Our countrymen have a right to all the moral support we can give them in this struggle. We ought to assure them of our unwavering confidence in the justice of our cause, and of our unshaken trust in the God of our fathers, who is able to defend it.27

Sustenance of morale and assurance of support were the legitimate avenues of Baptist

leaders into political comment. 28

Like the Convention, the Index cautiously, yet significantly embraced a patriotic vision in its columns, acknowledging that the secular press had “excited and absorbed almost the whole attention of both saint and sinner.”28 Gradually the heading “Secular” disappeared from the paper’s sections devoted to politics, and by 1863 readers could most certainly became informed about the war and governmental affairs through the Index.

Support of the Confederacy emerged most significantly in the Index’s faithful reporting of the war in the weekly “Notes on the Times.” Throughout the war, writers commonly referred to the government and Jefferson Davis as noble, honorable, and sound, admonishing readers to “do well [their] part in upholding and sustaining [their] rulers in all that is right.”29 Throughout the conflict, the Index remained a staunch cheerleader of the government, maintaining its support of secession and the Confederacy as enthusiastically as in 1861. One writer’s “Thoughts on the Government” deemed equality rather unimportant, a justifiable casualty of republican government.30 Another reminded readers that a house divided would indeed fall and that all “must be willing to let leaders determine what resources are required” to achieve victory, however unfair such a process may appear.31

Writers usually praised the dignity and success of Confederate leaders, but problems with the government, specifically an intense criticism of Davis and army generals, consistently rivaled their patriotic praise. President Jefferson Davis confirmed such praise by acknowledging the country’s dependence on God.32 However, one writer criticized the absence of Christ’s name in a Presidential proclamation, wishing that “the adorable name of Jesus were honored by an insertion in the document.”33 Davis’s position as leader of the righteous Confederate cause never exonerated him from scrutiny. 29

In “Richmond Correspondence,” one contributor chastised Davis for completing the final

leg of a trip on the Sabbath. Sins “in the high places of government and society [came]

with a kind of authority to the masses beneath and often outweighing” the authority of

God.34 This action “scandalized” the religious public, and in no way attests that “the

clergy [urged] submission to both God and Jefferson Davis.”35

No matter the reporting of the war, explicit support of the government, and the

Index community’s explicit nationalism, writers encouraged patriotic expressions and the fulfillment of political duty in markedly religious forms. In 1860, “Kappa” of Charleston observed that the citizens were much engrossed by politics and the “present excitement

[was] more deep and pervading” than any previous one. Chastising Boykin for ignoring

the political excitement of Index readers, “Kappa” deemed it

safe and pertinent to urge the Christians of the South, to mingle prayers for this country with all their intercessions at the throne of grace, privately as well as publicly, and even more in private than in public, should the great disposer be involved in the most perilous crisis.36

Such sentiment was frequent from the onset of the war to Appomattox: the Christians’

best patriotic expression resided in prayer. Though these prayers might suggest the

convergence of Confederate patriotism and evangelical religion, politics was termed an

“interdicted subject” in this paper of religion, and the writer’s supplications at this time

were seemingly offered on behalf of the United States, not yet the Confederacy. The

Index encouraged readers to pray for peace, that God may “direct for good the mind of the incoming U.S. administration and bring about once more tranquility, harmony, and prosperity.”37 After secession, though, the Index never hesitated to proclaim the

goodness of the Confederacy: “thus gloriously launched, our young Confederacy has

brilliant prospects ahead…What a glorious Arcadia will this be! How grand our destiny! 30

How happy and homogeneous its people!”38 Through admonitions to constant prayer,

Baptist writers avowed their love of liberty, desire for independence, and determination

to maintain their freedoms denied and trampled upon by Lincoln’s despotism.

From the beginning of sectional conflict, prayer for cause and country dominated

the discourse of evangelical political responsibility. The battle cry of the Index became

“fly to your closets,” and readers certainly understood the importance and necessity of their earnest please before the Giver of all good gifts.39 The Index proposed that

Christians, unable to meet together amid sparsely populated country, should pray for their

country daily at “precisely” one o’clock. Weekly prayer meetings proved insufficient

and impractical for “securing a concert of prayer for our country and for those who have

gone to fight our battles.”40 In “Anecdotes for our Soldiers,” one writer wholeheartedly

supported this idea: “In that moment of quiet, in very mid-day, when stillness is so

unusual, when it will be then all the more impressive, let every praying soul remember

his country and its defenders before God.”41 For many, prayer became the “power which

shall break the blockade of heaven and procure for us the richest supplies of grace and

assistance from the heavenly armory.”42 Throughout the war, the Index chided readers

for not praying enough in faith and encouraged them to remember their prayer “closets”

and to “storm the gates of heaven with your petitions.”43 Not only was Confederate

victory uncertain, but it depended upon the prayers of Confederate Christians to win

Heaven’s favor.

Typical of the Index’s thrust was an excerpt from the Columbus Inquirer entitled

“Amen.” Boykin concurred with the secular paper that all churches should offer a 31

“solemn prayer…that peace and harmony may be restored to our country.” Following

this citation, Boykin added this amendment:

To the Christians we would add, Pray for the prosperity of Zion. Pray that the love of many may not wax cold. Pray that God would send his spirit into the hearts of his children.44

Here Boykin affirmed the duties of evangelicals to the nation and to Zion, separately. If the individuals ignored either responsibility, they would fall short of their duty.

In addition to prayer, homefront Baptists committed themselves to the care of active and wounded soldiers. Herein resides an explicit and public display of patriotism and Christian concern, seemingly a stark convergence of religious faith and political necessity. Writers encouraged the “Daughters of the South” to contribute “warm, useful clothing and thus cheer [the soldiers] on, and strengthen their stern resolve, to fall, if their country falls, and to never return unless crowned by victory.”45 Providing for the needs

and wants of soldiers became a calling worthy of heightened religious and patriotic

devotion. Southerners had “yet to learn how much [they] owed to those heroic souls”

who stood between them and subjugation; therefore, the recognition of such ignorance

propelled them to consider their defenders and the national cause.46 As buildings and

towns across Georgia became havens for sick and wounded Confederate sons, Boykin

encouraged all to consider soldiers’ martial valor and daily needs that could, with

adequate efforts, be satisfied in true Christian spirit.47

Though prayer and humanitarian care were obvious tasks of daily Christian

charity and essential components in Confederate victory, the relationship between the

individual Baptist and political responsibility remained precarious at best. In an address

to Confederate Georgians, Governor Joseph Brown defined the nature of the present 32

struggle: “the cause of the Confederate States is the cause of every patriotic citizen of the

South. We believe God is with us and presides in our councils. Let us try to live near to

him and implore his continued favor.”48 At once a politician and a Baptist, Brown

invoked religious fervor and the presence of the Divine to justify the existence and to

solidify an abode for the rebel government in hearts of its citizens. Most Confederates

and indeed most evangelicals searched traditional sources to understand the world,

defend their actions, and determine their responsibilities. Later, by the end of 1863,

Robert Toombs decried war-weariness, demanding that “every thought, every energy,

every purpose of every man and woman should be bent to that one great object—the

successful ending of this war.”49 Though the Index writers, especially those few and infrequent contributors holding political office, desired its readers to “heed the calls of patriotism,” the nature of these calls, aside from prayer, endurance, and care for soldiers, remained unclear.

Index writers repeatedly declared that political duty and religion were amiable

partners, but often the reality of the Index discourse proved this partnership more a

friendly jostling than a love fest. In a September 1863 letter, “Semei” complained that

for many individuals “our cause,” the cause of God, had suffered. Confederate

evangelicals had “lived too much for the war and in the war; and it is no inferior token for

good, when we show that we are learning to look beyond it and above it.”50 Baptist

associational meetings as well reflected the spiritual dearth that followed war. Gathering

at Mt. Zion in 1862, a committee of the Columbus Association reported that

the progress of the war, it is true, as reduced the male attendance on our religious meetings, and deprived us of the services of may of the ministers of Christ accustomed to labor within the bounds of the Association; but the committee hope [sic] that we have been blessed with a partial abatement of the worldly temper that 33

so deeply agitated us in the first stages of the conflict of arms, and with a deeper sense of our dependence on the only source of our strength.51

War seemingly induced the decline of religious services and availability of faithful

servants, and political responsibilities garnered more attention from Confederate Baptists.

The Index included lengthy and varied discussions of the Christian’s proper

wartime duty, but mixed messages abounded. How should individuals, who preside over

half-emptied towns rather than battlefields, support their government? How much of

one’s heart could justifiably be swept by political passion? How much of one’s service

should attend the needs of the state over the church? One writer lamentably asked how

“Baptist churchmen of the highest standing can desert the House of God on the Holy

Sabbath day, in order to catch a few crude and unreliable rumors from a passing railroad

train.”52 Boykin included an excerpt from the Banner and Baptist in which the writer

observed that “many of our brethren seem to think their whole duty is comprised in the

support which they give to the war.”53 In these articles, efforts for God and religion

precluded patriotism, though service to the former never implied contradiction with the

latter.

According to Baptist tradition, Christians should simultaneously be wary of

political excitement and, when called upon, given wholeheartedly to its pleasure. “Allen”

of Kalmia stated that readers “should not identify themselves with any political party.

They should be known not as Secessionists or Unionists, Abolitionists or Southern

Confederates, but only as christians. If they join or abet any of these factions they only

hasten the fearful doom of their country.”54 Such admonishment seems hardly congruent with the position of the Index or the hearts of its good Confederate readership. This struggle for identity and determination of individual duty, whether political or religious, 34

was most definitely unfinished variance, rather than a predetermined set of regulations

and expectations in which religion and politics blindly conjoined in a common struggle

for united goals.

The discourse at the beginning of the war offered the most evidence of religious

allegiance cowering to political duty. In 1860, N. M. Crawford of the Bible Revision

Association marked “the duty of every good man to do all he can to avert the calamities

which we are now threatened; of every wise man to prepare to meet them if they must

come.”55 The official response of the Georgia Baptist Convention to secession revealed

little doubt about its advocacy of the new government and the duty of preachers to

encourage all Southerners toward independence. The Convention not only unanimously

endorsed the Confederate government, but also its own leadership in this new political

experience. For example, the resolution stated:

while this Convention disclaims all authority, whether ecclesiastical or civil, yet as citizens, we deem it but a duty to urge the union of all people of the South in defence [sic] of the common cause; and to express the confident belief that, in whatever conflict the madness of Mr. Lincoln and his government may force upon is, the Baptists of Georgia will not be behind any class of our fellow citizens in maintaining the independence of the south by any sacrifice of treasure or blood.56

Baptist preachers considered their political responsibilities in war solely as citizens, and some even worried that Baptists might not exemplify the most concerted leadership in the cause, allowing other denominations to shine.

Some Baptist ministers had reservations about offering official support of the state, and many felt more comfortable serving the state by upholding religious order, a perceived integral part of successful social community and thus a help to the national cause. Noting and detailing famous exceptions such as Thomas R. R. Cobb, Leonidas

Polk, and Stephen Elliot, Steven E. Woodworth contends that many Southern religious 35

leaders felt uneasy about the relationship between politics and religion and that many

“had qualms about saying so openly and at once.”57 One Tennessee Baptist writer,

invoking the separation of church and state, incurred much excitement and interest in his

disagreement with the Southern Baptist Convention’s official action on the state of the

Confederacy. Boykin responded that “if individual ‘Baptists’ as such, have no right to an

expression, we know not who have. No Baptist remotely [imagined] that the resolutions

passed by the Convention, would or could bind the denomination, or that they were so

intended.” According to Boykin, history proved that Baptist preachers had officially

commented on political affairs when good judgment and occasion deemed such remarks

necessary, though such remarks were mere earthly commentary.58

Those responsible for such public statements were Baptist ministers, and during war, the writers of the Index debated the proper role of preachers. Should ministers preach the legitimacy of the young government and stir the fires of war from the pulpit?

Should ministers retreat from traditional ecclesiastical duties and prayers to offer their services to their country? As long as the Confederacy proclaimed its own self-defense, many ministers found no contradictions in their service to the church and state, for underneath such a banner the political became apolitical.59 In response to criticism of the

ministers’ lack of political involvement, specifically the decision of many to refuse

military service, one writer reminded readers that “no minister called of God to the work

can voluntarily abandon his profession for any secular calling without unfaithfulness to

God and his country.” The writer chided “the inconsistencies of wicked men” who

complained about ministers’ involvement in elections and politics during peace and then,

with similar ferocity, complained of ministers’ relegation to church duties during war.60 36

Clearly, according to the Index, the minister should serve his flock by fulfilling his duties

to God and men, rather than killing Yankees. Each man and woman had duties to both

God and country, and for ministers, their service to the spiritual interests of the

Confederacy indirectly served country as well.61

Still others stated that ministers should be even more careful in their monitoring

of spiritual interests. As the “watchmen upon the moral and spiritual ramparts of our

Confederacy, who must sound the alarm” of Satan’s attacks upon the fortress of Zion,

ministers must seal their religious duties and commitment to the Gospel from the

wavering passions of earthly politics.62 If ministers and the church failed in their

religious duties, political and military failure was their responsibility alone. One writer

explicitly stated that the church “has been the chief reason of the calamity, and she has

most influence at the Throne of Grace. It was always intended, also, that she should be

the preserver of the State, and not the State the preserver of her. The destiny of the world

depends on the church.”63 While this may even more muddle the church’s role in the present political state, the discourse becomes extremely important and less orthodox than historians have previously considered, especially since these words came from the same pen that later encouraged individuals to avoid identity with one particular political party, aside from that of Christ.64

To appease their dual identity and torn spirits, some ministers chose to be

chaplains. Chaplaincy seemingly brought ministers to the frontlines of war but allowed

them to retain spiritual purity and religious duty. In the formation of this office, the most

telling discourse concerning church-state relations emerged. J. Johnson deemed that a

chaplain, appointed and compensated by the government, ministered without biblical 37

precedent, in defiance of church-state separation, and invited laziness and passivity in

churches. If churches could depend on the government to provide ministers, what would

be their role in fostering religion in the army?65 Another “Chaplain” responded in

disagreement with Johnson’s question of biblical authority of chaplaincy, but affirmed

the importance of keeping the church and state separate. Rather than admonishing

Baptist ministers to resign their government-sanctioned offices, this writer encouraged

chaplains to remain, so as not to leave room for others to preach error.66

The Index clearly opposed any efforts of the government, wayward politicians, or

chastising citizens to pressure ministers into military service.67 For example, an artillery

lieutenant had requested an appointment of chaplain, supposedly as his gifts and

relationships deemed this move natural, but the government determined his martial office

more important to the cause and thus denied his calling. “Semei” strongly warned

against a new policy of the Department of War, one “worthy of severe reprehension.”68

In similar thinking, the Georgia Baptist Convention formally requested that Davis “pass an order directing the discharge of any ordained minister of the gospel whose services are asked by any regiment or separate battalion in service, or by any church as a pastor.”69

Another writer specifically stated that “any careful student of this war will have noticed that the connection of christian ministers with the army, as fighters, has been barren of valuable results.”70 The office of the chaplain straddled the boundaries of faith and

politics and stretched the minds of many Baptists as to the proper relationship between

the government and the movements of the spirit. Clearly, however, the spiritual interests

of the men and the necessity of their appeasement, outweighed, or at least was an integral

part of, Confederate victory. 38

Rendering Unto God

Though prayers for country, care for sick, and chaplains for soldiers’ spiritual

needs were faintly political in nature, the Index writers feared the inescapable surge of

political passions within their communities and thus reined political expression into these

evangelical forms. Enforcing calm and abating the wayward fires of patriotism proved a

more daunting task and evoked only meager confidence from Baptist “monitors” that

such could be assuaged. Many feared that

the restraints of humanity will be forgotten in this war—aye forgotten by ourselves; we are unused to war and therefore, unused to restraint, and hence we urge every Christian and every man or woman of education and refinement, to exert his or her influence to preserve a due regard to the restraint imposed upon us by humanity.71

Susceptible to bad passions, ministers and lay people guarded against such in their religious circles and in larger society as well. In 1863 one frustrated observer noted that many unsuspecting Confederates had been “carried away with the patriotism and fear of a skilled advocate,” accepting as truth the words and whims of eloquent politicians.72 War

threatened religious order by dividing loyalties, demanding the individual follow patriotic

passions more fervently than religion.

Though the Index reported church news, ecclesiastical business, and theological issues, war seemingly crept into each of these arenas of debate and discussion. Tight budgets and military support emptied pocketbooks whose liberality usually benefited foreign missions and evangelical ventures; interdenominational cooperation made staunch Baptists usually leading the charge against pedobaptism somewhat uncomfortable; personal piety, customarily cultivated with steady care, now competed with patriotism for the affections of evangelicals. One writer questioned: 39

Our thoughts, our finer emotions, our sympathies, are being centralized and secularized by the one great absorbing theme of the day. Shall this centralization and secularization go into the pulpit and subsidize what is left of evangelical truth? Shall it obtrude itself into the sanctuary and thrust aside the gospel?73

Though not ignoring political responsibility, the Index fancied the reader to discharge faithfully his or her religious responsibilities, rather than merely delaying them until the news from the front arrived and political debated entertained.

The church supported the Confederacy and encouraged its members and religious affiliates to acknowledge their government as good and their independence vital to their survival, but such support did not imply devotion, in its most spiritual sense, the sense in which these Baptists understood the word. In “Political Excitement,” “J.” warned that in this crisis “the mind will be taken up with political subjects to the exclusion, in a great degree, of subjects of vastly more importance. The worst passion of my frail nature will be excited unduly, and to my injury.”74 No matter the accuracy of this prediction, this sentiment seemingly girded all political comment in the Index, and certainly deemed the separation of church and state more clearly defined, or at least still in debate, than outward hegemonic support and governmental religious ritual might imply. The Index was merely a cry in the wind, however distant and fleeting, reminding readers to be critical of the passions of patriotism.

One of the more vivid images from the Index during the war was of a Roman sentinel of Pompeii, who facing the threat of heaven, the tremble of the earth, and volcanic tyranny, faithfully stood and never deserted his post. The application was simple and clear: “Let Christians learn to stand to their duty, at the post at which their

Captain has placed them, and come what will, let them be found undauntedly faithful.

Tis [sic] not for them to fear the storms of earth not to flee at the approach of danger.”75 40

Certainly this image could have moved soldiers toward endurance and civilians toward

greater commitment to the Confederate cause, but the editors were clear that the

“Christian warrior” was their audience, religious duty was their highest concern, and this

sentinel pondered not the destruction of Yankee civilization, but heavenly victory.

Readers knew that theirs was “a position of awful responsibility,” in which Christ had

committed the diffusion of light to them, and like the moon, they should reflect the sun.76

Though the “excitement of the times may result in a formality of secret, social, and public worship, which shall be alike offensive to God, and injurious to ourselves,”77

the Christian should remain faithful to the cause of Christ. An article reprinted from the

Southern Christian Advocate deemed the easiest route away from one’s post as the failure

to “cultivate” personal piety. Confederate Christians could easily “satisfy [themselves]

with such generalities, as that God reigns, that He is on the side of the right, that he

favors and succors the oppressed, that He will make all changes of empire conduce to the

establishment of His kingdom. These are important, but not saving, truths.”78 Work still

needed to be completed in spite of the times, and followers still needed to make the

“saving” truths known. Failure to make every effort in this cause constituted treason of a

spiritual sort.79

Concern for religious responsibility and monitoring the obstacles to genuine

religion were indeed nothing new to the columns of the Index. Before war, many

Baptists leaders decried not wayward political passions, but an unwavering partisan

spirit, such as religious bickering, that destroyed unity and in the pressures of daily

business that “thrust religion into second place.”80 Despite this debasement of thought and action, one group solemnly reasserted the ever-present existence of spiritual needs 41 and the responsibility to spread the faith: “our destitute white population as well as five million blacks in our Confederacy, have a strong claim upon Christian sympathy and labor.”81 By the end of the war, especially once Georgia became battlefield, the mere survival of religious activity where it existed became the utmost concern of the Index writers. One contributor praised the efforts of a church at Pindertown of the Pea Ridge

Baptist Association, whose membership regularly met for Sabbath School, gave money to purchase religious literature for the soldiers, faithfully attended preaching whenever a preacher was available, and whose deacons received praise for their responsibility and activity.82

By 1865, Yankees had left their mark upon the soil and spirit of Georgia, but the calling of the Index was still to religious duty. Boykin called readers to repent, pray, read the Bible, honor God, and imitate Christ. In addition, readers should watch and pray for

Christ’s return. Amid the “wrecks of [their] former fortune,” the paper admonished readers to remain “unspotted from the world” and to “throw some of their enterprise into the churches.”83 One might expect religious sentiment to come much easier in defeat, as religion proved an excellent coping mechanism and God a “very present help in trouble.”84 However, as the Index demonstrates, the call to traditional religious duties, as distinct and even competitive with patriotic duty, existed throughout the war.

One of the constant cries of the Index writers during war was the shortage of preachers, both at home and in the army. Though churches always clamored for faithful servants of God to fill ministerial positions, war intensified this need, as religious commitment and potential interest in the cloth faded into political passions. In 1860,

“C.” of Atlanta noted the great number of churches without pastors: “when God’s written 42

word is not headed, he speaks in his providence, when the thunder of his voice is not

heard, he sends out his lightening and his arrows to scatter and discomfort the indifferent

and the rebellious.”85 Another estimated that at least three churches existed for every one

laboring minister.86 Some ministers had indeed left for the “tented field,” leaving the grave possibility of disorganization, idleness, and “sleep” of infecting their congregations at home.87

By the middle of the war, the questions and discussions evolved from the scarcity

of ministers to the ability of churches to pay the salaries of those that continued to work.

Churches and associations scrambled to gather the resources necessary for survival. One

association appointed a committee “to suggest some simple plan of raising money among

our churches, that shall promise effectiveness, and yet adapt itself to the embarrassments

that produced by the existing war.”88 Inflation left many pulpits in danger of vacancy,

and the inability of churches to compensate their ministers in an adequate fashion,

according to the newspaper, reflected a larger problem. “Hatton” suggested that those

who refused to meet and care for their pastors

must believe our national enemies are more dangerous than our spiritual; that the cause of the Confederate States is of more value than the cause of Christ; that temporal interests take precedence of eternal; that the body and land and negroes are to be preferred to the interests of the soul.89

“Hatton” lamented the countless cries for and about money, whether for religious or temporal cause; but he strongly demanded the cause of Christ receive full attention over the cause of country, for if the former was ignored, the latter would never achieve true victory. The Index consistently issued a hearty rebuke of the spirit which caused readers to falter in these efforts. 43

This implied competition between church and state for the financial resources

necessary for survival also emerged in a continuous debate in the Index and elsewhere

across the state in determining the legality of slave preachers. In a strong letter to

Governor Brown and other Baptists in the Georgia legislature, N. M. Crawford wrote that

by prohibiting Negroes to preach or officiate in church matters “Caesar has usurped

authority and forbids us to render unto God the things that are God’s.” He acknowledged

the mistakes of the past—that some Negroes were licensed though “not fit to preach”—

but legislative interference in matters such as these was most certainly wrong. He

acknowledged that God may or may not even call Negroes to preach, but that in this

matter, statute government was “not legislating upon the negro but upon the churches.”

Indicting the actions of the government, Crawford asked, “Who will dare to limit the

power of the Holy Spirit in qualifying men for the ministry?”90

Future Index editor (1866, 1878-1882, 1885) and future president of the

University of Georgia, H. H. Tucker strongly concurred, stating that the forbiddance of

slave preachers is a blatant “attempt to improve upon the laws Christ has given his

people” and “an usurpation of ecclesiastical power by civil authorities.” The

extraordinary times of Northern fanaticism terminated with secession, and thus religious

liberty, more specifically the internal monitoring of the peculiar institution, must be

restored. Tucker stated that this prohibition “puts back the sun many degrees on the dial;

it reverses the wheels of progress, and puts us back to the days of Puritan bigotry and

Popish intolerance, it puts us back and puts us down to a point where we have never

been.”91 For a people and a church so immersed in political affairs and support of their

government, such a discourse reveals more a propensity for traditional religious liberty 44 and church-state separation, rather than a overhaul of thought to appease any Confederate banner or bellum expediency.

Though the shortage of preachers posed serious threats to the stability of church life, perhaps no traditional religious activity competed more for the allegiances of

Confederate Baptists than the denomination’s missionary efforts. The Index frequently included letters and correspondence with Baptist missionaries in foreign countries, in

Indian territories, and in sparsely populated frontier lands in North America. In January of 1860, one writer challenged readers: “Christ left heaven for you, ought you not to leave your home and country, father and mother, all for him? The heathen are perishing, the world of woe is being populated with the souls of those to whom it may be your duty to preach.”92 M. T. Sumner, finance secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention and frequent contributor to the Index, stated:

Our labors are not completed—land uncultivated has spread out before us like the noble country [United States] we inhabit. The blacks on the plantations, the Red man of the Western front, the people of foreign birth found in all our large cities, and our own American population, have made their demands on our sympathies and prayers, and upon our money too. They must have the word of God to instruct them, the voice of the living preacher to call them to repentance, and point them to the healing waters of salvation.93

Sumner admonished readers to remember the duties that their faith demanded and to consider the people around the world and at home who knew neither Christ nor the

Baptist faith.

The prolongation of war severely decreased the attention and liberality of financial resources afforded to missionary boards across the South, forcing many to consider incurring debts. By 1863, Sumner and others noted that receipts for domestic and foreign missions had greatly diminished and people had apparently forgotten lost 45

souls amid political agitations.94 A Committee of the 1862 Bethel Associational meeting

acknowledged the “falling off” of their Indian missions, but “[rejoiced] that we have been

able to accomplish any thing good for these redmen.”95 Despite this, S. G. Daniel

affirmed that foreign missions remained “the cause of God—the same now as in the

past,” and the “circumstances of War and Blockade, may, for a time, impede the work;

but they do not relieve us from the obligation to ‘preach the Gospel to every creature.’”96

In the “Duty of Georgia Baptists for 1863,” one writer hoped to do

away with the paltry excuse that the war precludes missionary efforts. We tell you this war must end, and that between now and its period of cessation the headway attained by the glorious old ship of missionary endeavor must be kept up and the wheels of propulsion be made to maintain the revolutions.97

Defenders of the missionary cause spoke of war as their adversary in competition for the

Baptists’ affections and pocketbooks. Writers questioned that if the disciples of Jesus

paid tributes to Caesar, “should not God receive his share?”98

Georgia Baptists, indeed many Confederate evangelicals, remedied this rivalry through army missions. Members of the Bethel Association affirmed this endeavor, demanding that “our soldier boys may not be without the benefits of the personal labors of our ministry, and the use of pious readings, which have proved of so much profit to their souls’ last interest.”99 Though quite possibly these efforts muddied the line

demarcating traditional church and state boundaries, one must consider the frustration

and observations from which these efforts arose. Overwhelmed with Christ’s

Commission and brevity of life in the army, Baptists discovered a new “harvest” field.

Boykin affirmed these kindred efforts, urging readers “to enter as active laborers in the

army missionary service.”100 He hoped readers would understand the leadership of the

Baptists, as “chosen instruments in the hands of Providence for the accomplishment of 46

mighty results, and for the achievement of sublime victories—the victories of Gospel

Truth over Satanic error.”101

Though the paper never explicitly explained why the army missions garnered the

attentions of Baptists rather than traditional ministries, it remains overwhelmingly

plausible that these efforts were indeed not an effort to defeat Yankees and engender

more a more fearless army.102 More likely, Baptists heard the call from the battlefield for assurance amid death, chose an avenue through which contributors could simultaneously appease political passions and religious interests, and seized an opportunity to “save” their own. One writer stated that

if we will but glance our eyes over our Confederacy, and behold the broad, white, inviting field for missionary labor that lies spread out before us, in the army, we cannot but rejoice at the convenience of the field, while we tremble at our responsibility and deplore our listlessness.103

Certainly Baptists understood that a soldier who faced death, unhindered by its sting, more than likely made for a better fighter and that a citizen, confident in Divine omnipotence and Providence, more steadfastly stood against tyranny and fatigue. But the motivations for army evangelization only become strong once the call from the soldiers became too loud and the sheer convenience of the harvest too sensible to ignore.

Before the war, Boykin professed “to be a partisan—but of Christ only,” stating that he would only pursue the interests of Christ and exalt his name.104 Certainly, the

validity of such a claim falters under the weight of Confederate euphoria, but such a

commitment was not altogether lost. By the end of the war, Boykin affirmed his

determination to see the rights and independence of the Confederacy secured; but he

determined the “general influence of the paper shall be to promote religion. . . to be

useful to the cause of God and of country.”105 Though the discourse of religion and 47

patriotism converged during the war, it remains altogether unfair to ignore the boundaries

Boykin and the other writers placed, no matter how unsuccessful or problematical, upon

themselves and their readers. An article from the Banner and Baptist confirmed that

those who consider “their whole duty” to support the war and “either entirely neglect the

religious interests of the country, or give them only a partial and meager portion of their

attention” were sadly mistaken.106

Religion guided adherents to amiable proportions of patriotism. Reverend Joseph

M. Atkinson noted that Christians did not “cease to be men” upon salvation, rather the

“feelings of natural affection [were] not quenched but purified and regulated by faith.”107

They monitored and adjusted traditional religious activities and effort to the realities of

war, hoping to sustain the churches. Most importantly, though, they fretted themselves

with the substitution of patriotic excitement for true religious faith. Addressing the

soldier and any of like mind, Boykin warned that “all your deeds of renown, all your

patriotic sacrifices; all your burning love for your country, will not carry you to

heaven.”108 Boykin emphasized the importance of keeping religion and patriotism separate, and he warned evangelicals from bowing to fleeting passions:

There is only one name under heaven given among men, by which you can be saved; and that name is Jesus. Upon the cross he dies bearing the punishment of many, and opening a way by which all who believe on him may have eternals life. This he did once for all: now other sacrifice is necessary—no other efforts can work out salvation; and this was enough.

This message of separation may have been important because many had indeed confused patriotism and salvation.109 According to the Index, Christians should pursue the higher

passions and beware of “worldlimindedness, with all its train of carnal impulses, [which]

will take possession of the heart.”110 Indeed many devotees feared and witnessed how 48

religion appeared rather dull and bland in light of secession, new government model

government, and war against invasion. They hoped, though, that their “piety [would] be

stronger than [their] patriotism.”111

Readers reminded themselves not to forget spiritual concerns, to continue their

religious practices, and to protect the purity of faith. Boykin responded to an editorial

from the Mississippi Baptist that grumbled about the increasing discontinuations of their

subscriptions in favor of political papers: “Politics and secular matters are carrying the

day. . . . When a man stops his Index [sic] we take it as a sign that he is allowing politics

to rule more than they should in his heart.”112 Writers warned against political preachers,

and the importance of keeping churches “pure” by constant vigilance and action.113 E.

Dodson wrote that “public opinion in the North is causing our branches, creeks and rivers

to run with blood,” and those responsible for forming this opinion were Yankee preachers

who shrugged off the purity of religion. The violation of their true responsibility to the

church and spiritual matters contaminated religion and seemingly contributed to the

war.114 No matter the hypocrisy that may exist in this admonition, the writers separated

faith from politics and preserved their own religion distinct from patriotism along the

pathway to independence.

As the war progressed and the paper increasingly fell into the hands of soldiers, writers more fervently expressed that “something more than patriotism and the profession of social virtues is necessary to ensure peace in death.” God and the Confederacy both called soldiers to the battlefield but “neither one nor the other requires you to peril your soul.”115 Another stated:

Patriotism is good; it is a high virtue; but men are not saved because they possess a single virtue or many virtues. A man can no more be saved for patriotism than 49

because he is truthful or honest. The only salvation is revealed in the word of God. . . . Let Christians lift up the warning voice against the delusion now so fearfully prevalent, that patriotism is religion.116

Patriotism, however virtuous, was not the assurance of salvation. In a tract to soldiers

entitled “Patriotism not Piety,” one writer stated that though “unborn generations will

proudly claim descent from the martyrs of liberty,” one dare not “point you to Heaven as

your reward, if you are not a soldier of the Cross.”117

For this writer, patriotism was not religion, nor a substitute for it. Historian

Eugene Genovese contends that some Southerners ministers, “wishing to console the

bereaved, slipped into the blasphemy of speaking of the Confederate dead as martyrs for

Christ.”118 The Index, though, clearly reinforced salvation as different from Confederate

sacrifice. Blasting “Mohammed’s followers” for making martyrdom for political cause a

key to heaven, this writer stated

Patriotism embraces a single discharge of but a single duty. . . . [It] cannot take the place of religion since it may nerve the soul to self-sacrifice and deeds of heroism in our country’s defence [sic], when not a single desire is felt to please God. . . . It may coexist with the most daring contempt of God and flagrant violation of His laws. . . Patriotism is not the religion of the Bible: for it may exist apart from God, and obedience to his law, from a Saviour, from a Holy Ghost, faith, repentance, and regeneration, without which no man can enter the kingdom of heaven.119

In “Mohammedan Christianity,” an Index writer concurred, decrying the temptation to

“let down the character and claims of the Gospel in deference to the merits of the soldier and the needs of the patriot.” No matter how pronounced one’s patriotic vision or mortal one’s sacrifice for the Confederate cause, such offerings secured nothing in the next life and provided no protection before the judgment of God. This writer observed that “in obituary notices and funeral addresses, is not the impression made, that he who has generously offered his life in the defense of his country cannot suffer greatly in the future 50

world.”120 Custodians of “a pure Christianity” must be vigilant, keeping “jealous watch and word” that patriotism and salvation do not merge, that Confederate casualty does not imply Christian martyrdom, that political service does not garner Christian salvation.

Essential to the Confederate evangelicals’ vision for both religious and national

success was their ability to keep the Gospel pure. Many writers called for the church to

“return to the gospel as the standard of religion,” to dismiss the ungodliness that plagued

the church, and to embrace repentance.121 From the writers’ perspective, Southern

Christianity was the most Christian, and Yankees, in their desire to preserve the Union

and destroy the South, usurped God-sanctioned order and replaced divine truth with their

own version of morality. According to the Index, Bibles and hymnbooks in the North

proudly displayed “a union flag emblazoned upon the title page.”122 While camped at

Lookout Mountain, a Union army chaplain stated that he obeyed only his conscience, and

a “law higher than the Bible of God Almighty.”123 Another federal chaplain proclaimed

that his army knew “no other God but Sherman.”124 Accuracy aside, these accounts

reveal how Confederate evangelicals viewed themselves, their causes, and their relationship to the Divine. Through the transgressions of Yankee religion, the Index warned against exchanging the Gospel for the Constitution, the love of scripture for the love of country, and religious fervor for nationalistic ecstasy.

Granted, Boykin recognized “the power of religion operating upon the hearts of

our soldiers, animating, inspiring, and arousing a high pitch of patriotic enthusiasm…and

preserving the destinies of the Confederacy.”125 Though religion and religious

community were essential to the dissimilation of national ideology, the Index never

substituted one gospel for another. In fact, the message of salvation and the techniques 51 used to bring people into the faith varied little from the traditional appeal to sinners and peacetime missionary efforts. It is equally plausible, especially by the end of the war, that the writers who sold salvation thought first of their fathers, sons, and brothers who faced death “yet unprepared to die,”126 rather than the triumph of the Confederacy.

Repeatedly Boykin challenged readers to spiritual questions: “Do you believe that when you die, you will be called to stand before the bar of God? Do you know that there is a hell of eternal flame appointed for the wicked?”127 Articles entitled “To the Sinner” and

“A Call of the Unconverted” appeared as standards in the weekly editions, urging readers to “remember that Jesus Christ can save even you” and calling all to “believe on

Christ.”128 According to historian Ernest Kurtz, the “most important fact about any person, within the evangelical worldview, became whether or not he or she had undergone a ‘conversion experience’ and thus ‘attained salvation.’”129 The “possession” of the individual heart was the highest concern. Despite the importance of Confederate patriotism, this value did not change.

Though not speaking of the usurpation of patriotism over true salvation or of politics over religion responsibilities, Mary A. M’Crimmon, a frequent contributor to the

Index, defined the nature of idols:

There are mysteries in our own hearts which we do not comprehend. We know not how we will act under new and untried circumstances, because there are recesses in our own hearts, which we have never explored. . . . Whatever occupies the chief place in our affections is an idol, be whatsoever it will. Thus, the purest and best of people are in danger—of falling into error from excessive love of those upon who they place their affections.130

Perhaps these words reveal the Baptist understanding of oneself, one’s heart, and one’s affections, or at least the ideal that should be esteemed. Perhaps in this admonition the reasons for the simultaneous appeal and distrust of political passion become clear. 52

Confederate Baptists, given to patriotic fervor and national spirit, wanted victory for their government no matter the costs. They also knew, however, that such success could never satisfy the most pressing need of their collective and individual hearts, that victory would be hollow if the higher concerns of religion ignored and the Gospel tarnished to achieve it. Writers, unprepared and, in many instances, handicapped, seemingly struggled to rein their readers’ passions to true religious affections, as politics tore the soul and split desires. Nationalism and the sustenance of morale certainly captivated Confederate

Baptists, but the extent to which such captivation was encouraged by church leaders or even easily reconciled within individual hearts solely committed to Christ remains at best muddied.

1 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. 2 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1862. 3 Faust, Creation, 32. 4 Faust, Creation, 32. 5 Isaac, Transformation, 291. 6 Mathews, Religion, 57. 7 L. F. Greene, ed., The Writings of the late Elder John Leland (New York: G. W. Wood, 1845), 179-186, quoted in H. Leon McBeth, A Sourcebook for Baptist Heritage (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1990), 180. 8 Isaac, Transformation, 291. 9 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 April 1862. 10 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 March 1862. 11 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 April 1861. 12 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 July 61. 13 Minutes of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ebenezer Baptist Association, Convened at Evergreen, Pulaski County, Georgia, On the 15th, 16th, 17th of Oct., 1864 (Macon: Burke, Boykin, and Co., 1864), 8. 14 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 January 1861. 15 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 January 1861. 16 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 October 1862. 17 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 September 1863. 18 In one installment of “The Metabasisian Letters,” the writer lamented four valedictorians of Franklin College who had fallen: J. F. Cooper, T. L. Cooper, G. A. Bull, and T. R. R. Cobb. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 February 1863. Another wrote, “Never will it be fully known the value of the sacrifices the South has made in order to gain her independence. The worthy, nobleness, the priceless value of many of her sons, who free and patriotically and magnanimously, have yielded up their lives an offering upon the altar of their country’s liberty, are beyond the comprehension of our invaders.” Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 February 1863. 19 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 March 1861. 20 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 March 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 March 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 April 1861. 21 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 April 1861. 53

22 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 April 1861. 23 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1861. Silver states that after First Manassas many Confederates believed the victory a reward for their acknowledgement of God. Silver, Morale, 31. 24 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 February 1862. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1862. Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.) 25 March 1862. 25 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 June 1861. 26 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 May 1862. 27 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 June 1862. 28 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. 29 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 February 1863. 30 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 March 1865. For more explanation of Southerners’ rejection of natural equality, see Mitchell Snay, “American Thought and Southern Distinctiveness: The Southern Clergy and the Sanctification of Slavery,” Civil War History 35, no. 4 (1989): 320-321 or Snay, Gospel, 68-69. For southern evangelicals, rights were conditional, not simply given because of one’s humanity. 31 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 March 1865. 32 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 March 1862. 33 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 April 1863. 34 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1863. 35 Faust, Creation, 33. 36 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 October 1860. 37 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 February 1861. Daniel states that “no religious newspaper or denomination leader officially and openly espoused secession prior to the election of Lincoln.” This holds true for the Index. W. Harrison Daniel, Southern Protestantism in the Confederacy (Bedford VA: The Print Shop, 1989), 2. 38 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 February 1861. 39 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 July 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 August 1864. 40 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 July 1961. 41 “Anecdotes for our Soldiers,” South Carolina Tract Society Tract No. 94 (Charleston: Evans and Cogswell, n.p., n.d.), 7. 42 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 February 1862. 43 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 September 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 August 1864. Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 August 1864. One writer refused to believe conflict would become war: “We do not believe that there will be war between the North and South. And, yet, it is incumbent upon the christian to pray for peace, for it may be that God has determined to grant it in response to devout prayer alone.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 February 1861. 44 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 February 1861. 45 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 September 1861. 46 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 October 1863. 47 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 October 1863. 48 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 September 1861. 49 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 November 1863. 50 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 September 1863. 51 Minutes of the Thirty-fourth Annual Session of the Columbus Baptist Association, Held at Mt. Zion, Talbot County, GA., September 28, 29, 30, 1862 (Columbus: Daily Sun Stream Press, 1862), 8-9. 52 The same writer questioned, “If Christians thus prove so recreant to duty and to principle, what are we to expect for out beloved country. . . Shall black night enshroud our nation in dismal woe, because of individual dereliction on the part of Christians? Forbid it patriotism! Forbid it religion! For bid it Heaven! . . . We call you to arouse from your lethargy, and stake off that deadly stupor that is benumbing your spiritual faculties.” Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 May 1862. 53 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 February 1862. 54 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 August 1862. The capitalization of “Christian” or “Christians” was inconsistent throughout the paper. Often quotations may include “christians,” rather than “Christians.” 55 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 November 1860. 54

56 Minutes of the Thirty-ninth Anniversary of the Baptist Convention of the State of Georgia, Held with the Baptist Church in Athens, April 26, 27, 29, 1861 (Macon: Telegraph Steam Printing), 5. 57 Woodworth, Marching On, 119. 58 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 July 1861. 59 Woodworth, Marching On, 121. 60 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 March 1862. 61 Snay correctly asserts that Southern clergymen “drew a careful distinction between their roles as minister and private citizen,” but also that religion and politics were “symbiotic.” Snay, Gospel, 11-13. 62 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 September 1861. 63 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 July 1862. 64 See note 54. 65 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 May 1863. Daniel states that Southern Baptists voiced most of the criticism of the government pertaining to chaplaincy. Daniel, Southern Protestantism, 64. 66 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 June 1863. 67 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 July 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 February 1863. 68 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 December 1863. 69 Minutes of the Forty-second Anniversary of the Georgia Baptist State Convention, held at Atlanta, the 22nd, 23rd and 25th of April, 1864 (Macon: Burke, Boykin & Co., 1864). 70 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 August 1863. 71 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 September 1861. 72 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 August 1863. 73 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 March 1863. 74 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 August 1860. 75 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 June 1861. 76 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 April 1863. 77 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 August 1861. 78 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 August 1863. 79 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 January 1863. The Committee on the State of Religion of the Columbus Baptist Association reported that neglect of public worship, interest in religious training, Sabbath “desecration,” and fewer gifts of benevolence displayed a “state greatly to be deplored.” Minutes of the Thirty-sixth Annual Session of the Columbus Baptist Association, Held at County Line, Talbot County, GA., September 24th, 25th, 36th, 1864 (Hamilton: Office of Harris County Enterprise), 8. 80 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 July 1860; quotations from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 April 1861. 81 Minutes of the Thirty-third Annual Session of the Columbus Baptist Association, Held at Hamilton, Harris County, Georgia, Twenty-first of September, 1861 (Columbus: Daily Sun Steam Press, n.d.), 9. 82 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 August 1863. 83 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 January 1865. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 April 1865. Quotations from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 April 1865. 84 Psalm 46:1, KJV. 85 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 January 1860. 86 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 June 1860. 87 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 May 1862. 88 Minutes of the Bethel Baptist Association, Held at Cotton Hill, Clay County, Georgia. On Saturday, November 5, 1864 (Macon: Burke, Boykin, and Co., 1864), 3. 89 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. 90 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 February 1863. 91 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 June 1863. 92 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 January 1860. 93 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 February 1860. 94 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 March 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 February 1862. 95 Minutes of the Bethel Baptist Association, Held at Pine Bluff Church, on Saturday, November 1, 1862 (Macon: Burke, Boykin, and Co., 1862), 12. 55

96 Minutes of the Bethel Baptist Association, Held at Cotton Hill, Clay County, Georgia. On Saturday, November 5, 1864 (Macon: Burke, Boykin, and Co., 1864), 8. 97 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 January 1863. 98 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 July 1862. 99 Minutes of the Bethel Baptist Association, Held at Pine Bluff Church, on Saturday, November 1, 1862 (Macon: Burke, Boykin, and Co., 1862), 12. 100 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 April 1863. 101 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 April 1863. 102 Faust states that the missionary efforts in the army constitute the desire of the upper classes to impose a moral authority on the lower classes, in hope of solidifying military discipline and thus victory. Faust, “Christian Soldiers,” 77-79. 103 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 April 1863. 104 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 March 1860. 105 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1865. 106 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 February 1862. 107 Joseph M. Atkinson, “Casting our Burden on the Lord” Tract No. 10 (n.p., n.d.), 1. 108 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 February 1863. 109 Faust states that Confederate clerics reaffirmed the blood of Christ as the sole prerequisite to salvation, but despite their efforts, the “boundary between duty to God and duty to country grew increasingly blurred, and dying bravely and manfully came to comprise a significant part of dying well.” Drew G. Faust, “The Civil War Soldier and the Art of Dying,” Journal of Southern History 67(February 2001): 27. 110 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 August 1861. Another wrote: “Never was there a greater necessity for vigilance in keeping the heart than at the present time. . . . Religion is scarcely the topic of conversation in these exciting times.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 September 1863. 111 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 April 1863. 112 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 January 1861. 113 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 June 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 August 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 April 1865. 114 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 September 1863. 115 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 July 1864. 116 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 January 1863. 117 “Patriotism not Piety,” South Carolina Tract Society No. 132 (Charleston: Evans and Cogswell), 4. 118 Genovese, Consuming Fire, 66. 119 “Patriotism not Piety,” South Carolina Tract Society No. 132 (Charleston: Evans and Cogswell), 2-3. 120 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 July 1864. 121 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 July 1862. Woodworth states that for decades preceding the conflict, a “large segment of the Southern church had answered Northern condemnations of slavery by declaring the doctrine of the “spiritual church” and the claim that the affairs of this life should be of no concern to Christians.” Woodworth, Marching On, 119. 122 Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 July 1865. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 June 1861. 123 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 July 1864. 124 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 March 1865. 125 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 July 1865. 126 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 June 1864. 127 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 October 1865. 128 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 November 1865. 129 Kurtz, “Tragedy,” 223. 130 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 September 1864.

CHAPTER 3

FIGHTING THE WOLVES

“Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” Matthew 10:16 KJV

In an analysis of Southern religion, specifically the relationship of Baptists to other denominations, Samuel Boykin gloried in uncompromised standards of his denomination. Noting that others, presumably evangelical in temperament, would immerse a “wealthy and respectable” member, rather than allowing him to leave their congregation, Boykin condemned those who “compromit [sic] their doctrines, depart from their standards, their settled policy, in order to promote their interests and secure members.” Boykin declared that Baptist churches “cannot deviate from Bible truth to please despots or save their goods, their lives, or their religious principles.”1 Considering the social, cultural, and religious radicalism of eighteenth-century Baptists, these words appear most striking. Historians have clearly demonstrated that evangelicals in the South traded abolition for slavery, conciliation for confrontation, and dissent for patriarchic hegemony.2 Rather than dismissing Boykin’s words as mere hypocrisy and selective self-definition, historians must consider the adversarial position Boykin and other evangelicals assumed against the world, revealing similar sentiment that defined both early evangelicals in favor of egalitarianism and those later defending slavery. This heritage of controversy, particularly for Baptists in the South, prepared them for sectional conflict, and the conception of the denomination as the harbingers of Truth made Holy

Scripture the friend to affirm their positions and the sword with which to attack their enemies, those on either side of denominational or national divides.

57

Internal bickering and interdenominational discord were common among Baptist

circles, and the Index was the playground for such passions. Though discouraging

“sectarianism and bigotry,” one writer proclaimed that Baptists should hold fast to their

“ardent love for the truth, a fearless defense of the pure Gospel, and an abiding

confidence in ultimate triumph.”3 Though Baptists decried bigotry, division, and

illiberality, they bound themselves to truth, which they gleaned from Scripture and which

they found solely in their interpretations. One writer stated

In a long life I have found that real Christians agree much more perfectly in experimental religion than they do in speculative points; and it is my belief that a more intimate acquaintance among Christians of different denominations would have a happy tendency to unite more closely in the bonds of brotherly love.4

Most readers would have agreed with this aged wisdom, but truth remained the truth,

incapable of dissolution while in Baptist possession. Contributor James Perryman

responded to Boykin’s desire for the paper to be “free from controversy,” stating that if

such were true, it would “never be a Baptist paper,” for it was “impossible to avoid

controversy, as long as error exists, except we valued peace more than truth.”5 Defense

of biblical truth had always marked the battlelines behind which Baptists labored.

Controversy, in the “sense of discussion” rather self-serving attack, continued

throughout the war within Index columns. As late as August of 1863, Boykin reminded

readers that there would be “no partisans in heaven,” no matter how many arguments

raged on earth.6 Mission boards and Sabbath schools designated patterns of disagreement within the Baptist denomination. Some questioned whether mission boards were even scriptural, and others chided the unmitigated jealousies that developed between the foreign and domestic mission boards. Another writer noted that the “antiboard spirit

[was] working mischief in our denomination,” injuring the “love and fellowship that 58

should exist between churches.”7 By 1864, the question still remained: “Can Baptists,

without violating the Scriptures, condone Missionary operations by Boards and

Associations?”8

Baptists could seemingly attack enemy opinions within the denomination, while simultaneously professing a desire for unity with the same internal enemy. They found in disagreement and Christian unity few contradictions, though acknowledging the ability of one to frustrate the other. In 1863 one Baptist complained that country churches ignored the importance of the “nurseries of the Church,” and later, in “A Grave Charge,” another

Baptist deemed such Sabbath schools the cause of the war because of their Yankee origin.9 Other topics of debate included the moral question of Baptists selling alcohol for

medicinal purposes and the various problems that arose from granting letters of church

membership.10 The Index proved a substantial medium for Baptists whose desire to defend their position, as the bearers of Truth, towered above all others.

No other issue, sacred or secular, assumed as much defining vigor for Confederate

Baptists as the ordinance of baptism. Baptists believed “immersion [was] the institution

of God; and this fact gives it an importance and prominence which forbid silence.”11 The

necessity of immersion doctrinally separated them from other evangelicals in belief and

practice, a separation of principle and spirit. Early in the war, many Index articles

concerning the subject were structured as question and answer sessions with Pedo-

baptists, those of a Methodist, Presbyterian, or Episcopal slant who baptized infants

rather than the saved, with the Baptists always victorious, of course.12 War reduced

lengthy doctrinal expositions in the Index, especially with paper shortened in length and

the minds of many on the war and religious efforts within the camps. 59

Yankee guns and patriotic expressions, however, did not lessen the importance of

the controversy over baptism, nor its centrality in the Confederate Baptist worldview.13

More specifically, practicality presided over the discourse of baptism, as evangelical denominations worked together in the Confederate armies to save souls. The arena of debate no longer restricted to written discourse or theological asides, conflict emerged directly from the realities of religious exercise in the camps. The general sentiment abounded that one could work with “Pedobaptist [sic] brethren, at suitable times and in suitable ways, in prayer, in praise, in preaching, without compromising” principles, but such cooperation implied no binding agreement to “hold back portions of Divine truth from perishing sinners.”14 Hesitant to waver on such a clear principle of the Bible,

Baptists never traded controversy for blind unity. Commenting on the instance of a

soldier, upon his deathbed, having been sprinkled, one Index writer warned that “all that pouring for pouring will do to die by, but will not do to live by.”15

Army evangelism posed certain problems for unwavering Baptists, especially as

the nature of religious leaders available often dictated the nature of baptismal service.

One Richmond writer exposed the “spots on the sun” of army evangelization, telling of a

youth who wanted baptism but was sprinkled by an Episcopalian nurse, for no Baptists

served in the hospital.16 Baptists understood that cooperation with these misinformed

enemies of revealed truth—pedobaptists—had “worked disadvantageously for them, as it

certainly [prevented] a promulgation of their peculiar views” and were “weakening the

principles of Baptists.”17 Through interdenominational collaboration, Baptist

“neighborhoods” were easily “turned into Pedo-Baptist gardens,” in which the fruits of

false doctrine flourished.18 One writer questioned Boykin for wishing Presbyterians 60

“success,” and Boykin responded that Baptists should “wish them success in all those things in which they teach and practice according to the word of God. This far we can go, but no farther.”19 Though many of these warnings against compromise stemmed from the Index’s call to furnish more Baptists ministers and literature for the soldiers, articles outlining the faulty doctrines of pedobaptists appeared consistently through the end of the sectional conflict.20

Baptists’ relationship to the Bible triggered a hypersensitivity to issues of truth, to which they, as a collective body and as individual minds, guarded against enemy infiltration. Even among themselves, this worldview stirred tensions. Boykin wanted

Baptists to become the “strings upon that glorious and eternal harp which is to sound forth the praises of our Redeemer through the long ages of eternity.”21 Another writer wondered what great influence could be disseminated among the world if Baptists “were all of one heart and one mind.”22 Many even hoped that in war Baptists might unify themselves and end their internal disagreements.23 War seemingly gave Confederate

Baptists a common banner and enemy, but Yankees and abolitionists, as threatening and evil as their desires might have appeared to Southerners, could not sway Baptist principles, nor the exigencies of war cleanse verity. With their Sword ready for battle,

Confederate Baptists challenged all of their enemies, whether Yankees or Methodists or

Universalists, to repudiate Baptist beliefs and by doing so, heap scorn upon the Word of

God.

Though foundational to Confederate Baptist identity, baptism did not make

Confederate Baptists Confederates. Delineating their position before God, Index writers confirmed that the war’s ignition and prolongation resided in slavery alone. For in this 61

issue, Confederates seemingly defended God, a cause certainly in step with victory. For

Confederate evangelicals, slavery not merely existed in the Bible, but its existence

confirmed their righteousness in the proclaimed Divine arrangement perfected within

Confederate borders. In Gospel of Disunion, Mitchell Snay deemed a “central pillar” of

the proslavery argument scriptural justification of the institution.24 Enemies of the

Confederacy, therefore, opposed the natural order of the world as created by God. With

the world against them, Confederates gloried in their solitary place atop the mountain of

truth:

The civilized world says that slavery is wrong, and have inaugurated against it a crusade of the most fearful and determined character. The moral sentiment of christendom, except the South, has for years brought to bear its mighty engines to crush out the institution, and now the sword has been unsheathed in the name of humanity and freedom, of philanthropy and the Bible, to drink the blood of the pro-slavery South, or to liberate the last African held in bondage.25

Separated from a world captivated by a conjured freedom and a defiance of Order,

Confederate evangelicals deemed their sole mission amid war to remain “true to

themselves, to God, and to the truth.”26

Crucial to the defense of slavery, the Bible proved the most essential foundation

of Confederate evangelical identity. Indeed, for Confederate Baptists, “evangelical

[signified] Scriptural.”27 Historian Mark A. Noll explained that “if the Bible was God’s revealed word to humanity, then it was the duty of Christians to heed carefully every aspect of that revelation. If the Bible tolerated, or actually sanctioned, slavery, then it was incumbent upon believers to hear and obey.”28 Though describing “nutritious

sermons” rather than slavery, one Index writer demanded that sermons “must have a great

deal of the Bible in them. Not an occasional scrap, or a dainty passage culled out to

beautify a sentence and round off a period, but wholly saturated with the word of God. 62

The strong meat is found in the Scriptures alone.”29 Proslavery divines not only used

Scripture to support their arguments, but Confederate evangelicals integrated their

support of slavery into their identity before God and opposed to the world. Slavery

afforded them confidence not only in ultimate Confederate victory, but in their

righteousness before God. Boykin stated that the Index community could “firmly plant

[itself] upon the word of divine truth, and upon the enactments of God himself “ and

“‘smile at Satan’s rage and face a frowning world.’”30 Confederate evangelicals never hesitated in the justification of slavery, for the institution formed “a vital element of the

Divine revelation to man” and constituted “a part of many of the books of the Bible.”31

Despite this confidence, Confederate evangelicals knew that their Northern

brethren prayed to Jehovah, read the same Bible, and attended churches similar to their

own. They knew that abolition stemmed from an opposing interpretation of their beloved

Scripture, however heretical and perverted, to which their whole existence and salvation

depended. Boykin acknowledged the “perplexity in the thought that many Northern

Christians are praying exactly the contrary to that which is the burden of our

supplications, and that, if God is true to His promises, He must hear and answer their

prayers as well as ours.” Nevertheless, for Confederate evangelicals, slavery, as well as

the Southern banner of self-defense, proffered a mark of lofted isolation in God’s good

graces.32

Abolitionism, as a condemnation of Southerners defending Divine order, was an

attack on the Bible itself. Because evangelicals considered Scripture the foundation of

their identity, any attack on their morality, however ill conceived their stance, warred

against the Bible as well. Though defeat threatened this understanding and some 63

believed biblical inspiration jeopardized by the death of slavery, Divine Will could never

be fully comprehended, and such was a truth sufficient for the continuance of faith.33

Though “delighted” by previous sermons of British preacher Charles Spurgeon, Asa

Chandler of Elberton was “pained” by Spurgeon’s recent denunciation of slavery in

Boston’s Baptist Watchman and Reflector. Condemning him for never observing

American slavery firsthand and for his ungentle and unbiblical rebuke of the Southern

Christians, Chandler warned Spurgeon that as “great as you think yourself to be, you are not out of the reach of the devil so long as you are in the body.”34 For Chandler, this attack against divinely instituted slavery was not simply an attack against Confederates and Southern evangelicals, but Spurgeon operated as the Devil’s arm on earth.

Challenging the foundation of Confederate evangelical identity and its holiness in a fallen and misguided world, Spurgeon, namely his position of religious authority, justifiably garnered the attentions of the Index. After Spurgeon denounced the thought of

“receiving a murderer into my church” or entering into “any sort of friendship” with

“manstealers,” the Index reported the fiery feelings of many in Montgomery, Alabama, who publicly burned some of his published writings and sermons. Though the Index projected “that [Spurgeon’s] books’ influence will not crown the shelves of southern book merchants,” some censure of these anti-Spurgeon actions must have occurred outside the Index columns. An Alabama writer, in defense of his people, answered the

“pointed finger” of the Index, stating that the call for such protest was indeed made by the

“city paper” and one bookstore owner found fire an easy remedy, ideology aside, for his overstocked shelves.35 Confederate Baptists, though unfriendly to Spurgeon’s

abolitionism, were unwilling to denounce wholeheartedly his religion and desecrate his 64

biblical scholarship. The Alabama writer, presumably an evangelical, poignantly

separated his identity from the secular “city paper.” If his religious identity was indeed

synonymous with national affiliation, the defensive response would have been

unwarranted.

The onset of war did not immediately spark Index writers to slavery’s defense in a

marked concentration of passions. The articles and letters that did offer advice on the

subject were somewhat elevated in nature, clearly restating the meanings of “slave,”

“doulos”, and the condition of the biblical servant Onesimus.36 Another determined

about 600,000 slaves were owned by professing Christians, 125,000 of whom had

masters of a Baptist persuasion.37 Other writers provided various Scriptural references to

the justification of the institution, and one encouraged all to be vigilant amid “many evil

disposed white persons, emissaries of Northern incendiaries and vagabonds consorted

with them” who had been “exciting discontent and subordination.”38 The paper noted the

different varieties, or “accidental subdivisions” of the human species, that divided races

and paralleled the three sons of Noah.39

Strangely, the explicit need to justify the institution in such an apologetic manner

did not remain strong throughout the war. Only in the summer of 1864 did Index writers

again express pointed opinions that outlined the righteousness of the institution,

specifically according to the Bible. In February of 1864, the editor of the Confederate

Baptist stated that slavery was “fast becoming a nuisance,” and Boykin responded that he only meant the “evil resulting from mismanagement” rather than turning toward abolitionism.40 “Nicodemus” wrote the Index that “we are not right in this war,” stating

that slavery was “the occasion of great wrongs” and denouncing the evils of the 65

institution, namely wayward overseers, that made “merchandise of [slave’s] souls.”41

Alarm over these words demanded a response and clarification by “Nicodemus,” in which he affirmed his intention not to advocate abolition, but expose blatant abuse of the institution before God and man.42

Much of the discussion concerning the righteousness of slavery in 1864 stemmed

from a serial novel, Nellie Norton, published by a Macon author that appeared in the

Index in January and February. The novel depicted a mother and daughter duo from New

England who visited relatives in the South, upon the daughter’s request to see a slave and

the “sum of all villianees [sic]” that bonded him.43 The young Nellie learned quickly the

scriptural justification of slavery and the goodness it offered the enslaved. A later scene

depicted her conversations with a Northern minister, in which she questioned whether

“the authority of conscience was superior to the authority of the Bible” or whether the

slave was better off in American bondage or African idolatry.44 To both, the resounding answer was no, and Nellie, once enlightened, spoke for the South. After many discussions of slavery in the Bible and the nature of scripture, the writer concluded that to deny slavery was “to charge God with worse than folly.”45

Nellie Norton garnered the attention and praises of many Southerners, especially

after popularity demanded a single publication of the entire series by the end of the year.

The Telegraph and Confederate deemed it a “plain, common sense interpretation of

scripture” which outlined the universally Yankee traits of obstinacy and conceit, and the

remedy for all doubts in the institution.46 Another agreed, contending the sole aim of

Nellie Norton was to prove slavery’s authority from the Bible, and “to settle the minds of

all wavering upon the subject.”47 In a review of the work, J. William Jones, the post war 66 minister who championed the Lost Cause, the religious superiority of the South, and himself, affirmed the importance of slavery to the Confederate evangelical:

We ask the Divine protection in the present unequal contest with the North, and feel that we are battling for the very life of the institution. We know that the whole Christian world is combined against us in consequence of our adherence to it, and that we must succumb unless we be fighting for the truth of God. Now the momentous question with us is, are we right?48

Slavery had cornered Confederate evangelicals, forcing them to depend upon its Biblical justification and their own isolation, neither of which existed peaceably without the other.49 Always against the world and sole partners with God, Confederate Baptists stared at defeat, both of the institution and seemingly the Scripture that justified it.

Indeed, their institution was peculiar, but perhaps not as peculiar as their relationship with the Divine and the defeat that both were seemingly forced to accept.

Between the initial defense of slavery and the clamoring in 1864 to reaffirm their position before God, Confederate evangelicals committed themselves to the purification of the Southern order. As Eugene Genovese purports, Southerners viewed sinful not the peculiar institution, but the particular abuses of it.50 Having shrugged off the threat of abolitionist propaganda seeping into the South and justified their national existence in the name of slavery, many Confederate evangelicals called for the repeal of the outlaw of slave literacy. With clear boundaries now separating them from the world, many writers now embarked upon the refinement of their collective body, unafraid of foreign (Yankee) biblical dilution. Boykin and others demanded that

Higher still do we rise in our sense of obligation concerning this matter. We have no right to debar such a large class from personal perusal of the Bible. The Almighty intended his Word to be universally read: its truths intimately concern every immortal soul on earth; and unless we would be accessory to soul-murder, and assist in peopling hell, we must not close the sacred pages to any one.51

67

Another noted that “the slave did not enter the Church and his ‘shackles fall’ outwardly

and pro forma, but spiritually he was his master’s equal, like him a child of God, like him

a member of a great household of faith.”52

Such opinions, however, were far from unanimous, even after secession. One

“Baptist” accused Boykin of allowing “enthusiasm in a new cause. . . [to] get the better of

your judgment.” The writer deemed any efforts to make slaves literate “rather foreign to

the mission of the church,” which was called merely to preach the Gospel.53 Most

agreed, though, that the state of slave religion demanded the most intense attentions of

white evangelicals, without government regulation or interference. H. H. Tucker noted

that the “great majority of the human race are of a dark complexion” and that no laws

made in Georgia should impose regulations on God.54 Many observed that the country churches are “largely composed of blacks, that have no special preaching, no books, nor education” but rather “a voice almost equal to the Linnet or Nightingale” and souls “of just as much importance in the estimation of Deity as those of the whites.”55

Paternalistic and inspired by religious faith, white Confederate evangelicals

offered their opinions to the society with little hesitation. Without the pangs of

abolitionism, Index writers called for a reassessment of their duty to the slave and care for her welfare. Secession and the subsequent perception that Yankees no longer posed a threat to Southern order allowed for questions, once deemed unlawful and unwarranted.

E. D. Campbell even suggested that Boykin and others entertain the question of allowing slaves to marry. Boykin immediately responded that the question was “worthy of the mature consideration of all right minded men” and despite “great difficulties,” efforts to make this proposal reality would have better positioned Confederate Baptists as “right 68

before God and man.”56 Though many would have agreed that the “greatest enemy the

Negro has in this life is the deceptive and wicked professors of religion in the North,” this

discourse of responsibility appeared without any explicit implications for the Confederate

cause, aside from references to the new government under which Baptists now lived and

the great evil that existed outside its borders.57

In promoting awareness of the state of slave religious life, many writers ignored popular expectations of slave behavior, as a working forced unseen and unheard. For example, the Index often reported revivals among slave populations and visits of whites to African American congregations. Paternalistic racism permeated their recorded observations, and they often praised blacks for obedience, order, and fervent spirituality in song.58 In the “Richmond Correspondence,” one writer, though, denounced the secular

Richmond Examiner for deeming a revival among the colored population as “’mania’ that

begets ‘thievery and murder.’” In contrast, the Index writer determined that this revival

commenced with “marked power.”59 Such a distinction between secular and religious

press, though minor, solitary, and rather hidden amid the columns, was indeed important

in understanding Confederate evangelical identity as a religious people within a nation

seemingly ordained by God.60 Their separation from the world was two-fold, from

Northerners, both Christians and infidel abolitionists, and from other secular

Confederates who participated unknowingly in defense of God and his order.

Confederate Baptists confirmed their righteousness and Northern iniquity through perceived Yankee revelry. Historian John Boles states that in secession “each region constructed in effect a distorted image of the other, and each condemned the other as sinful and guilty of misusing the Bible for secular and political purposes.”61 After First 69

Manassas, one writer, “S,” described the festivity of Eastern kings and Christian-killer

Nero after military victories. Neither honoring nor acknowledging the Sabbath, they would “feast and carouse . . . [lying] in their drunken state for days.” For “S” and the

Index readership, the intended comparison was unmistakable:

We find graye [sic] Senators and wise Representatives going out for the purpose of feasting and revelry on the Sabbath, 21st of July, near the field of Battle! Here, were tables spread with every luxury that the Federal city could furnish, and the guests were waiting the signal of victory before they devoured the viands in readiness! 62

Abolition had indeed produced such “degeneracy,” disallowing politics and religion separate spheres. As it became the “essence of religion,” abolition reigned in Northern pulpits, and infidelity followed the “mingling of political with religious things, so they cannot be distinguished.”63

Throughout the war, the Confederacy’s defense of Divine order depended on a malleable yet consistently negative definition of the enemy. Perceiving Northerners as a

“fallen race,” Southern evangelicals harbingered godliness, sound morals, and moderation, while Yankees epitomized the arrogance, blasphemy, and corruption usually associated with the true Enemy.64 For Index writers and Confederate Baptists, Northern religion not only discarded, but perverted the true Gospel. As enemies of Southern evangelicals, Yankees not only opposed the Confederacy, but the children of God as well.

Slavery had become not only the issue which divided North and South, but Confederate

Christians found in it the reasons for their own righteousness before God as defenders of his Word and Order. Slavery became the medium in which they discovered and defined themselves, both as Confederates and as Christians, quite possibly because they needed religious justification for secession and because they truly believed Southern evangelicals 70

the most Biblically astute of all humanity. When an Index writer stated, “it is all-

important for each man to hold the true religion” readers certainly understood themselves

as the proprietors of such truth.65 This sentiment, though defining their opposition to the

North, was not altogether lost in the divisiveness of sectional politics. In the minds of the

Confederate Baptists, Yankees became one faction amid a world devoid of true

Christianity and in opposition to their perceived holiness as a people of faith, not simply as a nation of Confederates. An Index writer from Montgomery stated that despite

marked faults, the “body of Southern Christians is purer than any on the continent—that

the Gospel is with us, less adulterated with the dreams of fanaticism, and the perversions

of philosophy, than elsewhere.”66

In 1861, one writer strangely answered the question of whether or not Baptists

should be considered Protestants. The resounding answer was negative: “in doctrine and

practice they have not, except in individual cases, been corrupt; but have been witnesses,

who under various names, kept purer the New Testament principles and practices form

Christ till now.”67 As history’s sole protectors of the true Christian Gospel, Baptists

amplified their monopoly on Divine truth, even separating themselves from

Protestantism. For Confederate Baptists, who saw themselves in direct connection to

God and pure Christianity, though, scorn for Yankees surpassed that of political enemy or

military foe. One “sacrilegious outrage” perpetrated by Yankee invaders was the arrest

of a minister from his own pulpit for refusing to pray for Lincoln.68 This refusal was

justified as Lincoln, a “perjured man. . . destitute of truth and moral principle,”

constituted not only the South’s destruction but, for Southern Baptists, worldliness gone

awry.69 71

For Baptists, the Bible was true, “[imparting] to the soul, hopes, fears, desires,

longings for something found only in an immeasurable eternity” and “[laying] upon the

soul the great responsibility of an eternity of weal or woe, a heaven or hell.”70 They

decried the American Bible Society, which published twenty or thirty thousand Bibles

with the flag and an “adjuration to fight for the government” adorning the cover.71 Since

Yankees favored their own messages and proclamations over Biblical truth, the North made easy fodder for Confederate Baptist contempt. One preacher noted that in the

South “the Bible has been a mount of fire, upon which none dare lay unholy hands, and from whose smoke and flame has gone forth the voice of God to an attentive and trembling people.’”72 While certainly ministers respected the final separation of the

saved and the damned, irrespective of nationality, these fiery communications from

heaven were bestowed solely upon the South. Southern Baptists quite easily understood

themselves as defending a social institution in political turmoil, but because of its biblical

sanction, they simultaneously defended a pure Gospel as well. As “slaves obey not your

masters” became the new “cornerstone” of the Northern gospel and Yankee prayers “a

machinery for creating confidence in American stocks,” Southerners remained true to

Scripture, hemming in the hope of heaven and divine order, as well as the preservation of

Southern society.73

Yankees prayed to Mammon, incited slaves to trample upon Scripture, and

eventually ravaged Georgian soil, while the Index writers carefully cataloged the

“barbarous” activity of the Northern army. Holding to a “strict line of self-defense,”

Southern divines hoped to evoke the favor of heaven, as invasion proved riddled with rampant sin and evil.74 One writer questioned the existence of revivals and religion in the 72

Northern army camps, deeming the “contrast, as far as we know it, in the spiritual

condition of the two armies [was] remarkable.”75 Clenching New Testament commandments and insisting upon faith amid war, the Index writers even admonished readers to love Yankees, “not hating the invader, not thirsting for his blood.”76 “L. T.”

extolled readers to pray for the invaders, quoting Christ’s directives to “love your

enemies” and “pray for those who persecute you.”77 Struck by the illogic of these

commands amid war, another clarified “love” for enemies as “not a love for their persons,

or approval of their conduct . . . but a divinely inspired desire for their spiritual good.”78

By the end of the summer of 1864, however, Confederate Baptists strongly desired “no

sort of connection with the desolators of our land, the devastators of our home, the

murderers of our fields, and the destroyers of our liberties.”79 For most, Sherman made

loving these enemies impossible.

Pointed animosity attended many Georgia Baptists staring at political

subjugation.80 In his report of missionaries’ difficulties in pagan countries, one writer

“turned” his remarks to this Christian land, where Yankees had taken camp at the farm of

Reverend William Spottswood Fontaine of Virginia. With the Reverend away from his house and his family, the Yankee squatters shot farm animals, destroyed crops, ripped clothes, smashed furniture, and tore family portraits.81 Such destruction and unrestrained

evil awaited all in the path of Yankee invasion and infidelity. One report from

Washington, North Carolina, noted how churches would be turned over to “loyal”

preachers and how the burning of churches in the town constituted an attack on

Confederate existence and God himself.82 The writers even noted the hopes of many that

Confederate soldiers would return the favor in Pennsylvania, stating that Southern 73

fighters “could not be brought down” to the depths of such disrespect and barbarity.

Once Sherman reached Savannah, the language of the Index marked not fears of invasion,

but the desperation amid such a reality. Yankees were not simply invaders but “foes so

merciless and unprincipled that the names Goth and Vandal whiten when compared to

them.”83 Writers deemed war the “madness of human lust and passion,” Sherman a

vandal, and Yankee soldiers an army of “locusts” of a Biblical scale.84

Index writers particularly fretted over Yankee control of Southern churches. Most

foresaw Northern missionaries who would “swarm over the land and the long arm of

Northern ecclesiastical power stretched out over our people.”85 One writer confirmed the

observations of the London Herald, proclaiming the religious homogeneity of the South

devoid of the “intolerance” of Puritanism, the “free-love” of Mormonism, and other

“loathsome doctrines” of the North.86 Though infrequently mentioned, Catholicism

certainly infiltrated the contempt of many.87 The religious distinctions between the North

and South enabled Confederate evangelicals to stand more firmly in the light of God’s

favor, though they recognized that their defense of the Bible and slavery did not

automatically make the entire nation or individual Southerners “godly above all others.”88

Confederates agreed that:

If the Northern people could free themselves from the fog and mists of prejudice; if they could see things as they are, and extend their vision beyond the limited horizon of Northern interests, it would take no argument to convince them that, if, in earnest, they are hugging to their bosoms a delusion, which a moment’s consideration might serve to dispel.89

Clearly Confederate Baptists looked upon their national experiment as one rooted in the

standard of Right. Through the transgressions of Yankee religion, the Index warned of

exchanging the Gospel for the Constitution, natural order with the equality of man, and 74 humility with conceit. When the Southern Baptist Convention passed resolutions in 1861 supporting the Confederate government, one writer responded that in them “nothing fanatical, nothing of a bloodthirsty nature, no fire and smoke and carnage, naught of lust, rapine or revenge” could be found.90 These remarks certainly revealed the nature that the writers had indeed pinned on the North, as zealots bent on destroying the South and

Divine order. But herein also lies the essence of Confederate Baptist identity.

Southern evangelicals had not always considered their Northern brethren irreparably and inherently wayward. For example, as late as 1861, reports on conversions and revivals streamed into Index columns from the “Lincolndom,” and praise for the accomplishments of American Baptists, of which Southern writers included themselves, was common.91 Writers deemed the American Tract Society as one of the few institutions holding the nation together and hoped that Philadelphia and Virginia Baptist

Associations would continue their correspondence, that it “maybe long before this last link is broken.”92 Some writers actively attempted to repair sectional divisions, deeming good feelings and Christian fellowship a strong probability. One correspondent noted that Northern Christians opposed slavery, but not the South, nor would ever “dream of doing mischief in the South.”93 Another noted the “earnest practical character” of evangelical churches in Brooklyn, in their prayers for God to act “upon the irreligious masses.”94 In 1861 the Index community lamented that the missions of ‘our northern brethren” in Burma had suffered greatly because of fire.95 A correspondent from

Philadelphia, “Theophilus,” noted

Many of the South suppose that the Northern preachers are generally abolitionists, and never preach without indulging in some offensive threats at themselves. Hence their unwillingness to go to church without some guarantee in the character of the minister, that they will not be denounced. This apprehension is groundless. 75

. . The subject, when introduced, is for the most part, discussed in a Christian spirit.96

These words indicated a genuine desire among the Index community to abate familial

discord, but these words also prove hollow in light of war.

Once gunfire silenced this camaraderie, Southern evangelicals used their

relationship with God to define their enemies, and the rhetoric of this new battle fitted

nicely into evangelicals’ strict demarcation of good and evil. For example, President

Eaton of the First Baptist Church in New York, who, in the name of peace, suggested

sending men south in order to compel “those seditious brethren of ours . . . to save our

national existence.” Boykin responded that instead of admonishing a spirit of

brotherhood, such remarks made the Yankees “invaders” and evoked “an invader’s

doom.”97 By the summer of 1862, a more common description of the North solidified:

Every day brings evidence of the worse than heathen character of the people and the Government of the federal states. To say that they outrage civilization and religion is a feeble statement of their war policy. . . . They disperse religious congregations, pollute the temple of the living God, and imprison His ministers.98

Index writers recognized that Northern Baptists supported the Yankee cause with the same fervor, however misguided, as southern Baptists stood by the Confederacy, and the decision of Northern Baptists to seek no peace “until that monster [slavery] hath received its death blow” affirmed perceived infidelity.99 Writers charged Yankee “transplant”

Fanny Kemble with “atrocious slander” and deemed Washington, D.C. a “gigantic

brothel.”100

Many Index writers indeed explicitly monitored this change of heart concerning

Northern Christians and more significantly, they cataloged the changing nature of Yankee

religion. One writer recalled the time “when Southern Baptists, at least, felt no hate or 76

scorn” for Puritanism or Puritans. Once Puritans “mingled in the party conflicts of the

mother country” and “inhabitants of New England [had] become thoroughly

abolitionized,” hope for congeniality between the regions faded.101 Growing religious

diversity in the North contributed to the Southern appropriation of Divine sanction. In a

letter from Philadelphia, one writer noted the predominance of “infidel clubs” in northern

cities, groups, once content to renounce Christian faith, presently embraced a more active

attack on Christianity.102 Though the prevalence of Catholicism, atheism, and rationalism

would alone prove sufficient to distinguish the North from the South and validate

Confederate identity as pure and just, the Index also noted that Baptists in the South were

more fervent in religious activity than Northern Baptists. For example, one edition of the

paper contained charts demonstrating that Southern Baptists had more seminaries,

colleges, and religious newspapers than their fallen brethren of the North did.103

Conveniently hidden but not ignored was the fact that Northern Baptists gave much more money to missions and that tract societies were almost exclusively Northern in operation.

Using Yankees as the physical foe and spiritual foil, Confederate evangelicals could more easily define themselves as God’s chosen people. This process, inherent in

Baptist worldview, demanded the separation between spirit and flesh, right and wrong, heavenly and worldly. For evangelicals, the defining moment of life was conversion, a

“radical cleavage” between the individual and the world.104 This break, this separation of

the old from the new, this partition between the world and the spirit, captivated the

thinking of evangelicals, even in their understanding of politics and earthly matters.

Baptists knew nothing of a gray hue, deeming themselves, by virtue of their conversion,

just and those opposed to them unjust. Civil war only reinforced such a worldview, as 77

Yankees fit nicely into categorical opposition and simultaneously bolstered the

Confederate evangelicals’ obsession with their opposition to the world.

Despite this, Confederates strikingly embraced the legacy of American uniqueness, inheriting the spirit and the rhetoric of the Revolution.105 The Index community readily acknowledged that “God has something to do with the affairs of nations,” and American victory in the eighteenth century proved a cause worthy to be maintained.106 Liberty, given by God even unto salvation, had “thrilled the human heart,” and such enjoyment must be preserved no matter the cost.107 In 1860, the Index announced the timely publication of “The Pulpit of the Revolution, or Political Sermons of the Period of 1776,” and by the end of 1861 proclaimed that “not since the war of

Independence has there been such a spontaneous unanimity of feeling as this call to arms has brought out from the people.”108 In terms of liberty and democracy, their identity, as

Americans, had set them apart from the nations of the world, and, as Confederates, they hoped to further isolate themselves from the passions that propelled history and cling to the liberty that made them discordant with the world.

As losses mounted upon the door of Confederate hope, Baptists increasingly separated themselves from the world. The “whole Christian world [had] combined” against them, and the South was “on trial before the civilized world.” 109 This interrogation was most certainly welcomed, for through such examinations God affirmed their position as being above the world and reproach, subjected not to earthly standards.

Though the whole world conspired against them, Confederate evangelicals affirmed their trust in God, supremely above chariots or horses.110 Though defining the relationship 78 between slavery and religious liberty, one writer’s sentiment extols the evangelicals’ relationship to the world:

I am under no obligation to shape my views of right by what England chooses to call just and proper, when she forced the institution upon us in a colonial state. I am independent and old fashioned enough to go by the decisions of the Bible in questions of morals, caring very little about any which have not this Book as guide and criterion.111

Left behind in this present world and awaiting a crown in the next, Confederate Baptists responded to political crisis by acknowledging their removal from such cares and seemingly welcomed the attacks upon their beliefs, as long as the Bible and Divine order remained their companions.

Perceived historical uniqueness amplified this separation that sealed Confederates as God’s Chosen in stark opposition to their enemies. Index writers confirmed their

“magnanimous position” to be let alone in separation from the Union and encouraged readers to consider “with sufficient seriousness the cause for which they are fighting—no people were ever engaged in a more serious struggle.”112 Confederates deemed Yankees fanatical, with such extremism inherently portending abolitionism. Woodworth noted that “it might seem odd for men to march off with religious zeal in their hearts and weapons in their hands to defend the true faith at the same time decrying religious fanaticism, but so it was.”113

For Confederate evangelicals, Israel was an obvious comparison, affirming their special place before God as a nation. In 1860, one writer deemed the United States the new Israel and the North Judas.114 Interestingly another explicitly noted the connection:

A parallel may be drawn between our position and that of the Israelites, closer than is commonly supposed. It is not generally perceived, I think, by cursory readers of the Bible, that the bondage of the Israelites in Egypt was not domestic servitude. It was rather political subjugation, something like the case of India, or 79

Poland. The family of Jacob went thither as freeman invited by the monarch, and admitted to equality within the kingdom.115

Here the writer clearly intended to appropriate Scripture to his own national experience.

Another creative writer even composed a scripturesque retelling of secession, entitled

“The Demise of Uncle Sam and What Followed,” as recently “exhumed from the vaults at Nineveh by Laylard or discovered in Golgotha by some antiquarian.” In the “fortieth chapter” of the Book of Chronicles, the writer explained the struggle between Cousin

Fed, William the Sneak, and Abraham the Ugly, between the Dixie and the Doodle tribes, concerning the existence of the Ethiopians:

41 Then Abraham the Ugly, called upon the Doodle tribes and they rose up and fought against Cousin Fed, because he was steward for the tribes of Dixie. 42 And the Doodles said: Dixie is a fair land and looketh toward the sun, while our land is a land of ice and snow. We will go to Dixie and occupy it, for it shall be ours. 43 For Abraham will give it to us when we have killed Cousin Fed. 44 So Abraham the Ugly, warred against Cousin Fed; and the Doodles fought against the men of Dixie.116

Granted, such a passage lends more to comedy than depth of meanings for most readers;

but the message of the Confederacy’s special place was confirmed in the imaginations of

Baptist writers.

Others, though, perused the Old Testament not for the Confederate justification or

humor, but for explanations of defeat and hope for future victory. One writer examined

used the second book of Samuel to reveal the discipline of God. God loved Israel,

purposed her punishments, waited for their cry of deliverance before removing the rod.117

Another noted the defeat of Joshua’s army in the hands of the Amorites, which ultimately resulted from the nation’s covetousness. Certainly such sin, though not yet determined, must have been the reason for the Confederate Army’s loss of the “impregnable 80 positions” at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge.118 Israel offered Confederate evangelicals not only reasons for defeat, but hope as well. For God’s people had always suffered in the wilderness before the streams of refreshing abounded. One writer proclaimed that “we must have our Red Sea.”119

Confederate evangelicals defined themselves by their enemies and interpreted their fortunes through a contrived connection to Israel, hoping to assemble the boundaries of their position before God and the rest of humanity. Their isolation from the world created for them a special place above humanity, irrespective even of the rise and fall of nations, but most importantly these efforts to distinguish themselves from the world revealed the two-front war in which Confederate evangelicals believed themselves victorious. For Confederates, Yankees were the invading infidels bent on the destruction of the South, but for Confederate Baptists, another Enemy attacked the spirit, and the

Index demanded readers stand guard against both. When the word “SUBJUGATION” appeared in the paper, most readers probably thought of both Yankees and Satan.120

After denouncing the threat of Lincoln’s “emissaries,” one writer questioned

Shall Satan take advantage of our sleeping condition and wrest from us the provinces we have gained by many a hard fought battle? Shall he completely drown the missionary spirit which with so much effort we have cultivated in the hearts of people? Never.121

Yankees threatened peaceful earthly existence, yet Satan threatened eternity. The War, or more precisely these two wars, demanded the full attention of Confederate evangelicals, for most writers recognized the laziness toward or utter saturation with one cause ultimately injured the other. The individual must always protect both body and soul, monitoring the realities of earth and eternity. 81

Confederate evangelicals waged war as champions of the Southern cause and as

soldiers of the Cross, arrayed in both Confederate grey and Gospel armor. One writer

asked

Christians! at such a time as this can you sleep? When round about your church the hosts of Satan are encamped: when they are making fierce assaults upon your ranks is it possible that you can sleep? And, yet, such is the case. . . . Is it not true that you are remise in your private devotions, in your study of the Bible, in family worship and in your regard for God’s holy day? . . . And if you read the Bible, is it not with an absent mind? And if you pray is it not hurriedly and with wandering thoughts? And if your place in the sanctuary is filled is not your heart elsewhere?122

The language of battle, fresh on the minds of adherents, was indeed nothing unusual, for the conflict between Christianity and the world, though visible only in its effect, had continuously plagued Zion.123 One writer lamented that the advent of gunpowder had

reduced the need for high quality fighters in war, but stated this only to remind readers

that in their battle against Satan, the quality of the fighter was all that mattered.124

Another informed readers of a night walk of Napoleon after Rivoli in which he found a soldier asleep on his watch, and in light of the days long march, the general offered a stern warning to be more careful, as “a moment’s inattention might ruin the army.” The writer then demanded the soldier of the Cross “keep up constant guard . . . lest Satan should surprise the soul and slay it,” for Christ, like Napoleon, was always watching.125

As Satan “violently [assaulted] the kingdom of Jesus, it becomes his followers to exert their utmost powers in repelling the invader.”126

In a letter to Boykin, James Barrow of Bowden hoped not to kill Yankees or support to Confederacy at all costs, but desired to “spend [his] last breath pleading with sinners, and at last to die at [his] post—a soldier of the Cross.”127 Writers, probably in

hopes of turning intense patriotism into Christian service, often concentrated on Christ’s 82

cause over patriotism and war, deeming spiritual battles more important than any martial

conflict between nations. “Hatton” called readers to

rally to the standard of the cross. A host of enemies are hovering upon the borders of Zion, armed with the weapons of eternal death.—Many of our citizens are falling under his galling fire, and are sent down to the cold death-damps of eternal night; and shall we not come boldly to the rescue? Shall we stand ignominiously aloof, and not face the enemy? Never, no, NEVER. We must show our loyalty to Christ, love for His cause, and our sympathy for precious souls.128

Historian John Boles stated that the southern churches’ role as primarily the spiritual

monitor was “gone with the winds of war,” that churches found a political voice and

“lent” their services wholeheartedly to the Confederate cause at the expense of their

former mission.129 Though the Index writers’ support for the Confederacy certainly filled

columns and the hearts of all, one might consider these “winds” more a breeze than a

gale, as religion and spiritual warfare continued with significant fervor.

Though Kurt O. Berands and Drew G. Faust clearly denoted the earthly

implications for the evangelization of Confederate soldiers, one must consider the extent

to which proselytizers even considered earthly affairs. Berands states that when churches

and presumably Index writers offered soldiers salvation and espoused the glories of a

righteous life, they “called them to victory.”130 Faust contends that the efforts to curtail the derisive behavior of soldiers revealed a social conflict in which the Southern gentry sought to abate the social mishaps of rural farmboys unused to living and operating as a team.131 Though these claims be valid, the Index community posed a different cause in

its message. This message, no less urgent than Confederate victory and national support,

beckoned the “anxious sinner:” “Hasten, O hasten, to Christ just as you are.”132 83

One of the vices deemed detrimental to the national cause most certainly was straggling in the army, and the Index understood the importance of its medium in deterring such behavior. One must consider, though, these words following a brief denunciation of desertion:

But, there is a set of stragglers whose defection to the cause in which they have volunteered, is tinged with a heinousness of a deeper dye than deserter ever earned. We allude to stragglers from the command of King Immanuel—soldiers of the Cross, who have basely abandoned their flag, and left the ranks of the Captain of their salvation, to wallow in worldliness, pleasure, money-getting or sensuality. Backsliders they are, whose first warm has cooled; whose heart devotion to their Saviour has waned; whose efforts in the cause of religion have relaxed; and whose struggles to grow in grace have entirely ceased.133

The spiritual message cannot be overlooked, for Christian soldiers warred against two enemies. Perhaps the writer clearly understood the importance of abating desertion in the army, but equally as plausible, the writer employed the message of desertion only as didactic exposure, uncovering a religious problem in need of remedy. Confederate

Baptists observed death and sorrow “stalking through the land,” and they justifiably wondered why people’s minds should not “be far more impressed with the nearness and reality of eternal things than they are.”134 In a tract, Boykin noted that, though earthly peace “indeed a boon of estimable value,” all should “be inconceivably more interested in

. . . peace with God.”135

The message to the soldier was indeed ambivalent. In 1861, writers admonished soldiers to avoid illness, bathe regularly, grow a beard, and always wear the best military hat available.136 Encouragement and endurance dominated Index exhortations to the army camps, reminding soldiers of the prayers of those left behind and the desire of families that they see salvation.137 One admonished his “Christian brother in the Army” to follow “rigid adhesion to the principles and practices of the Bible” not to assure 84

Confederate victory or courage in battle, but to enjoy peace through such a process,

offering in death an example to comrades or in survival a return home full of

thankfulness.138 By 1863, half of Index subscribers were soldiers, and the message of the

paper reflected this audience, calling all toward faithful service in spiritual and earthly

war.139

James W. Silver contended that no group of leaders was “as likely as the church to exercise a direct and guiding influence on the conduct of the individual citizen.”140

Many went to the church for guidance and direction in all matters, whether trivial or

foundational to life. Certainly this claim cannot be refuted, but the implications—that the

church served the state through message and messenger—are quite tenuous. In fact, the

Index revealed the opposite. Much of the discourse exhibited a theme of the church

actually using the war to advance its own cause, irrespective of patriotic colors. A

“Young Lady” explained to soldiers that “you must fight either for or against the King.

The foe is mighty, and all must be muster to meet him. None are exempt” from eternal

judgment.141 In “Neutrality is Treason,” one writer, with no mention of the border states

or unionists, demanded that all readers do the “work of God, with all the energies of your

character, with all the powers of your intellect, with all the affections of your heart.”142

Readers clearly understood the term “Beleaguered” as applied to the Confederate capital

in 1862, and one writer prominently offered a “spiritual parallel” to describe the state of

the Church.143 Writers evoked physical battle to teach and to challenge: “You bear into

that fatal strife a treasure worth more than [earthly delights]—an estimable treasure—and

immortal soul which hereafter must shine and sing around the throne of God.144 85

The Index, though supporting the army and government, may have in fact

perpetrated more a competition of arms, rather than a united front against evil. In 1860,

one writer noticed how patriotism tipped the scales of passion:

See how the things of time, when brought to bear strongly upon the soul, can arouse the energies of men! How would the christians of our land, and of all lands act, if the great things of the soul, of Judgment, of eternity, were to come down on their minds and hearts with a pressure, in a right and needful degree, proportioned to their infinite magnitude.145

Another observed that when earthly cause could “secure so much zeal, promptness, and

obedience,” should not Christians heed the “marching orders” from King Emmanuel.146

The attentions of individual hearts proved more responsive to the religious message than

writers seemingly anticipated; unfortunately, though, the affections of many, especially at

home, went not to religion, but the Confederacy. Thus the admonition to “stand like a

mailed knight, ready for battle at any moment, when the enemy is out of sight, is not so

easy as to hack and fire away at him in actual combat” procured a double meaning,

employing the affection for the Confederacy in order to defeat Satan, the physical

battlefield to resist temptation.147

In September 1861, the Index community lamented the death of Thomas J.

Pinson, the first graduate of Mercer University killed in battle:

Death seized his victim and the grave swallowed its prey. But while the body succumbed, how fared his spirit? Not more bravely in the face of the Northern army did the solder Pinson, bear himself, than the Christian Pinson in conflict with the King of Terrors. Death was robbed of his sting; and the grave gained no victory. . . . and as he had been a “good soldier of his country,” now he proved himself a “good soldier for Christ.”148

Clearly Pinson fought for two victories, neither of which he experienced in life, but one

his spirit found in death. If his salvation was indeed “fused with the hope of Confederate

triumph,” his salvation would have been tainted for such victory remained aloof.149 If 86 victory over Yankee tyranny was indeed all that Confederate evangelicals had in mind for their future, Pinson’s death would have been marked with tragedy. Such, however, was not the end. Confederate evangelicals battled Yankees and Satan, wrestled with the worldliness that threatened their earthly blessing and the sin that damned their eternity.

Though for many it may have appeared as such, political subjugation was not Hell.

Though separated from the world, Confederate evangelicals longed for the next.

1 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 June 1863. 2 Snay, Gospel, 20. Heyrman, Southern Cross, 24. Mathews, Religion, 69, 156-158. 3 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 January 1860. 4 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 March 1862. 5 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 March 1861. 6 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 August 1863. 7 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 March 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 June 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 November 1860. 8 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 September 1864. 9 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 April 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 September 1864. 10 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 March 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 March 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 November 1863. 11 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 January 1860. 12 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 June 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 February 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 April 1861. 13 Some have argued that wartime interdenominational cooperation proved the lessening of doctrinal stances. Justus, “Impact,” 43. 14 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 April 1862. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 April 1862. 15 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 September 1862. 16 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 June 1863. 17 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 June 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 November 1863. 18 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 September 1864. 19 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 June 1863. 20 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 May 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 February 1865. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 March 1865. 21 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 March 1861. 22 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 July 1860. 23 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 April 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 August 1863. 24 Snay, Gospel, 54. 25 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 December 1863. 26 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 December 1863. 27 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 September 1863. 28 Mark A. Noll, “The Bible and Slavery,” in Religion and the American Civil War eds. Randall M Miller, Harry S Stout, and Charles Regan Wilson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 43. 29 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 June 1861. 30 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 January 1863. 31 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 February 1861. 32 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 March 1862. 87

33 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 January 1865. Snay states that abolitionism was an attack on the Bible, threatening not only Southern society, but also Western civilization. From this grew the understanding of abolitionism as infidelity. Snay, Gospel, 59-60. 34 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 April 1860. 35 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 February 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 March 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 April 1860. 36 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 June 1860. For outline of biblical defense of slavery, see Snay, Gospel, 56-59. 37 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 June 1860. 38 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 January 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 January 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 February 1861. 39 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 February 1862. 40 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 February 1864. 41 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 June 1864. 42 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 July 1864. 43 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 January 1864. 44 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 January 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 February 1864. 45 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 February 1864. 46 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 November 1864. 47 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 September 1864. 48 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 November 1864. 49 Index writers recognized the precarious position of the Confederacy, noting the subject of arming slaves. In November of 1864, a discussion concluded that such “would place the South in an attitude of antagonism to its own opinions.” The Index Community seemingly agreed that slaves should not fight because they had no liberty to defend, and such an action would violate property rights of slaveowners. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 November 1864; The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 November 1864. 50 Genovese, Consuming Fire, 49. 51 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 September 1862. 52 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 February 1861. 53 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 October 1862. 54 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 June 1863. 55 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 July 1863. 56 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 July 1863. 57 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1863. 58 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 September 1862. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1863. 59 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 September 1863. 60 The secular press had indeed embraced many discussions reserved for religion, and most deemed this evidence of the Confederacy’s righteousness. This was on of the “most impressive indications of the christian character of our people.” “Anecdotes for our Soldiers, No. 1,” South Carolina Tract Society Tract No. 94 (Charleston: Evans and Cogswell), 6. 61 Boles, Irony, 77. 62 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 August 1861. 63 Ibid. 64 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 June 1861. Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 July 1862. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 May 1864. 65 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 July 1863. 66 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 March 1861. 67 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 April 1861. 68 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 March 1862. For Silver, the effort of Union generals to take “loyal” ministers is the proof that southern preachers supported the Confederacy. Silver, Morale, 99. The important question is not whether Southern preachers supported the Confederacy, but rather the nature of their defense. 69 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 February 1863. 88

70 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 October 1862. 71 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 February 1861. 72 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 April 1863. 73 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 September 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 September 1864. 74 Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 January 1864. One writer deemed the “Right Spirit” to leave vengeance to God. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 August 1861. 75 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 November 1863. 76 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 January 1864. 77 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 June 1864. 78 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 July 1862. Another had stated that the Bible required men to “feel a genuine good to all men.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 June 1861. 79 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 January 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 September 1864. 80 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1864. 81 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 July 1863. 82 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 June 1864. 83 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 March 1865. Silver states that Yankee atrocities “became progressively more brutal,” an observation confirmed in the Index. Silver, Morale, 88. Because of the Index’s home in Georgia, it is difficult to prove Silver’s pattern, for in 1864 Georgians and Index writers witnessed war firsthand, as they had previously only read about. 84 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 October 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1865. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 February 1865. 85 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1862. 86 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1863. 87 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 August 1862. “Allen” examined the follies of Catholic history, specifically its ties to despotic monarchies and winning converts with force, deeming such actions “infidelity.” 88 Genovese, Consuming Fire, 40. 89 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 February 1863. 90 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 May 1861. 91 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 March 1861. 92 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 February 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 October 1860. 93 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 October 1860. 94 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 July 1860. 95 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 April 1861. 96 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 July 1860. 97 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 May 1861. 98 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 August 1862. 99 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 August 1862. 100 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 February 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 May 1864. 101 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 August 1864. 102 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 October 1860. 103 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 July 1860. 104 Mathews, Religion, 21. 105 This concurs with Snay’s argument that “establishing the historical continuity to the Revolution lent profound legitimacy and sanctification to contemporary political problems.” Snay, Gospel, 196. 106 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 January 1861. 107 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 August 1863. 108 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 October 1860. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 October 1861. 109 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 November 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. 110 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 July 1864. Psalm 20:7. 111 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 February 1861. 89

112 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 June 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 February 1862. 113 Woodworth, Marching On, 137. 114 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 May 1860. 115 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 September 1863. 116 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 February 1862. 117 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 2 March 1862. 118 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 December 1863. 119 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 July 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 September 1863. 120 One warned readers against allowing the “entire subjugation of immortal faculties to the sway of the evil one.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 September 1862. Another stated that the “enemy is Yankee subjugation but also that which keeps people out of church.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 July 1862. 121 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. 122 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 February 1862. 123 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 May 1862. 124 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 July 1862. 125 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 September 1862. 126 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 August 1862. 127The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 October 1863. 128 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. 129 Boles, Irony, 85. 130 Berands, “Wholesome Reading,” 153. 131 Faust, “Christian Soldiers,” 76-78. 132 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 August 1863. 133 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 February 1863. A parallel appropriation of military terminology can be found in Basil, Manly, Jr., “The Young Deserter,” Tract No. 99 (n.p., n.d.): Enlistees under the banner of Christ had “left the Lord, left his people, they left his ordinances, they left his ways, they cast his book aside, they put his laws behind their back, they cut themselves off from Him and His.” 134 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 October 1864. 135 Boykin, Samuel. Samuel Boykin, “The Joyful Tidings” Tract No. 73. (n.p., n.d.), 7. 136 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 June 1861. 137 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 December 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 March 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 November 1862. 138 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 27 May 1864. 139 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 October 1863. 140 Silver, Confederate Morale, 64. 141 “An Appeal to Young Soldiers,” South Carolina Tract Society Tract No. 103 (n.p., n.d.), 1-2. The writer outlined goodness of the cause, the certainty of victory, the pleasantness of the service, and the greatness of the reward, with all points speaking only of salvation and the spiritual war that waged, whether or not soldiers accepted its commencement. 142 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 January 1861. 143 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 June 1862. 144 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 May 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 June 1861. Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1864. 145 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 November 1860. 146 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1861. 147 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 February 1863. 148 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 September 1861. 149 Berands, “Wholesome Reading,” 153.

CHAPTER 4

TENDING THE FLOCK

“My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” John 10:27-28 KJV

In 1860 “Aunt Mary” of Augusta instructed Baptist readers to “gird thyself for the conflict, though the way may be hedged up on either side, fear not, press forward, soon you will sing the songs of deliverance. Soon will the storm be calmed and he will bring thee into the haven of peace. ‘If the Lord be for us, who can be against us?’” Entitled

“He Careth for You,” Aunt Mary’s letter neither explicitly anticipated nor evoked the political conflict that divided the nation. The confidence and worldview that Aunt Mary gleaned from her evangelical identity wove themselves into Baptist interpretation of herself, the war, and God. As an evangelical Baptist, “Aunt Mary” could approach God with confidence, cast her cares upon Him, and stare down the world around her, knowing that nothing could penetrate the shield that was her faith and the fortress that was her

God. Her covenant with God truly altered her experiences and her understanding of their sway, but her covenant was also collective, uniting her with other believers in expectation of their future deliverance together.1

Aunt Mary’s avowal “If the Lord be for us, who can be against us?” frequented the Index columns during war, reassuring readers that no matter the circumstances of war,

God would be on their side. Their covenant of faith provided them divine protection in every trial of life or death. In The Creation of Confederate Nationalism, Drew G. Faust argues that Confederates transferred this notion of covenant into political discourse and

91

ideology. She stated that this covenant “signified that [Confederates] were corporately

special in a way that rendered religion and nationalism indistinguishable.”2 “Divinely

chosen” described not only individual Christians, but the entire Confederate nation, and

such an identity “transformed God himself into a nationalist and made war for political

independence into a crusade.”3 Following secession, therefore, Aunt Mary would most

likely have meant, “If God be a Confederate, how can invading Yankees defeat His army

of Right?”

Other historians contend that Confederate evangelicals abandoned their message of salvation of the individual soul, replacing such a spiritual focus with a corporate vision that buttressed Confederate righteousness.4 In The Irony of Southern Religion, historian

John Boles has asserted that the “almost century-old idea that the church’s primary responsibility was spiritual, private, and individual, not political” was forgotten by 1850.5

Certainly when the Index writers proclaimed that “all things work together for the good

of them that love God,” they thought of victory and independence in both an individual

and a corporate sense. One Index writer stated that “the wrath of God is more signally

visited upon nations than upon individuals. . . . When whole nations, or even cities, forget

God, reject his word, and relapse into idolatry, they may expect the vials of the wrath of

God to be opened upon them.”6

Faust may have accurately described what some Confederates wanted to believe

of their new nation; but in reality, most Confederate evangelicals juggled two identities,

neither altogether opposing nor inseparable. For example, “Semei” noted that “if God

gives the victory to the South, it must come for the sake of his church at the South, not

for it as a people, but for those among us who are His people.”7 Most believed strongly 92 that God was indeed for them, supporting their actions and determining their steps; but none could adequately distinguish behind which identity, Christian or Confederate, the

Lord’s favor stood. Confederates, placing their trust upon the perceived defense of scripture and Divine order, could merely “look around and see if God in his providence

[favored their] cause.”8

To understand more ably the Confederate evangelical perception of the state and

Divine will and to determine the infusion of religion with politics, one must understand both the collective and individual identities. Confederates seemingly approached God as individuals and as collective bodies, secular and religious. In order to understand the relationship between God and the collective Confederate state, this chapter elucidates two

“doctrines” that garnered significant attention in the Index. Writers consistently debated the nature of Divine Providence—how God used war to accomplish his purposes and where the Confederacy fit amid such a heavenly matrix—and National Sins—how internal evil inhibited victory. Ultimately, though, I propose that Index writers approached Heaven as individuals and that the pathways to Divine Favor never slighted the necessity repentance, salvation, and religious fervor.

Ruler of Nations

With the defense of Divine word in hand, Confederate evangelicals found confirmation of their righteousness in military victory and material success. For the

Index, Reverend J. H. Stockton proclaimed that

no other spot upon the whole earth has ever been favored with the goodness of God, as the people who compose the Southern States, whether an account of Gospel privileges, or the rich temporal blessings heaped upon us. For half a century have we moved on in uninterrupted enjoyment of all the mercies bestowed from a kind Heavenly Father’s bounty.9

93

Blessings, spiritual and material, unlocked the warm smile of Heaven upon the

Confederacy and its army. A Baltimore correspondent, reporting to a London newspaper,

extolled the “beautiful humility and heroic piety of all the Confederates I saw. I have

never seen a strong religious sentiment so generally prevalent as I find it among them.”10

Evangelicals “took [defeats] as mysterious dealing by an inscrutable and ultimately wise and benevolent god who would still give the final victory to the Confederacy.”11

Though the rhetoric of the Index certainly attested to the sanction of the

Confederacy and the righteousness of its political stance against Yankee infidels, Index writers were not wholeheartedly convinced that their political stance warranted victory on its own merits. For a people certain of their cause and given wholeheartedly to support it, the Index writers exhausted their pens in convincing themselves of the fact. Reassurance of victory pervaded the discourse by 1863, and Associations in Georgia reaffirmed their

“belief that [God] will ultimately deliver us.”12 In December 1864, Boykin included an

excerpt from the Christian Sun of Petersburg:

We have firmly believed from the first that our cause was just, and that God would defend and sustain us. The evidences of his assistance and protection have multiplied as the struggle as progressed, and we firmly believe that he will bring us safely through our trials and to victory and independence, if we continue to put our trust in him and do our duty.13

Here the righteousness of the Confederacy was not necessarily equated with victory, and

the Confederate cause merely hopes for, rather than inevitably entails, divine support.

For Confederate evangelicals, even righteousness, thus their hope for victory, was always

conditional, not based on principles of ideology or political position, but on commitment

to God. And commitment to God resided with the heart of each individual. 94

Thus the paper admonished “Citizen Christians” to “be the purest, best, bravest, humblest, and highest style of men” and to “commit [the Confederate] cause to God; look to Him for protection and success, and in his name meet [their] enemies, and for his glory put them to flight.”14 Though they stood for Divine Order and thus against

“Lincolndom,” their victory was not predestined and their nationalism not enough to warrant the continuous favor of God without constant supplication. Some even noted that the Southern “population includes many impenitent and even immoral persons and families,” and though many fell short of duty, the Confederacy was “not an ungodly nation.”15 Writers acknowledged that “God [held] the reins of the empire,” but they were unwilling to proclaim with certainty the direction in which God intended to move.16

Some even cautioned readers against equating religious and ideological righteousness with victory, hoping to prevent the dismissal of Providence, if piety and blessings failed to correspond. Boykin admonished readers:

Let us not say, in our hearts, that God showers these favors down upon us, because we are so much better than the Yankees, or because we are such a religious people; but let us feel humbled, and acknowledge that from first to last they are undeserved manifestations of God’s mercy. It is because God is merciful and not because we are meritorious that he blesses. We have been presumptuous, self-righteous, and forgetful of God.17

Other writers concurred. Describing the “tokens of God’s favor,” one stated that “neither the Bible nor the history of God’s dealing with men as traced down the vista of times fleeting years, give us nay good reason to suppose that, in this world, a just cause is never overcome.”18 Therefore, success and failure on the battlefield cannot be the lens by which one determines Divine favor or lack thereof. Confederate evangelicals knew neither how to measure God’s will, nor His favor. 95

Ultimate victory unquestioningly stood before Confederate Christians; but they

often admitted they neither knew the treacherous pathway to nor the exact nature of such

success. Writers revealed the constant evangelical tension regarding the nature of

blessing in the Divine relationship. For example, in a funeral sermon commemorating

Frederick E. and George W. Wimberly, Reverend C. D. Mallary reminded readers that

God had always chastised his own through war. In war, God exterminated heathens and

“humbled, for their good, his ancient Israel” alike. Here military victory seemingly had

no relationship to one’s standing before God, and destruction no clue to spiritual

partisanship. Both victory and defeat were the gifts of Heaven. Later Mallary stated:

We have confidence in the justice of our cause, and a strong hope that, through the guidance of divine power and wisdom, we shall come off victorious.—We trust that by achievement of our independence, new safeguards will be thrown around the temple of constitutional liberty, new guarantees secured to the rights of conscience, and a terrible and effectual rebuke administered to fanaticism, political corruption, and the mad and merciless love of gain.19

Victory paraded to Southern applause because Confederate Christians were chosen; but

the notion that victory may not have hinged upon such a relationship was equally

plausible in the evangelical matrix of belief. Blessing neither implied nor denied one’s

good standing before God; but in the minds of Confederate evangelicals, the blessings of

the battlefield followed more tenaciously the coattails of Divine favor than defeat.

Independence captivated the hearts of most, and in the beginning of the war,

discourse in the Index concerning victory emerged in discussions of responsibility and

duty. Most considered their cause “as sure of success as the sun shines.”20 For example, in “Prayer and Fasting” one writer demanded that

there be but one voice, one ascending volume of earnest supplication going up from millions of hearts; from every sanctuary, from every family altar, from every closet until the solemn, sublime spectacle may present itself to angels and holy 96

intelligences of a whole nation wrestling in prayer, and, the most glorious results would follow, we are confident.21

But defeats tested such confidence, losses tried hearts once given to wholehearted

assurance, and many Confederate evangelicals began to remind themselves, that victory

would eventually come. Indeed the South would “suffer terribly” but “independence

must come sooner or later.”22 For “a gallant people in a good cause never have failed.”23

Though the contradicting examples in history and within the Index itself glared at these

writers, their hope controlled their pens.

By July of 1864, though, the entire nature of victory subtly changed. Many still

believed that if Confederates would merely “remain true” to themselves and never waver

on slavery’s sanction, then “sweet and glorious” triumph would be theirs.24 The

discourse of victory turned inward, focusing on the heart of the individual rather than the

tally of victory. Another writer deemed it an impossibility that God would ignore their

cries for deliverance, but all should have understood that the peace given by Christ is

“higher” than any peace on earth. No matter the circumstances, a Christian should feel

that “God is around him and nothing can befall him but what the almighty friend and

father permits.” The writer concluded that “God will end [the war] in the way which will

best promote his glory and extend his cause.”25 This hesitation, this wavering of

confidence, complicates the identity of the Confederate Christian. Another correspondent

noted that Confederate evangelicals would receive everything asked of God in prayer, if

it is in accordance with Divine will; if their requests do not mirror the will of God, however, all must “submit cheerfully knowing that our father understands what is the best for us.”26 Here God, not having declared himself a Confederate, became merely the

bearer of success and failure, the guiding force behind all human history, rather than the 97 an omnipotent supporter of the Confederate cause. God and Confederate man seemingly had different minds, which may or may not be preoccupied with Confederate victory.

In the spring of 1865, one professor stated that if the Yankees defeated the South,

“multitudes” of persons would renounce their faith in God.” The Augustan correspondent who reported this prediction chided this man for “walking by sight,” noting that true faith “will accept reverses and notifications from the Divine hand as easily as it receives successes and gratifications.” The writer refused to deny doubts concerning ultimate victory, but expressed a “hope” that it would be achieved: “if we are united, I think our independence will be established, but His will always should be desired.”27 Impending defeat forced Confederate evangelicals to reconsider the nature of

Divine will and its implied embrace of the Confederate cause. Defeat forced Confederate evangelicals heavenward, to remember “that whatever may betide the Confederate states, there is a country to which we are heirs, which is ‘far better.’”28 Writers were able to hold unswervingly to both “countries” and understood that God’s promised deliverance would best come to them as evangelicals in communion with him, rather than as

Confederates in defense of perceived truth. Afflictions and losses were not always

“evidence of Divine displeasure, for whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth and scourgeth every son who He receiveth.”29 Baptists proclaimed “God is good, not because he gives the Confederacy victory, but because he gives breath and life.”30 Boykin’s 1865 request to “leave God’s will to Him” and “obey the Golden rule” only faintly resembled the confidence of 1861. Once patriotism faltered and Confederates retreated to their eternal salvation, Divine will no longer donned a Confederate hue. 98

The uncertainty of Divine will stemmed from the doctrine of Providence that

governed the worldview of Evangelical and Christian religion in general. In 1861, Dr.

Rambaut, president of Cassville College, stated that God was indeed involved in the

affairs of nations and prosperity came from Him alone. Exposing “fallacious” reasons for

Confederate prosperity, he rejected education, common cause, military excellence,

politics, and agricultural skill as the sources of national prosperity. Ruling by “moral

right,” only God was the giver of good gifts. Rambaut also warned that “if it is God’s

will to destroy our Government, He will break it to pieces as the potter’s vessel is broken

by the rod of iron.”31 Such are the words of an evangelical Confederate, one deferring to

the mysteries of Providence, yet hoping that the Confederacy would receive such grace.

Indeed God “ruleth the nations of the earth and governs the passions of men.”32

Writers, though, deemed that “in movements so vast, so unexampled in magnitude of scale, and so surpassing the ken of man in the far reaching extent of their results—there must be some divine design, deeper than the issues upon which at first the contest seemed to be joined.”33 The Old Testament’s perennial underdog, Israel, provided Confederate evangelicals substantial evidence for the hand of God in war. For example, one writer noted that Gideon, upon facing the superior and larger armies of the Midianites, witnessed their panic-stricken confusion and flight. Though the author noted that the comparisons were not exact, God was “no less the author of the victory of Manassas” as

Israel’s triumph over the Midianites.34 Many considered God alone to be the source of military victory, yet Providence dependent upon their own commitment to cause and country.35 99

According to the Index community, victory and defeat depended on the whims of a God who knew Confederates personally and supported their defense of Right.

Therefore, His favor should be expected and acknowledged. Under Divine Providence, muskets and swords became the instruments of God in defense and in the advance of his truth.36 North Carolinian James E. Carter lamented that many had forgotten God’s hand:

Many professed christians [sic] ignore the hand of God in this war. It is either South Carolina or Massachusetts, Democracy or Black Republicanism. . . if God were to send a famine in this land, the same people would account for it upon some philosophical principle. . . it is lamentably true that professed Christians will look no further than second causes which are powerless in themselves.37

Whether ignorant of Divine Providence or merely unable to ponder its heights, none could “understand perfectly [their] own necessities and best interests,” much less “discern the whole mind of God, nor understand all that is in his heart.”38

Confederate evangelicals were certain that God governed the kingdoms of Earth,

and their motivations and actions should reflect a marked confidence in his governance.

According to their worldview, God was “the Arbiter of war, the Ruler of nations,”

holding “in his hands the destiny of kingdoms.”39 Therefore, it only “becomes [them] to

acknowledge Him as the great Lawgiver, in order to secure his blessings and guidance.”40

No authority was established on earth without the meddling of the Divine hand, but

nations, such as the United States could usurp Divine order once established, and

therefore garner the scorn of heaven and those preparing for it. Evangelicals should

examine the Confederacy, monitoring its steps in order to prevent a similar stumble.

As many Confederates used religion to justify secession and Divine providence a constant issue of thought and discussion, many Index writers, uncomfortable with pinning down God’s hand, warned that many had abused the doctrine of Providence. I. H. Goss 100

trusted that “God will fight our battles for us, and soon cause our enemies to feel that they

are not merely fighting the South, but Almighty God Himself.”41 Another writer,

presumably Boykin, countered this sentiment, deemed a prevalent but disparaged

opinion, stating that

this acknowledgement of God’s hand has been made in a spirit and manner calculated to degrade the doctrine of Providence, and ultimately even to endanger it in popular confidence. “God is on our side,” has been the perpetual reiteration, frequently irreverent and flippant, sometimes self-complacent, boastful, and patronizing. “God is on our side” has been shouted by tongues that, a moment before, blasphemed His awful name, and by lips that spat upon His holy law.

Though some ignored Providence and some abused it, many evangelical writers reined in

the authority of its usage into distinctly evangelical parameters. Despite their hopes,

God’s plan for the Confederacy was most definitely unknown and all should be careful

not to provoke a reversal of divinely planned success by restricting God to the

Confederate corner.

Boykin and presumably others wanted reverence to govern the discussions of

Divine Providence. Though they acknowledged the human inability to comprehend the

ways of Heaven, all readily valued their own role, implying that God’s favor was

somehow contingent upon human obedience to God’s law. In August of 1861, “M”

stated that war followed sin, and that God often used the wicked to purify those on his

side.42 Another stated that “because of our sinfulness and worldliness has God visited us with these calamities and He will not avert then because we continue in rebellion to him.”43 After the city of Atlanta fell to Yankee control, two writers stated that Atlantans’

“forgetfulness of God” brought their demise.44 Success would most definitely hide from

them without proper obedience to God, but loss may not be prevented by holy 101 compliance. Such uncertainty proves a far more shaky equation than Silver’s “infallible formula.”

Providence was indeed mysterious, but if human actions pleased God, such heavenly ways could be more easily traced and thus possibly determined. Writers used, or perhaps more accurately overlooked, the omnipotence of Providence in order to demand conformity to church doctrines and disciplines. Through war, God would “turn the hearts our people to him, convict them of their evil ways, and bring about such a moral reformation as will lead to an outpouring of spiritual and national blessings.”45

Another noted that “the God who presides over our destinies is a God of justice; He will never suffer a righteous cause to be overthrown. He has placed us in the furnace of affliction in order to burn out the dross.”46 Ridding societies and individuals of impurities, often the former by means of the latter, had always been the perceived responsibility of the church, and war seemingly reminded churchpeople of this duty.

In the summer of 1864 Boykin included a story, presented as factual, of a

“colored” woman whose children had died in unusual proximity of time. The woman stated that “’it seem like I was too hard-hearted to turn to de Lord, tell He come don and sweep up my house [sic].’” For Confederate evangelicals, these words provided a tangible significance to the anonymous horror of war: men are perishing on the battlefield and chaos reigns at home, but such calamity was essential to pierce hearts and secure individual attention heavenward. The loss of battle and the ruins left where life once presided demanded one to question the meaning of such events. Confederate evangelicals turned to their understanding of the human relationship to God for answers.

There they found sin as the culprit of old, and the reasons for their present troubles bound 102

in traditionally evangelical dumps. Writers “arrived at the conclusion that the Almighty

intends to humble us as a nation, because of the many glaring and heaven-daring sins that

have mildewed our society, and, like noxious fumes, gone reeking up to heaven.”47

Confederate evangelicals used the war and its misfortune to call the flock back to the

Shepherd, to cleanse their society, and to reaffirm the omnipotence of God. War and famine were merely “manifestations of God” directing individuals to holiness.

Here, in this purification and purge, Confederate and evangelical identities most significantly converged. The goals of the collective vision of nationalism—patriotism and military victory—might appear, for evangelicals, synonymous with those of Christian sanctification. Defeat forced evangelicals to consider the relationship between social ills and military victory, between individual sins, national ends, and divine favor.

Confederates could not expect peace until repentance made its mark, for because of

“sinfulness and worldliness has God visited us with these calamities.”48 Boykin called

for each reader to examine herself and determine whether transgressions, wrong attitudes,

or lack of faith controlled her thoughts. These shortcomings, though once significant

only for one’s standing before the bar of God, now attained national significance. For

example, one writer challenges the reader “in the secrecy of his own personal experience

[to] give thought and prayer, if need be fasting to it. If we share the sins, on account of

which the nation suffers the stroke of the Lord, perhaps he will give us the grace of

conviction.”49 Another asked how those who refrain from even attending church could expect Divine favor.50

Though many Confederate evangelicals agreed that the chastisement of God had

arrived because Southerners had “departed from the paths of virtue” and Divine favor 103

would continue in silence “until the provoking cause is removed,” few could agree what

these particular trespasses were.51 By 1865, one writer stated that Confederate

evangelicals not only must “recognize and abandon our sins, but we have to ascertain

what they are.”52 Internal bickering was nothing new for Georgia Baptists, and such

presided over the nomination of national sins, thus revealing the passions of many

concerning religion and nation. One faction, presumably including Boykin, defined

national sins, such as Sabbath-breaking, the love of money, and drunkenness, as those

committed by individuals, which had national implications for the good of society and the

favor of God. Reverend A. C. Dayton and others, though, found national sin “not in the

great deep of personal wickedness, but in the official action of the Government as the

representative of the people.”53

Dayton bemoaned “the unbelief of our great men, so sad to contemplate and so far

beyond the reach of human remedy,” which many hoped “may be thwarted and not result

in castigations from above” nor “be the cause of our speedy downfall.”54 In the army,

generals were smitten with the “intoxicating drink” and formal reviews desecrated the

Sabbath.55 Much of the writers’ scrutiny focused on Jefferson Davis. With much

conviction, “Semei” complained that Davis returned to Richmond on the Sabbath, rather

than delaying the trip until Monday. In addition to “scandalizing the religious public,”

this action “provoked the anger of the Lord,” and it revealed Confederate leaders as “the

instruments of prolonged chastisement from the rod of a righteous Providence.”56

Another criticized Davis for praying with “no allusion to the Redeemer.”57 Searching to

uncover the sin that unlocked the wrath of Heaven, Dayton criticized Richmond for not

only permitting, but “[requiring] by law the weekly violation of the fourth 104

commandment.” Government officials who continued to work on the Sabbath, ignoring

God’s proper design, only invited punishment for the entire nation.58

Many, though, considered Dayton’s analysis “a most astounding assertion . . . unsupported alike by reason, by Scripture and by history, that record God’s providential dealings with our race.”59 For example, one “Visitor” to fast day activities in

Milledgeville heard and commented on a sermon by Episcopal Bishop George Pierce,

who had traveled through Georgia to encourage support of the Confederate cause. To

Pierce’s claim that national sins were solely those committed by the government, a

“Visitor” replied that Pierce might have been “troubled to show that the doom of Sodom

and Gomorrah was due wholly to the sins of their governments and not in a great

measure, to the wickedness of their inhabitants.” 60

According to many, widespread iniquities and social vices that have “ulcerated”

the nation must be to blame. Any doctrine that aligns with the predispositions of the

heart to shift the blame and guilt of sin from the individual person and thus dislocates the

relationship between Confederate loss and personal sin could not be tolerated. The

doctrine of national sins “[diverted] attention from the iniquities which abound among the

masses to some evil perpetrated by a few individuals who have been invested with the

law-making power.”61 “National sin” created a “repose and comfort which it ministers to

the conscience of the individual sinner,” allowing those under the conviction to thwart

thoughts of individual redemption in favor of collective scrutiny.62 According to this

writer, the human heart was already disposed to shift responsibility from itself, and thus

ministers should be wary of such a constant search to determine and to fight collective

sins. 105

Granted, Baptists called for the remedy of the mishaps of the government, whose

leaders often trampled upon Divine law; but blame upon this earthly authority should not have diverted the conviction haunting individual souls. For example, one writer reminded readers that even Sodom would have been spared by the action and faith of a single individual.63 Israel was defeated at Ai because of one man’s sin, and the same

presumably could be true for the Confederacy.64 Not only should readers understand the importance of their individual position before God, they must also determine whether the cause of national troubles might reside in personal sinfulness.

More consistently than blaming the government, writers analyzed Southern

society to determine the great evils that triggered defeat. Frequently mentioned in the

paper and most commonly used by historians to denote a new, corporate vision was the

sin of extortion, or greed.65 Writers decried the love of money as one of the great evils of

the Confederate people: “it is true that we too inordinately love our broad lives, our

numerous slaves, our stocks and hoarded cash.”66 The Christian ideals, such as the

liberality of resources, the sharing of wealth with the poor, and the protection of society

against those who would use the war to exploit, made for a pulpit beneficial to the

political stage. One Index writer stated:

The patriotic fervor that smolders in our bosoms must be fanned into a flame: selfishness, covetousness, and suspicion and extortion must be cast to the winds and the whole people, as one man, start up from its lethargy, and with a mighty bulwark of poised steel and doubtless, confiding hearts encircle the government of their choice, and, invoking the aid of Heaven, swear by all the honor and patriotism and manhood and virtue of our land, never to yield.

Before one should deem such efforts against extortion an acceptance of a corporate vision

to the detriment of the evangelical’s traditional individual focus, one must consider that

money had always been “the root of all evil.”67 106

The love of gain had always forced many Christians to forget the supremacy of heavenly treasures, to leave no room for religious meditation and study of the Bible, to become absorbed in temporal affections that exclude Christ from the individual heart.

One writer asked if any “Ananiases” lived within Confederate borders, referring to the particular Ananias who, according to the Book of Acts, withheld a portion of money that he claimed to have given to the apostles; then he subsequently fell and died.68 In 1864, the “rich and the proud, and all who have plenty” were asked to consider “what they owe this day, and through all the bitter winter, to the poor and distressed.”69

Though such admonitions certainly revealed the religious justification for denouncing the social problem of extortion, writers considered extraordinariness of times and the importance of this message to political and religious cause alike. Inflation made urgent financial issues often overlooked in peace, and even the church deliberated with more worry and grief over financial matters. Baptists recognized their voice in abating the “feeling of secret terror and distrust” that pervaded the society, uncertain of their currency’s worth in the hands of reckless speculation.70 Quite possibly the message of the Index focused on the “lust for wealth and gain” not solely to rebuke a hindrance to

Confederate victory, good morale, and Divine favor, but also to attack the one sin traditionally known to impede Christians’ proper religious responsibilities and affections.

For Index writers seemingly understood the crucible nature of war, its newly created problems, and, most definitely, that their investments “shall return to us in the end of the world,” either to “bear us in their arms to the skies” or to “hurl us headlong into the pit of darkness, the gulf of despair.”71 107

Though greed potentially disrupted society and ravaged the Confederate cause, other sins exposed by the Index writers were distinctly evangelical, namely Baptist in nature and in spirit. Moral actions, though possibly in war more significant to the community, continued to be a problem of individuals. Writers consistently attacked profanity, whiskey, pride, and gambling, but even such chastisements alone constitute no significant, markedly Confederate diversions from traditional standards of evangelical morality. One tract questioned: “Is not your heart harder because of profanity? Is it not less susceptible of divine impressions? Is it not more gross, beastly, earthly, sensual, devilish?”72 Indeed God has always dwelt “with people according to the proportion in which Christ is born in their hearts.”73

In 1863, Boykin included the experiences of General Burn who told of his torment:

One Lord’s day, when I was to receive the sacrament before I approached that sacred ordinance, my conscience so keenly accused me on account of this beloved idol, (playing at cards,) that I hardly knew what to do with myself: I tried to pacify it by a renewal of all my resolutions, with many additions and amendments. I parleyed and reasoned the matter over for hours . . . unwilling to depart with my darling lust, I became like one possessed. Restless and uneasy, I flew out of the house to vent my misery with more freedom in the fields under the wide canopy of heaven.74

Such an inclusion could be considered an attempt to compel soldiers who read the Index toward obedience to divine law in order to insure Confederate victory. For this writer and unduly General Burn himself, the relationship of utmost interest was not between the national sin and Providence, but between the individual and a Father God.

More than any other, whiskey, liquor, and “fire water” received passionate scorn from Boykin and the contributors. Baptists most definitely lamented that Southerners

“indulged in corn liquor and camp meetings with equal zest.”75 Several installments 108

featured the headline “King Alcohol versus King Jesus,” and most Index writers agreed

with the sentiment, whether or not their diet supported their claims, that “no genuine

disciple of Jesus will disgrace himself and risk the salvation of his soul by guzzling down

whiskey.”76 In his “Richmond Correspondence,” “Semei” in moralizing humor noted a

local Richmond drinking saloon that “rejoices in the soubriquet of ‘Chickamauga.’” He

continued:

the true ‘river of death’ is there—a river that drowns reason; that sweeps away the bulwarks of conscience; that buries under its deluge the sphere of personal, domestic, and national happiness; from whose ooze and slime spring murders, robberies, lusts, and sorrows, and shames, and deaths; and which bears all its victims steadily onward—downward to the gulf that is bottomless.

Alcohol engendered the most passionate and menacing derision from these Baptist

writers. One tract, written by “A Physician,” noted the hypocrisy of the man “who raises

his stalwart arm to break the shackles which an earthly Despot would impose on this

sunny South” and then “bows at the shrine of Bacchus, and sells himself to a Despot, who

has enslaved both soul and body.”77

But the drink was not alone atop the Confederate Baptists’ directory of evil.

Writers also exposed billiards, dancing, and “vices of imagination.” One writer questioned if Baptists should attend theaters, noting that such attendance encouraged sin and “less instructed” disciples.78 Gambling most certainly “debases the mind, often

enrages the heart, [and] impoverishes your family.”79 Baptists believed that such sins

prolonged the coldness of the heart and the indifference of the soul to spiritual matters,

sullied rational human existence, and that the failure to repent of these sins left souls to

sink into depravity.80 Religious tracts demanded the

soldier, wherever you are, forsake for one hour your cards and your curses, forsake the scenes of idleness and vice, and spend that hour beneath the cross of 109

Calvary. Think on the Saviour, who gave us the worship of angels, the glories of Heaven, and came to earth, patiently to endure years of pain, and end a life of anguish there, the taunts of wicked men, bowed down beneath the load of your guilt, pierced by your sins, forsaken by the Father, in agony unutterable to die for you.81

Some seemingly less serious offenses also contributed to the poor state of religion hindered by sin. One writer discussed the “Evils among the Baptists that Should be

Remedied,” among them the unpunctuality of preachers, the excessive length of hymns and prayers, sleeping in church, agricultural and political talk outside the church door, and “squalling” babies during services. To remedy the latter, the writer proposed a

“monthly babyshow for the especial benefit of all who thinks their babies are prettier and smarter than other people’s babies.82 Such are not the sins that preclude Divine favor upon the Confederacy or threaten the society or military advance, but they certainly distracted from evangelical efforts and desecrated the souls of those needing evangelical reformation and saving grace.

Before God and man, some Confederates expressed supreme confidence in their cause, asking if even the toughest of Yankee mettle could “withstand the children of Zion in battle array with the blood-stained banner of King Emmanuel flying.”83 Though these words from a Georgia chaplain capture the enduring hope Index writers shared with most

Confederates until Appomattox, such sentiment has blinded historians from suspecting any uncertainty among Confederate divines that their cause was less than blameless or that their nationalism anything more than a convergence of individual faith and collective feeling. For most Confederate evangelicals, their nationalism was natural. The cause was righteous because “the great heart of the Southern people is sound; the pure Gospel is preached, believed, and obeyed.” God had given the earth to his saints, and the 110

Confederates evangelicals, by their actions and commitment to his order, were most certainly the “saints of the Lord.”84

Arbiter of Souls

As God’s chosen, evangelical Baptists embraced this identity that demanded deference to Divine order. In an exposition concerning “Sanctification,” one writer stated that “holiness was the primeval glory of our nature, and shall we not endeavor to recover that glory, to be restored to the image of his who created us?”85 Though the writer spoke nothing of war, this restoration of glory was certainly not for losers or for those subjected to the whims of a wayward worldly despot. Such a future was available to them solely through their conversion experience. The rejuvenation of this divine mark stemmed not from a national cause or even a collective desire, but within individual hearts.

Individual commitment fuelled the frustration of many Index writers who weighed the spiritual fervor in the army camps against the dearth of those left behind. Writers and indeed most excited Baptists never satisfied themselves with the state of their religion.

But the initial stages of war, these spiritual watchmen deemed religion a sad state. Under the telling title, “Demoralized,” one writer lamented this condition:

“Demoralized! What a baneful word! An army demoralized is almost worse than none. A family demoralized is most pitiful; a school demoralized is most painful; a community demoralized is horrible to contemplate; but a church demoralized is a spectacle over which angels might weep.—Christians! you who remain at home and are endeavoring to cultivate the neglected and cold fields of Zion, tell us, are your churches in a demoralized state. . . Awake! Arouse! Let christians everywhere remember that they have a vigilant enemy and a good captain; and let them buckle on their armor and do valiantly for King Jesus. Let not wars and rumors of war kill religion and spirituality in your bosoms.86

At home, churches had faltered and evangelicals slumbered.87 Religion languished, and

“an attachment to the form rather than the essence and spirit of Christianity, [seemed] to 111

have taken possession of professors.”88 Confederate evangelicals’ “hearts and churches

[bore] sad testimony to the moral revulsion” detested by religious leaders. Spirituality

“sadly waned” and prayer exhibited more restraint than faith.89 In the army camps,

soldiers too faltered in this arena of faith, for they “[incurred] the danger of contamination and other demoralization, being subjugated to the strongest temptations, and often disposed to murmur at hardships.”90

Camp life distinguished itself from the worldliness of the civilian existence, as

sporadic revivals in the army became widespread by the winter of 1863-1864.91 The

camps and hospitals offered a starkly different atmosphere for religious questions.

Reverend L. B. Woolfolk of Knoxville reported that soldiers “are easy of reproach and

converse with frankness on the subject [of religion]. . . . [They are] eager to hear, and are

serious and attentive listeners to the Word.”92 As such openness persisted and the response of the soldiers prove “most encouraging,” the “work of God” progressed “in a wonderful manner.”93 One writer observed a “deep seriousness, a great desire for religious instruction,” and a “clamoring for the Testament.”94 J. S. Dodd, reporting a

revival among the Georgia regiments of General Colquitt’s Brigade, deemed the efforts

“more gracious work of divine grace [than] I have ever witnessed. Hundreds would

crowd the altar, at a time, for a prayer, while the saints were rejoicing, and some shouting

aloud the praises of God.”95

Those who reported from home seemingly wrote from the outside looking in, and

those from the camp overwhelmed by the movements of the Spirit. Descriptions of

religious revivals abounded in the Index columns, detailing conversions, baptisms, and

sermons, often of which writers provided specific numerical totals. J. H. Kauffman of the 112

First Kentucky cavalry that God had been faithful “in blessing this regiment with the

outpouring of the spirit—reviving his backslidden people and converting sinners, some of

whom we admitted to the Baptist church this day.”96 Another reporter doubted “whether

there has been anything since the days of Pentecost equal to this wonderful work of God”

in the Army of Tennessee.97 Such reports, termed “intelligence,” gloried in the great

numbers of those involved, such as the report of two Virginia regiments that incurred 81

conversions, 27 baptisms, from the efforts of the Baptist chaplain alone.”98 The Index

provided readers the color of the revivals and the nature of the soldiers’ spiritual

conditions. In the spring of 1863 as the “customary season for revivals” approached,

many wondered if the soldiers’ “precious seasons of refreshing from the presence of the

Lord, in which hundreds in lowly penitence seek the altar and find the sweetness of

forgiving mercy” would be theirs as well.99

Some writers attempted to determine the reasons for the disparity of religious affection in camp and at home. Certainly, the shortage of preachers and the widespread inability to support those available hampered the religious cause at home. Explaining why churches were cold and why camps overflowing with “marked efforts to fill the mourner’s bench,” one writer claimed that camp churches benefited from being predominantly outdoors. Removed from the walls of the church, the attendees of the camp revival service breathed better air and communed with nature. Less air inside churches entailed less blood flow to the brain and therefore less devotion.100 Another

stated that soldiers’

minds has been forcibly turned to the subject [of religion] by the many sad scenes through which they has passed. They had seen field after field strewn with their dead and dying comrades. This, and the uncertainty of the future to themselves, produced a serious, thoughtful frame of mind, which pervaded nearly the whole 113

army. Nearly all seemed disposed to converse on the subject of religion, and freely admitted that it was a matter of deepest importance.101

Clearly the proximity of death and the solemnity of life in its grasp forced people to

questions ultimately religion existed to answer.

For many, the remedy to this spiritual sleep was altogether simple: join with the

soldiers and make available resources necessary for the prolongation of revival and the

salvation of those facing death. Since death was not respecter of persons, many wished

“to know the welfare of our kindred and friends—whether they are prepared to die” and

“to see the cause of Christ flourish, taking deep hold on the people.”102 Index writers

hoped to unite Georgia Baptists in colportage and missionary efforts, providing a soldier

the gospel “ere disease may close his eyes in death or the reverses of war may hurry his

spirit to the bar of God.”103

Much of the paper by 1864 appeared as a compilation of tracts, as about half of the copies printed went to the Army. The message clearly emphasized “The Soldier’s

Decision:”

There is a moment in the life of every man which, as it is seized or neglected, decides his future destiny. . . . ‘He that believeth’ has his soul safe. It does not repine in sickness, nor tremble in danger, nor cower in battles. It is ‘kept by the power of God, through faith, unto salvation.’104

Analyzing such a message, historians have deemed the call to salvation of publications, such as the Index, as evidence for the Gospel’s subordination to the Confederate cause, implying that churches used the former to advance the latter, that by making soldiers

Christians, proselytizers intended to form a victorious army.105 For no army made of

those “who are superior to the fear of death” could have exuded more courage.106 114

Granted, the abatement of fears and courage followed closely the promise of a heavenly home, but the Index tract continued:

In urging you to this decision, I do not ask you to abandon this world, but to prepare for the next—not to despise what good things God has given you here, but to set your affections supremely on better things. . . . More important than the fate of your land is this matter to you. Your General can’t decide it; neither can your dear parents. Jesus himself will not. He leaves it with you.107

The heart of this message was that of the individual soul. Soliciting salvation rather than deference to the Confederacy or its leaders’ morality,108 the writer indeed may have known of larger ramifications to the nation or collective group, but a clear hierarchy of priorities was more than implied. At best, most Confederates determined the army revivals a reflection of blessings to come, a “pledge of God’s intent to save the

Confederacy.”109

Confederate Baptists, despite their staunch desire for Confederate victory, expressed earnestness and urgency in the discourse of salvation. Evoked by Reverend S.

Landrum in a sermon entitled “A War from which there is No Discharge,” death roamed unswayed by youth, health, unfinished business, or the fear of its inevitability. Landrum stated that all humans warred against death, and because of sin, no exemptions, dismissing, or enlisting could be expected. From this battle, Christ alone was “able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God by Him; to save from the sting and dominion of death.”110 Landrum’s only references to the present struggle of the Confederate nation appear only as a foil to heighten the hearers’ awareness of the pervasiveness of this spiritual battle, placing the immediacy of salvation and the intensity of Satan’s attacks far beyond the physical conflict that threatened their earthly livelihood. 115

War forced the reality of death upon many with undue haste and unexpected

sovereignty. This “grim monster” and its force emerged not only from mortal news from

the battlefield, but the Index hoped to prepare readers to escape its solemn trap. Baptist

writers constantly affirmed “one of the cardinal points of [their] belief that a final and

eternal separation is to take place between the righteous and the wicked.”111 Hell indeed

was a real place for these evangelicals, and pulpits demanded their pen and their

pocketbooks submit to spreading the awareness that the “places of good and bad were

separated by an impassible gulf.”112 William H. McIntosh, an Alabama pastor, wrote that heaven and hell rouse my hopes or my fears, as they could not, but for the personal interest, which my deathless nature gives me in them.”113 The immediacy of death and

the promise of the life after death, whether good or bad, bombarded readers, calling all

who read the paper heavenward. Andrew Fuller’s sermon, in response to the questioning

of a “universalist,” detailed the reasons why the punishment of the wicked would indeed

be endless. Fuller stated that Scripture distinguished between heaven and hell, hinted at

nothing beyond these places, and implied separation by using the terms righteous and

wicked.114

With hell waiting in the throes of death, readers were encouraged to salvation;

once sealed, newly inducted saints should then focus on holiness and preparation for the

home that awaited them. War not only forced evangelical Confederates to the brink of

eternal damnation, but war, namely defeat, reminded evangelicals that loss was indeed

temporal and sufferings purposeful within a divine arrangement. One North Carolina

correspondent deemed the afflictions of war nothing strange, for through such disguised

blessings, God “has, in his economy of grace, made afflictions indispensably necessary to 116

a grow [sic] in grace.”115 Staring at defeat, many Confederate evangelicals beheld war a purge, a chastisement of God for their sins, an opportunity to rely more fully on the Lord.

In 1860 one “Drifting” writer called readers to “put the oars of faith and Prayer in a

rowlock; bend every nerve and muscle to the task.” The writer questioned, “How far

have you floated from God? It is so easy to sin, that Satan floats his victims, his willing

victims, along with the tide that is bearing them—wither? Repent!”116 The Index

proclaimed that “now is the time of action” to abate the power of sin, for sin will indeed

be punished, men cannot be saved without repentance, and all “men must turn, or else

they burn.”117 All evangelicals seemingly knew, irrespective of their actions or their

support of the Confederacy, that God would “never grant any to enjoy the love of Christ

in heaven, who [were] destitute of the likeness of Christ on earth.”118

Central to the necessity of salvation and the Baptist worldview was the

importance of divine revelation through the Bible. To avoid “weak characters and barren

lives,” Baptists needed continually to protect their “acquaintance with the word of

God.”119 One confirmed this traditional call of Baptist faith:

Amid all this perturbation of the mind and stimulation of spirits, it is not wonderful that we neglect our Bible. Indeed, this melancholy truth is apparent, that the excitements of the day have unfitted most Christians for that calm study of the word of God, that meditation upon its precepts, which changes us with prayer-power and maintains that unsettled serenity, that quiet trust in Providence and that attentions to the religious duties which should adorn the Christian character.120

The writer simultaneously acknowledged the extraordinary times of war and its effect on

religion, while reaffirming an integral tenet of the Baptist faith unchanged and

unblemished by war. Baptists believed that not only was the Bible true, but it “imparts to

the soul, hopes, fears, desires, longings for something found only in an immeasurable 117

eternity” and “lays upon the soul the great responsibility of an eternity of weal or

woe.”121

Little in these diatribes requesting repentance was peculiarly Confederate, nor hinted at an intended goal of Confederate independence or collective atonement through such discourse. In June of 1863, the Index included an article from the N.Y. Chronicle, detailing the attributes of “Commencing a Religious Life:” the expectation of the perpetual struggle between good and evil, the happiness known only through the practice of eminent Christianity, the promotion of benevolence, and the accountability of other saints in the performance of religious responsibilities. The writer admonished

Remember that the Christian life is a warfare, and that it is only at the end that we are to come off conquerors, and more than conquerors.—When you feel your own strength and resolution failing, go to Him that hath said,--“My grace is sufficient for thee, and My strength shall be made perfect in weakness.”122

Though these suggestions accepted from a Yankee press defied the notion that

Lincolndom was inherently evil, Boykin included this article, and indeed the message,

without source notation, would appear no different from that of a Confederate evangelical

pen.

Readers seemingly recognized the significance of such wisdom, even if its source

defied their identity as Confederates poised against the Yankee evil. If indeed the

Confederate and evangelical identities had become one and Southerners alone entertained

a divine relationship, such advice would appear impossible, much less accepted by true

Confederates. The Index and its community, though, knew, even as they entertained

notions of Providence, that God concerned himself with souls. The conversion

experience and self-discipline remained the precursors to holiness, a pathway that wound

through sin, repentance, and glory, rather than Confederate glee, national commitment, or 118

Richmond. Donald Mathews has stated of earlier evangelicals that “the sinner’s acceptability to a righteous God was in terms of his being made just through Christ’s intercession.”123 Divine acceptance, even for Confederate evangelicals, stemmed from no other source. One could try to determine and change Divine Providence, but commitment and righteousness mattered only in light of the individual’s condition, not the collective’s cause. Though many deemed their national existence just and righteous before God, all seemingly knew, or felt compelled to make known, that salvation and victory came through God alone and the most important and the most essential triumph was spiritual.

1 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 January 1860. 2 Faust, Creation, 29. 3 Faust, Creation, 28. 4 Faust, Creation, 28. 5 Boles, Irony, 81. 6 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 May 1861. 7 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1863. 8 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 May 1861. 9 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 April, 1862. 10 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1863. The “Index” in London was later proclaimed the “Southern organ” of the city. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 June 1863. 11 Woodworth, Marching On, 134. 12 Minutes of the Forty-Ninth Anniversary of the Ebenezer Baptist Association, Convened at Salem, Pulaski County, GA., On the 17th, 18th, 19th of Oct., 1863 (Macon: Burke, Boykin, and Co., 1863), 5. 13 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 December 1864. 14 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 April 1861. 15 “Anecdotes for our Soldiers,” South Carolina Tract Society Tract No. 94 (Charleston, SC: Evans and Cogswell, n.d.), 2. 16 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 January 1861. 17 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 September 1863. 18 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 September 1863. 19 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 March 1863. 20 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1863. 21 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 June 1861. 22 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 February 1864. 23 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 May 1864. 24 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 May 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 August 1864. 25 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 July 1864. 26 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 December 1863. 27 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 April 1865. 28 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 April 1865. 29 Atkinson, Joseph M. “Casting our Burden on the Lord.” A New Tract for Soldiers No. 10, 5. 30 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 April, 1865. 119

31 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 January 1861. 32 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 June 1861. 33 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 September 1863. Another stated that Providence used “the Northern armies as instruments.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 April 1863. 34 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 August 1861. 35 One stated that “God’s gracious presence is absolutely essential to success, and though, sometimes our plans may appear successful independent of his complacent guidance, yet all such success will in the end rove nothing but disaster.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 April 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 May 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 August 1862. 36 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 July 1861. 37 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 November 1864. 38 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 10 June 1864. 39 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 1 April 1864. 40 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 January 1861. 41 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1862. 42 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 August 1861. 43 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 January 1863. 44 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 October 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 October 1864. 45 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 March 1863. Genovese has noted that the clergy and the press “railed against the impiety, selfishness, corruption, and profiteering that threatened to bring God’s wrath down on the Confederacy.” Genovese, Consuming Fire, 47. 46 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1862. 47 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. 48 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 January 1863. 49 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1864. 50 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 May 1862. 51 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 September 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 March 1865. 52 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 January 1865. 53 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 July 1862. 54 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 Jun 1861. 55 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 February 1862. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 February 1862. 56 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 19 January 1863. 57 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 March 1865. 58 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 7 August 1863. 59 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 October 1862. 60 Daniel, Southern Protestantism, 30. 61 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 November 1862. 62 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 28 October 1862. 63 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 January 1864. 64 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 October 1864. 65 Faust correctly asserted that extortion revealed a distinct split within Southern religion and the Confederacy in general: one faction susceptible to the “modernizing impulse” of the market and the other given to the care of humanity. Faust, Creation, 57. Silver states that the cries against extortion were efforts to stop “treason.” Silver, Morale, 70-72. 66 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 January 1865. 67 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 March 1861. 68 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 April 1861. Acts 5:1-6. 69 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 23 February 1863. 70 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 March 1863. 71 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 January 1864. 72 John Nevins Andrews, “Why Do Your Swear?” (Raleigh, NC: n.p., n.d.), 5. 73 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 January 1864. 120

74 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 January 1863. 75 Thomas, Nation, 22. 76 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 February 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 April 1861. Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 Aril 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 February 1865. 77 Physician, “Liquor and Lincoln,” (Petersburg, VA?: n.p., n.d ), 1. 78 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 November 1863. 79 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 March 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 June 1863. Quotation from The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 October 1863. 80 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 September 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 June 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. 81 A. M. Lorraine, “Jesus, the Soldier’s Friend” Evangelical Tract Society No. 174 (Petersburg, VA: n.p., 1864), 1. 82 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 September 1862. 83 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1864. 84 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 20 May 1864. 85 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1862. 86 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 14 August 1861. 87 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 January 1861. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 July 1861. 88 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 June 1860. 89 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 August 1863. 90 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 4 March 1862. The sequence of spiritual sleep and revival concurs “that men donning the Confederate uniform did not at first demonstrate unusual piety” and the moral state of the army bleak. Drew Gilpin Faust, “Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army,” Journal of Southern History 53, no. 1 (February 1987): 68-69. “To the Christian in the Army.” No. 43 91 James McPherson, For Cause and Comrades: Why Men Fought the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 75. Bell Irving Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1978), 181-183. Wiley described how Southern churches provided materials and chaplains for prayer meetings, preaching, and other traits that characterized revivals in the Confederate camps. Though these dates convey the most intense and widespread of the religious revivals, reports of such were nothing new to Index readers by this time. 92 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 July 1863. 93 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 June 1863. 94 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 February 1863. 95 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 6 July 1863. 96 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 September 1863. 97 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 January 1864. 98 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 June 1863. 99 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 June 1863. 100 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 May 1864. 101 “Camp Nineveh” Evangelical Tract Society Tract No. 244 (Petersburg, VA: n.p., n.d), 1. 102 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 July 1861. 103 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 February 1862. Another hoped that “all our soldiers would seek God sincerely ere it be too late.” The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 June 1861. 104 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 June 1863. 105 Berands, “Wholesome,” 8. Faust, “Christian Soldiers,” 77. 106 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 June 1861. 107 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 June 1863. 108 “The Importance of a Soldier Becoming a Christian” Soldiers’ Tract Association Tract No. 56 (Richmond, VA: n.p., n.d). Loosely based on the sermon of Reverend W. H. Christian at Union Station, this tract noted that “Christianity will make men better soldiers.” Religion promoted obedience, efficiency, bravery, and fearlessness. 109 Woodworth, Marching On, 277. 110 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 3 June 1862. 121

111 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 September 1862. 112 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 March 1863. 113 William H. McIntosh, “How Long Have I To Live,” (Raleigh, NC: n.p., n.d), 4. 114 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 July 1863. 115 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 16 February 1865. 116 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 April 1860. 117 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 17 June 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 October 1864. 118 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 25 January 1865. 119 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 April 1863. 120 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 26 June 1861. 121 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 22 October 1862. 122 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 June 1963. 123 Mathews, Religion, 59.

CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

In the summer of 1862, Samuel Boykin admitted his “fear [that] some persons

have misinterpreted and misapplied Scripture.” Obviously, any tampering with Divine

law or Divine revelation was a grave mistake by any individual, whether a preacher, layperson, or nonbeliever, and any attack on scripture a threat to larger evangelical culture and religion. Boykin continued:

In the Bible, we are told that God occasionally appeared to men in dreams and through them communicated his will. Perhaps some supposed that this method of communication will be practiced now, and so put themselves to slumber in church, in preparation for such revelation.1

Sleeping in church, though a most definitely a problem worth remedy, attained a larger

importance, even if only for didactic jesting, as a challenge to Divine Word. The Index

and the religious leaders who comprised its community seemingly defined themselves

primarily through such a connection to the Bible. Baptists also underscored their identity

as a spiritual alarm for the world, waking their like-minded siblings from slumber,

waking society to the demands of a holy God, and waking sinners to the evil that had

invaded their hearts.

In secession, Southern evangelical ministers “expressed the hope that the new

Southern nation would become an exemplary Christian republic,” and as Mitchell Snay

contends, the “birth of the Confederacy demanded a spiritual awakening.”2 Religion and

religious clerics certainly fostered a sectional identity, but this awakening was nothing

new to Southern evangelical ministers, for sleep had always sedated individuals into the

status quo and made distant and unimportant the things of God. Their confidence in 123

victory was perhaps more persistent than even their faith, and belief in ultimate victory

following appropriate chastening from above “simply would not be surrendered.”3 The use of evangelical metaphors and religious discourse to describe the war and to confine

Yankees to infidel status certainly demonstrates the strong relationship between religion and sectional discord. Confederate evangelicals certainly understood the South as Good and the North as Evil.4 Nevertheless, salvation and gospel retained sacred status, apart

from Confederate drama or patriotic rush.

For most Confederates, war prompted fundamental questions about life, death,

and salvation, leaving no room to ignore the destruction of body and spirit. Southern

evangelicals most assuredly welcomed crisis as a spur to revival. One observer noted

that “many are now receiving the Gospel who would be destitute of it if they were at their

peaceful homes. . . what a sublimely glorious field does this war present for the Christian

enterprise.”5 Given the efforts to divorce pure religion from nationalism and to transform military passion into spiritual awareness, one must consider not simply the ways in which the Confederacy used the centrality of religion to bolster the national cause, but the efforts of Confederate evangelicals to make salvation a reality for those surrounded by, though perhaps never immersed in the faith. War reaffirmed “a faith that gave meaning to life and death, good and evil, and held out hope beyond the grave.”6

The Christian Index girded Confederate nationalism, by encouraging readers to be

steadfast and faithful. Religion “[excelled] at reconciling opposites and building

rhetorical consensus and providing nomenclature for make believe,” serving “as a

lubricant that lessens intellectual frictions and greases the skids of moral choices.”7

Commenting on military circumstances in Mississippi, one writer warned that “there are 124

yet more hardships, sufferings, and privations in store for us. But his strength may be

made perfect in our weakness. Let us do our whole duty and leave results with Him.”8

Boykin and other contributors bore the burdens of the Confederate spirit with pleas for

courage, confidence, and duty.9 For evangelicals, proper religious duty involved hearty

support of earthly authorities, divinely instituted to govern sinful man. This duty

encouraged by the Index writers certainly sustained the fragile nation amid defeat and buttressed Confederate patriotism in individual hearts amid the pangs of war.

Often writers contradicted their own estimations of the Confederate cause. In

determining proper duties, one writer stated that “if all do their duty as patriots, six

months hence the star of the Confederacy will be in the ascendant.” The following issue

concluded that with a few more losses, the Confederacy’s fate "would be decided."10

Later in the summer of 1864, one Atlanta writer noted that upon Sherman’s invasion, only the rats “pursued their respective avocation without the least sign of fear,” and another stated that indeed the city fell without unnecessary “panicks.”11 No matter the

extent of emotions or the proximity of success, the Index admonished all to endure.

Gleaning lessons from the war, one observed that

Many a child of God, when he first enters upon the conflict, thinks that he can endure even unto the end, in the strength and power of the grace which he then feels in him; but he needs a fresh supply every day. There is such a thing as daily grace as well as daily bread.12

Boykin reminded readers that “sorrow endureth for a night, but joy cometh in the

morning,” that “these are times that try men’s souls,” and that those who mourn will

indeed be “blessed.”13 The Index firmly believed that Confederate success depended at

least partially upon the endurance of its readership and its faithful support of the

government.14 Perhaps, though, this overt relationship between church and state, faith 125 and nationalism reveals not a solid marriage, but more a “close affinity” between religious faith and political duty.15 Crowther notes that one cannot simply peruse churches and clerical writings to determine the evangelical worldview,16 and similarly, one cannot determine the evangelical role in the war merely by examining politics and patriotic expressions.

Preachers most certainly could serve God and man, heaven and the Confederacy.

They could extol servants of the Lord to execute their duties within religious spheres, such as prayer and care for humanity, and praise patriotism as a lofty trait of both preacher and lay person alike. However, soldiers, merely by their enlistment and gallant efforts on the battlefield, did not serve “both God and man.”17 Berands states that the editors of the religious press “demanded a righteous life from the people” and in “calling the army to civilians to that life, the editors called them to victory.”18 Certainly, this statement describes the Index writers’ visions of Confederate independence; but Berands ignores a crucial ingredient of the nature of “victory.” For Confederate evangelicals, victory entailed more than the defeat of Yankee invaders. The term victory itself was loaded even within the evangelical discourse; for such was both their determined identity before God and their desired state that remained just out of human reach. During War, victory was both political and religious, and the logic of evangelicalism withstood the challenge, as defeat in the latter implied little about the former. Even as religious words and sentiments crossed into the political discourse and national identity, the relationship was more complex than historians have implied.

The Index reveals a people in turmoil, certain of their own righteousness as God’s chosen, yet hesitant to equate Confederate victory with Divine will. Much of the 126 churches’ efforts were not simply to uplift the Confederate spirit or preserve Southern hegemony. Calling for individual conversion and repentance, the Index clearly indicated the importance of personal relationship to the Divine and the centrality of this above all other concerns. Once redeemed and humble, white Confederate evangelicals could then wait expectantly for God’s favor and the assurance of His omnipotence. As

Confederates, they never substantially questioned slavery as sanctioned by Scripture and infused by their own social existence. As evangelicals, responsible to their own faith and the souls of their neighbors, they readily embraced Christian duty and faithfulness to God as supreme, even above their patriotic cause. Throughout the struggle, however, defeat lurked in the darkness of individual sin and upon the feet of Yankee infidels. Religious

Confederates hoped to blind themselves with individual piety, purge their institutions, and wait upon the Lord. For those Christians, whether Confederate or Yankee, whose

“faith rested on a firm foundation, the passing events of life, even including wars and rumors of wars, could be understood, endured, and overcome.”19

By nature, evangelical faith demands that life events, no matter how difficult and painful, filter through spiritual scrutiny, and evangelical religion “seemed to be all things to all people.”20 The profane, though distinct and restricted by the spiritual, reflected the aloof totality of God’s wisdom and, especially in tragedy, commanded unwavering assurance in Divine Providence. God and country appeared synonymous not because the

Confederacy was infallible, holy, and just or because the church without discernment lined up behind Confederate ideals, but rather because those evangelical Christians which comprised the rebel nation claimed, as they had before and after the war, a faith-induced connection with God that provided special identity and blessed assurance. 127

1The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 15 June 1862. 2 Snay, Gospel, 172. 3 Woodworth states the widespread persistence of this confidence as “nothing short of amazing.” Woodworth, Marching On, 284. 4 Snay, Gospel, 170. 5 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. 6 Woodworth, Marching On, 292. Woodworth also claims that the Civil War ultimately did not challenge or fundamentally change the American religious landscape. He contends that Christian religion remained entrenched and the American worldview continued to be “more the working out of the thought of John Winthrop, Thomas Hooker, and Jonathan Edwards than it was a harbinger of the ideas of William James, Lester Frank Ward, or Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr.” Woodworth, Marching On, 293. 7 Crowther, Southern Evangelicals, 170. 8 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 30 September 1862. 9 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 18 February 1862. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 31 June 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 11 March 1862. 10 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 5 February 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 February 1864. 11 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 29 July 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 12 August 1864. 12 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 9 September 1864. 13 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 8 January 1864. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 24 July 1863. The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 21 August 1861. 14 The Christian Index (Macon, Ga.), 13 April 1863. 15 Daniel, Southern Protestantism, 29. 16 Crowther, Southern Evangelicals, 12. 17 Boles, Irony, 86. 18 Berands, “Wholesome Reading,” 153. 19 Woodworth, Marching On, 293. 20 Crowther, Southern Evangelicals, 5.

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