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Christian Interpretations of the Civil War1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

William A. Clebsch
William A. Clebsch
Affiliation:
The Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest
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Extract

The Civil War more than any other episode in American history struck into the lives of all the families of the land, demanding that everybody take sides. Partisanship focused upon many facets and features of the conflicting causes, but the order of the event allowed no bipartisanship. Only a handful of anticipative revisionists, who earnestly cried that the whole affair, even once begun, was needless and somehow avoidable, found ground for nonpartisanship. Families branched across Mason and Dixon's line split and sided in spite of torn loyalties and wistful recollections of unity. Had slaves foreseen, as freedmen knew, that emancipation's price was personal degradation, they might have borne mixed feelings about the issue, but even their ambivalences purchased no point of impartiality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 30 , Issue 2 , June 1961 , pp. 212 - 222
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1961

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References

2. Boston, 1872–77, quoted by Stainpp, Kenneth M. (ed.), The Causes of the Civil War (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1959), p. 12.Google Scholar

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10. Ibid., p. 301.

11. Ibid., p. 311.

12. Quoted by Parker, Edwin P., “Ministry at Large,” Life and Letters of Horace Bushnell, ed. Mary Bushnell Cheney (New York, 1880), p. 474.Google Scholar

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21. Buergerkrieg, pp. 8, 28 (CI, 9:2, 12:1).

22. Ibid., p. 16 (CI, 9:3).

23. American Nationality, p. 21.

24. Buergerkrieg, p. 9 (CI, 9:2).

25. Ibid., p. 25 (CI, 10:1).

26. Ibid., p. 16 (CI, 9:3).

27. Idem.

28. Wilmer, , The Recent Past From a Southern Standpoint (New York, 1887), pp. 273, 25.Google Scholar