The Impact of Politicized Religion in Richmond, Virginia, 1845-1914
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San Jose State University SJSU ScholarWorks Master's Theses Master's Theses and Graduate Research Fall 2015 "Living in the Confluence of woT Eternities": The Impact of Politicized Religion in Richmond, Virginia, 1845-1914 Timothy Allen Case San Jose State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses Recommended Citation Case, Timothy Allen, ""Living in the Confluence of woT Eternities": The Impact of Politicized Religion in Richmond, Virginia, 1845-1914" (2015). Master's Theses. 4627. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31979/etd.fuf9-n66q https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/4627 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Master's Theses and Graduate Research at SJSU ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of SJSU ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “LIVING IN THE CONFLUENCE OF TWO ETERNITIES”: THE IMPACT OF POLITICIZED RELIGION IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 1845-1914 A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the History Department San Jose State University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by Timothy A. Case December 2015 © 2015 Timothy A. Case ALL RIGHTS RESERVED The Designated Thesis Committee Approves the Thesis Titled “LIVING IN THE CONFLUENCE OF TWO ETERNITIES”: THE IMPACT OF POLITICIZED RELIGION IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 1845-1914 by Timothy A. Case APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY December 2015 Dr. Libra Hilde Department of History Dr. Patricia Evridge Hill Department of History Dr. Glen Gendzel Department of History ABSTRACT “LIVING IN THE CONFLUENCE OF TWO ETERNITIES”: THE IMPACT OF POLITICIZED RELIGION IN RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 1845-1914 by Timothy A. Case This thesis analyzes the political nature of religion before, during, and after the Civil War in Richmond, Virginia, the capitol city of the Confederacy. I contend that the relationship between the state and the church, politics and faith, public space and sacred space was forever changed by the war and its origins. Sacred space and sacred actors became political space and political actors before the war in the debates over slavery, during the war in defense of the Confederacy, and continued in this role in its aftermath. Their faith in God and his providence for the South aided Southerners as they dealt with defeat and guided them as they encountered the effects of a rapidly changing world. Religion and faith offered the citizens of Richmond, and the South, a means of navigating these changes and a space in which to do so. Though the South remained politically divided with debilitating class conflict, religion afforded Southerners a sense of unity. Convinced of their righteous position, Southerners’ defense and remembrance of the cause in God’s name remained political and allowed them to avoid political scrutiny. Driven by a new sense of political agency and guided by their Southern faith, members of the war generation, especially in urban and industrial centers like Richmond, negotiated the world of the old and new, the past and present. Men used the circumstances of the time to chart a new future for themselves in the enterprises of the New South, while many women drew upon their wartime experiences to continue in more overt public and political roles. Religion afforded Southerners the ability to be both ardent defenders of the Lost Cause and participants in social and economic change. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my advisor, the Graduate Studies Chair, and primary thesis reader, Dr. Libra Hilde. Finishing this work has definitely been a challenge and I could not have done it without the patience, guidance, motivation, and immense knowledge from Dr. Hilde. I am grateful for her willingness to advise me in an area close to her research and the time she put in aiding the improvement of my argument and scholarship. I would also like to thank the rest of the thesis committee, Dr. Patricia Evridge Hill and Dr. Glen Gendzel for their effort and guidance as well as two other professors who helped me along the way: Dr. Ruma Chopra and Dr. Patricia Lopes Don. Your classes provided inspiration for this work and I am grateful for your help in becoming a better scholar in the field of History. My sincere thanks also goes to the Santa Clara County Office of Education and the faculty of San Jose State University that coordinated with the SCCOE to offer teachers in the valley the Teaching American History grant which helped cover the costs of part of the Masters degree and highlighted the need to link academia with high school history teachers in order to enhance and improve how history is taught and the quality of historical scholarship. Last but not least, I would like to thank my wife for her patience and support while I completed this work. She stuck with me through some tough times and continued to support my dream to complete my Masters degree. For that I will be forever grateful. v CONTENTS INTRODUCTION – The South’s Politicized Religion……………………............ 1-24 CHAPTER ONE: “Wall of Separation” in the Old Dominion?............................. 24-48 CHAPTER TWO: The Not So Separate Church and State – Politics and Religion in Civil War Richmond…………………………………………………................ 48-68 CHAPTER THREE: “Richmond is the Cause”: Christian Patriotism and the “Impregnable Fortress”…………………...........................………….................... 68-88 CHAPTER FOUR: Lost Cause Religion and the Contest for Confederate Memory…............................................................................................................... 88-112 CHAPTER FIVE: Old South Memory, New South Reality: “A Point Between the Eternal Past and the Everlasting Future”……………………...................……. 112-135 CHAPTER SIX: Political Religion made Political Women: Intended and Unintended Consequences……………………………….................................. 135-179 vi Introduction: The South's Politicized Religion In the course of research on this paper I visited the city of Richmond eight times. I spent most of my days in the archive rooms of the Library of Virginia, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Museum of the Confederacy. With the remaining hours of light after these institutions closed, and with the few days I set aside for exploring the surroundings, I traversed the city and its history. I visited every major church from the war period that was still operating, captured photos of Civil War monuments in every part of the city and the surrounding areas, and staked out the cemeteries and battlefields scattered across the city and at its gates. I re-traced the steps of Jefferson Davis as he left the White House of the Confederacy and walked to St. Paul’s Church, then passed the Washington statue in Capitol Square, and finally made his way to the Capitol Building. I walked the route of volunteers from historic St. John’s Church, where Patrick Henry spoke in defense of liberty, to where the massive Chimborazo medical complex stood. I followed the path Union soldiers took to enter the city after breaking through the lines at Petersburg. I stood in awe of the ninety foot pyramid dedicated to the memory of the fallen Southern soldiers that it commemorated and walked among Confederate graves in Hollywood, Shockoe, and Oakwood Cemeteries. I traced the route of the marchers as they made their way through the main streets of the city to the Lee Monument unveiling on the aptly named Monument Avenue. 1 By my last trip to Richmond, I could direct you to every Civil War related building, museum, artifact, monument, church, battle-site, and cemetery that was still there from nearly any point in the city. This had not been my intention when I first embarked on the project. It was the institutions of historical preservation, not the city’s history, which brought me to Richmond 1 Reference to city events and the actions of Richmond’s residents as outlined in Emory Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1971). 1 for my initial research. Though I set out to simply demonstrate the importance of religion in the lives of Southerners and the role the church played in supporting and legitimizing the state during the war, my experience of the city’s history and its sacred spaces led me to a far broader and more significant position by chance. It did not occur to me until after I was reviewing the photos I took over the course of my first four trips to Richmond that I visited Hollywood Cemetery every time. I had four different sets of photos of the exact same scenes: four trips worth of shots of the pyramid soldiers’ monument, four series of images of Jefferson Davis’s resting place and the monuments dedicated to him and his family, four shots of the markers identifying the Gettysburg section where the remains of soldiers were reinterred through the work of the Hollywood Memorial Association, and photos of four visits to the graves of George Pickett, J.E.B. Stuart, John Pegram, Rev. Moses Hoge, and others. 2 It struck me that with such limited time outside of formal research hours, I made my way to the same place repeatedly over the course of multiple trips and documented the exact same thing as if it were a new experience. I was not purposely documenting the details of the cemetery for my initial study. Based on its existence and the number of Confederates buried there during the war, I concluded that death was a regular occurrence and that it was often celebrated in this place. Yet, as I looked closely at the photographs and the inscriptions on the graves and considered the purposes of the messages to those that would read the words in the future, it became clear to me this was why I had visited Hollywood Cemetery so many times.