Book Review: American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era

American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era. By Robert Emmett Curran. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2023. Hardcover, 458 pp. $60.00.

Reviewed by Evan Portman

Robert Emmett Curran enters a burgeoning literature on American Catholicism and the Civil War in his new tome American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era. He provides a comprehensive history of Catholic participation during the war as well as how American Catholics helped reshape the meanings of freedom and equality before and after it.

While other works have dealt with Catholicism and the American Civil War from specific angles (William B. Kurtz’s Excommunicated from the Union, David Power Conyngham’s Soldiers of the Cross), no author has tackled Catholic participation in the war as a whole. Curran’s work provides the first comprehensive overview of American Catholics’ relationship to the Civil War, chronicling Catholic participants on the front lines and the home front. He analyzes broad trends of assimilation, dissent, and equality throughout the Catholic experience of the war. (2)

Beginning with the Mexican-American War in the 1840s, Curran provides an overview of American history from a Roman Catholic perspective. He explains that American Catholics fractured over the issue of slavery and typically aligned with sectional allegiances. Curran pays particular attention to the role of Catholics in the 1860 election and how the “Catholic press was badly divided over the issue of secession.” (58) He traces this division and how it galvanized the religious community for war in both North and South.

Much of the book follows the achievements and exploits of Catholics in prominent political, military, social, and religious positions, including but not limited to Lt. Gens. James Longstreet and P.G.T Beauregard, Confederate First Lady Varina Davis, and Maj. Gen. William Rosecrans and his brother Bishop Sylvester Rosecrans. However, throughout the work, Curran sprinkles a few vignettes of the Catholic laity, including the contributions of individuals like Union Col. Patrick H. O’Rourke and Confederate spy Rose O’Neal Greenhow.

Yet, he also addresses prominent social trends and their relationship to the religious community, particularly the Catholic position on slavery. Curran examines this complex relationship in detail and concludes that many American Catholics grew wary of abolitionism not because of their support of slavery, but because of abolitionism’s ties to nativism and classical liberalism, which they perceived to be a threat to the Roman Catholic faith.

As his title suggests, Curran is especially interested in the Catholic “quest for equality” and hence weaves that theme throughout his work. He effectively demonstrates how Catholic participation in the war earned them greater assimilation and acceptance into mainstream American culture. Curran’s ability to embed this discussion within the context of overall Catholic participation is a particular strength of his work. American Catholics and the Quest for Equality is intended for a popular audience, but Curran’s analysis of American Catholic social history blends an academic approach with a more public-oriented tone.

Curran also employs a macro-historical lens, contextualizing Catholicism within the long-Civil War era (1846-1877) as opposed to the traditional time frame (1861-1865). This allows him to examine social trends (like slavery, nativism, and religiosity) that extended well before and after the Civil War’s immediate duration. He convincingly traces the American Catholic community’s history from the Mexican-American War through Reconstruction, demonstrating how the community both fractured and formed bonds during America’s bloodiest crucible.

However, this macro lens also presents some drawbacks. By interpreting the long Civil War era, Curran is unavoidably selective in the details that he shares. He opts to provide a broad overview of the Civil War and contextualize American Catholics within it, pausing somewhat frequently to share human-interest stories and personal vignettes of the war’s participants. Such an approach unfortunately neglects other key details and themes and is decidedly Eastern-centric, devoting only a few chapters to the war’s Western Theater. Regardless, Curran’s study is as comprehensive as it can be in 300 pages, focusing on everything from military campaigns to Catholics on the home front. He also addresses overlooked aspects of the war like domestic unrest, particularly the New York City draft riots, and the role of Catholic agents in foreign policy.

Curran concludes with a discussion of how the war changed American Catholicism. He argues that acts of allegiance like enlistment, battlefield sacrifice, and political office-holding allowed for greater social agency and assimilation for Catholics. He also illustrates how “White Catholics, particularly in the South, found a new acceptance, borne of their contributions toward the restoration of a variation of the old order in that region,” during Reconstruction. (5) Thus, participation in the Civil War earned American Catholics greater social, political, and economic clout.

Despite several drawbacks in content and focus, Curran’s American Catholics and the Quest for Equality in the Civil War Era provides a solid overview of the relationship between American Catholicism and the Civil War. While the book does not delve into specific details and themes presented by previous works, it fills a much-needed gap for public audiences interested in the Catholic role in the war.