THE AMERICAN MORAL ESTABLISHMENT: RELIGION AND LIBERALISM IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY David Sehat A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2007 Approved By John F. Kasson (chair) W. Fitzhugh Brundage Peter Filene Michael Lienesch Grant Wacker © 2007 David Sehat ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT DAVID SEHAT: The American Moral Establishment: Religion and Liberalism in the Nineteenth Century (Under the direction of John F. Kasson) The relationship of religion to political governance is one of the most vexed questions in the modern world, but it is a central tenet of the American myth that the United States has solved the problem with the advent of modern religious liberty. In fact the United States maintained an established or state-supported religion through much of its history. The moral establishment moved through the proxy of laws designed, in the explanation of its proponents, to uphold public morals and good order. But the moral establishment often upheld a religiously derived morality, so although the establishment was not forthrightly a religious establishment, religious ideals still possessed the coercive power of law. Law in the nineteenth century became a way of advancing a regulatory regime that held a relative view of individual rights, rigidly subordinated to what courts thought was the good of the whole, and it was the moral establishment that prescribed the duties that citizens owed to one another and to the state. Part of that prescribed moral obligation entailed the limitation, the situational qualification, or even the flat denial of individual rights to women, Afro-Americans, and religious minorities including Catholics, Mormons, and free thinkers. Yet the paradox of the moral establishment was that as it increased its reach and attained a more-fully elaborated symbolic repertory and a finer-grained articulation of the limits of moral behavior, its proponents felt increasingly uneasy. Its growing intermediate range, iii neither forthrightly supporting Christianity nor effecting a complete separation of religion and government, left some proponents worried that it was a house built on sand, whose uncertain stability resulted from a lack of clear connection to what they took to be the rock bed of Christianity. Historians have typically taken religious rhetoric on face value, assuming that the decline in religious power was real, but ultimately the religious rhetoric of decline served to further consolidate the establishment’s support. By the end of the nineteenth century the moral establishment was more firmly entrenched than it had been at the beginning, and religious hold on the levers of public life was tighter than ever. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This dissertation was made possible by a 2005-2007 Liebmann Fellowship from the Dolores Zohrab Liebmann Foundation, a 2005 Summer Research Fellowship from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) History Department, a 2005 Summer Stipend from the UNC Center for the Study of the American South, and a 2005 George Mowry Dissertation Research Grant from the UNC History Department. Portions of this work appeared previously under the title “The Civilizing Mission of Booker T. Washington,” Journal of Southern History 73 (May 2007): 323-362, and are reprinted by permission of the Journal of Southern History. My committee has helped me in numerous ways. My advisor, John F. Kasson, showed me what history can be through his books, allowed me enough space to pursue an unusual project, and helped keep me on track in the process. Grant Wacker provided the original idea and impetus for the dissertation, though it has changed significantly in the interim. W. Fitzhugh Brundage suggested that I consider the activities and attitudes of Booker T. Washington and brought out the liberal narrative that I was implicitly addressing. Michael Lienesch provided a helpful note of skepticism, and pointed out my own tendency to follow a Hartzian narrative at a very early stage. Finally, Peter Filene reminded me to keep it readable and accessible for non-specialists. In addition to the committee, several other people read various portions of the work at various times, to the manuscript’s great improvement. For their criticism and intellectual exchange I am indebted (in alphabetical order) to David L. Davis, D.G. Hart, v Kathryn Loftin, Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Pauline Maier, Genna Rae McNeil, Phillip Luke Sinitiere, Benjamin E. Wise, and Ann K. Ziker. Surpassing everyone in providing criticism, help, and care was my wife, Connie Moon Sehat. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AND THE AMERICAN MYTH.................................... 1 CHAPTER ONE. THE BEGINNING OF THE MORAL ESTABLISHMENT............. 30 The Tangle of Religious Liberty........................................................................... 33 The Relationship of Religion and Morals............................................................. 41 Religion, Morals and Disestablishment ................................................................ 46 The Creation of the Moral Establishment............................................................. 61 CHAPTER TWO. WOMEN AND THE PROBLEM OF INDIVIDUALISM ............... 88 Legal Coverture and the Divine Subordination of Women .................................. 92 Equal Rights and the Question of Religious Authority ........................................ 98 Individualism, Citizenship, and Social Freedom ................................................ 114 Religious Standards and the Tightening of Family Law .................................... 133 Woman’s Rights and Women’s Moral Responsibility ....................................... 142 CHAPTER THREE. THE CIVILIZING MISSION AND CIVIL RIGHTS................. 157 Slave Christianity and Slave Control.................................................................. 160 Reconstruction and the Civilizing Mission......................................................... 168 Booker T. Washington: Colonized and Colonizer.............................................. 181 Christianity, Segregation, and White Man’s Burden.......................................... 198 CHAPTER FOUR. THE LIMITS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY ................................... 218 Challenges to the Moral Establishment .............................................................. 221 The Specter of Robert G. Ingersoll..................................................................... 232 vii Conservative Religious Response: Between Persuasion and Coercion.............. 238 The Meaning of Robert Ingersoll........................................................................ 253 APPENDIX: STATE CONSTITUTIONS AND RELIGION ........................................ 266 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................... 287 viii INTRODUCTION: RELIGION AND THE AMERICAN MYTH In 1834 the great American historian George Bancroft published the first volume of his magisterial series, History of the United States. Bancroft’s work would establish the major themes of American history that have come down to the present, emphasizing the genius of the American political system, the austere intellectual rigor of the nation’s Founders, and the virtue and promise of the American people. The United States, Bancroft explained, occupied a unique position in the history of the world due to its peerless political system. The American form of government was “necessarily identified with the interests of the people,” because the principle of freedom was its guiding light. So strong was that principle that even enemies of the state had “liberty to express their opinions undisturbed.” Instead of silencing opponents American political thought enshrined “reason” and mutual discourse so that political enemies could be “safely tolerated.” Most importantly, in a world in which religion and the state were often tightly connected so that political and religious enemies were one and the same, Bancroft touted the principle of religious freedom that existed in the United States where religion was “neither persecuted nor paid by the state.” He was quick to suggest that the lack of public funding did not mean that religion was unimportant. “The regard for public morals and the convictions of an enlightened faith” maintained a land of vigorous belief and order, he claimed, and the American arrangement created a system of laws that made the United States a beacon of liberty to the world, offering “an asylum to the virtuous, the unfortunate, and the oppressed of every nation.”1 Bancroft’s account established the essential myth of the United States, a myth that is hard to reconcile with many parts of the American past. Consider, for example, the story of Charles B. Reynolds. In New Jersey in 1886, Reynolds, a one-time Methodist minister turned freethinker, began holding freethought meetings in a tent. On the first day of the meeting in Boonton a mob entered the tent while Reynolds was speaking, accosting him with rotten eggs and vegetables before cutting the guy-ropes and slashing the canvas. Reynolds fled from Boonton to Morristown with the intention of distributing freethought pamphlets there, but the group from Boonton followed him, demanding that he be indicted. The local authorities responded swiftly, and Reynolds was indicted on two counts of blasphemy, for his activities