5 - Nationalism as a Civil Religion in the Thought of Abraham Lincoln, Carl Schurz, and Otto von Bismarck

Summary

Any discussion of nationalism in the thought of nineteenth-century statesmen must begin with a definition of the term. According to Hans Kohn, nationalism is “a state of mind in which the supreme loyalty of the individual is felt to be due to the nation-state.” Carlton J. Hayes called it a “modern emotional fusion and exaggeration of two very old phenomena - nationality and patriotism,” and Boyd C. Shafer explained that it existed “when a people are devoted to the entity they call their country . . . and consider themselves to be separate and one and so different from other peoples that they should have an independent state.” Adrian Hastings thought that it derived from a “belief that one's own ethnic or national tradition is especially valuable and needs to be defended at almost any cost through creation or extension of its own national state,” and Drew Gilpin Faust stressed the necessity of an idea in the creation of Confederate nationalism. According to Peter Loewenberg, all these emotions can be traced back to early childhood, the home, and considerations of “us” and “them.” The idea that every nation, often defined by language, should have its own state became so powerful a movement during the nineteenth century that hardly any major or minor country remained untouched by the concept. It truly developed into a civil religion, a faith so strong that it virtually competed with the older theistic variety.