Civil War / Religious Event
In a certain sense, the Civil War could be construed as a religious event, principally because the division of the country along the lines of slavery was also reinforced by various religious denominations. Quite simply, Christians in the north of the country vilified slavery as evil and against both God's will and the Bible, whereas Christians in the South justified slavery through God's will and various passages in the Bible. Northerners wanted to prohibit slavery; Southerners wanted to propagate it (Lincoln 2). The most important thing about the religious aspect of the Civil War is that it merely served to widen and deepen the sectarian differences between these two parts of the country, which primarily differed in their economic means of production. The North was relying on an increasingly growing industrialization that was bereft of slavery, whereas the South remained entrenched in a rural, agrarian economy that relied on slave labor to harvest and profit from tobacco and cotton.
Therefore, the...
The subsequent quotation, which was issued about the country and its religious proclivities well before the tumultuous
19th century in which the Civil War occurred, demonstrates this fact quite effectively. "In other words, the evangelical spirit, regardless of denomination, transcended region, and the shared religious sensibilities in turn buttressed a sense of
identity with the nation and fostered political cohesion" (Chapter 9 124).
This cohesion was widely eradicated by both economic concerns and the religious ones which served to emphasize the former in the 19th century, however. Some of the most active anti-slavery sentiments in the North came from various religious groups or from groups which utilized facets of religious propaganda (the Bible and other Christian teachings) to effect their political agenda of ending…
