Book Review: Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union
Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union. By Richard Carwardine. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2025. Hardcover, 624 pp. $35.00.
Reviewed by Max Longley
With Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union, Richard Carwardine takes up the now-popular subject of religion and the Civil War. In doing so he conducts pathbreaking research into two large religious groups which were influential in the Civil War North, though through different perspectives. The research for Carwardine’s lengthy opus leads him to President Abraham Lincoln’s papers where petitioners invoking the will of God instructed the president on his divine duties. Other collections of papers consulted by Carwardine show religious Americans expressing to each other their convictions about God’s role in the war.
These religious correspondents can be categorized into two groups. The first group was made up of New England heirs to the Puritans, who may not have kept their Calvinism but who continued their belief in a covenant between God and the American people. To hold up their end of the covenant and avert God’s wrath, the people would have to reject sin – and especially the sin of slavery. Otherwise, God would not give victory to the Union’s armies.
This Puritan religious influence could be seen not only in New England itself, but in areas later settled by New Englanders, such as the Western Reserve in Ohio, or the northern part of Lincoln’s Illinois, and points even further west like Wisconsin and Minnesota. In the wartime churches in these areas, sermons focused on Northern complicity in slavery manifested in the hesitancy of Congress and the Lincoln administration to strike at slavery. With such timidity in the face of a moral crisis, it was no wonder that God had not blessed Union troops with victory.
To the other religious grouping, it was the New England Puritan heirs, not slavery, who posed a danger to the Republic. Catholics, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and other denominations filled by Christians of immigrant and Southern descent saw a threat to the nation in the descendants of the New England witch-hunters taking on a new theocratic cause and throwing the country into violence and turmoil in order to impose strange religious ideas about Black equality.
Carwardine views both groups as religious nationalists, but their views of what God desired of the nation varied. Those of Puritan legacy saw a God incensed at His people’s tolerance of slavery and thus sent a war – testing the nation with a prolonged conflict – as both a chastisement of a guilty land and a means for removing slavery from that land. This covenant theology inherited from the original Puritans persisted in the 19th century. The non-Puritan religious groups saw a religious tyranny by the Puritan heirs, imposing their Yankee piety at the point of a gun.
The book’s lengthy examination of these activities by the conflicting religious nationalist groups gives the reader insight into how the non-prominent citizens – not just the usual-suspect activists – thought about the conflict. For those in the New England mode, the prospect of a holy war against slavery promoted morale in the face of military reverses. For the people who saw the later-day Puritans as religious fanatics and tyrants, support for a limited war (leaving slavery intact) or even Copperheadism (negotiating a settlement with the Confederacy and letting them return and keep their slaves) seemed better, and more in line with religious traditions which eschewed a crusade to revolutionize the country.
Carwardine’s book offers an important examination of public opinion. The Puritan inheritors sustained their morale amid Northern reverses by urging President Lincoln to earn God’s favor by turning the war into an antislavery crusade. At the same time, the opposing religious groups feared the new Puritanism flexing its political muscles to fix religious dictatorship on the people.
Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union is an important and welcome addition to the growing historiography of Civil War religion.
Good review. I am glad to learn of this book. It takes a different approach from Matthew Stewart’s book, “An Emancipation of the Mind” which I reviewed here on ECW early in January.
Always a worthy topic. I hope he mentions how the righteous New Englanders happily practiced slavery until after they sold their slaves to the Deep South at a handsome profit, instead of manumitting them like, for example, the Lynches in Lynchburg, Virginia, who freed their slaves in 1783…and only then discovered that their religion regarded slavery as an evil that had to be stamped out. Have you ever watched Liz Warren shrewishly lecture people as a cover for her hypocrisy? That’s what they were/are like.
Speaking about Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court found slavery inconsistent with the new Massachusetts state constitution in the Walker and Freedman cases, before the Revolution was over. There were perhaps 4 to 5000 slaves in colonial Massachusetts, 1% of the enslaved population of the 13 colonies(Virginia had over 290,000). In the 1790 US Census, there were no slaves in Massachusetts, but there were now over 5000 free blacks. So “selling their slaves to the Deep South” didn’t really happen, at least from Massachusetts. I assume this belief is some sort of psychic fig leaf for the human and moral failure of the slave states.
New York, which held 21,000 slaves according to the census, emancipation was a slower, harder road, but they got it done. Sojourner Truth, the famed abolitionist, was from New York, and using a New York law, successfully sued for the return of family members her former owner attempted to sell to Virginia(or Maryland? I dont recall). The danger was obvious enough for New York to pass a law forbidding the sale of slaves across state lines.
Interesting, one of the few slave quarters existing today is found in Medford, Massachusetts, a barracks-like building on the Royall estate, open to the public. Belinda Sutton, one of the enslaved persons on the Royall estate, now free after the Revolution, and would petition the Massachusetts Legislature for compensation for her stolen labor. The Legislature, called the General Court, granted her a sum of money.
Good points, and note that I said “New England,” which has long been known to have, in general, sold their slaves and then begun the abolition movement.
Figures, as well, depending on who compiles them and for what reason, can be suspect. Frankly, one would have to be incredibly naïve to believe that there were 4-5,000 slaves in Massachusetts and after the state ended slavery 4-5,000 free blacks were found living there. It would have to be paradise. If so, then why didn’t the 50,000+ free blacks – confirmed over and over by various studies and extant documents – living in Virginia before the war migrate to Massachusetts? As a perfect example of this, even though New Jersey ended slavery before the war, if you were born a slave and currently a slave there, you had to remain a slave unless your master freed you. When Noble Cause advocates were asked how many slaves this entailed, they furrowed their brows, “did research,” and replied, “One.” Then honest historians did research, and found the figure was 1,000, give or take 0.5%. Just think – New Jersey was a slave state during the Civil War! Amazing.
More important, the inescapable points are that Jim Crow was invented in the North and applied as The Black Codes prior to the war, were kept in place for the most part in the post war period while they were called Jim Crow in the South, and only changed with Supreme Court decisions; that six slave states that remained in the Union happily retained their slaves throughout the war with only few exceptions; that the Federal Government somehow, with zero Southerners in the Senate, could not get around to outlawing slavery until after the war was over; and that 90% of race riots have taken place in the North. For that matter, the only place I ever saw young black students being physically attacked simply for riding school buses to their schools was…in Boston, Massachusetts, Paradise.
The book maintains that religious groups forged Lincoln’s Union. Yes, an important subject. But even more important were those who fought slavery on civic, moral, and constitutional grounds and were decidely not religious, George Boutwell among them (and Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens). Remember that Lincoln may have invoked Providence, but his guiding star was the Constitution as a civil religion.
Excellent points.
The Second Inaugural, where Lincoln describes slavery as the cause of the war, and as an “offence” that God allowed, but now has inflicted “the scourge of war” of the country to eradicate it, very much falls into the Calvinist thinking the author describes.
You just have to marvel at how politicians flip-flop. Just four years earlier, Lincoln told Congress that the Southern states had to be brought back into the Union because of the vast amount of money in taxes and tariffs (internal tariffs forbidden, by the way, in the Constitution) it meant to the Government, and how his aim was to put down the rebellion and return the states to the Union with slavery intact. Slavery…which was not banned in the North until December 1865. Meanwhile, in the “war against slavery,” Lincoln happily admitted a slave state, West Virginia, to the Union in the summer of 1863. And then, as if by magic, after getting re-elected and being well on the way to winning the war, it became a war on slavery. Gosh, if only he’d had Carinne Jean-Pierre with her binder, or Jen Psaki to “circle back” for him when queried on what may well be the greatest flip-flop in American history.
The figures I wrote were from the US Census, as reliable as any numbers from that period. The ;idea that the New England states “sold their slaves then started the abolition movement” is not supported by the historical record.
The Confederate states seceded to protect slavery from the threat of an incoming Lincoln adminstration as they stated over and over again. The adminstration planned a policy of restricting slavery to where it existed. Both sides of the controversy assumed that if slavery didn’t spread, either into Latin America, the Caribbean or the West, it would become unsustainable, and “like a scorpion girt with fire” sting itself to death. Excellent books on the subject: James Oakes “The Scorpion’s Sting” and “Freedom National”
Your timeline for emanicpation is flawed; The Confiscation Acts, the Emanciption Proclamation and other anti-slavery measures came before the 1864 election. The 1864 election can be seen as a referendum on the administration’s anti-slavery policy, certainly the northern Democrats ran on a deeply racist platform.
Incorrect. The South seceded because a President had been elected whose party had announced that they would use Federal armies to invade and destroy the South along with slavery – despite it still being legal and protected by the Constitution…which somehow managed to not get amended until eight months after the war was over. This is why, for example, so many top commanders in the Army of Northern Virginia, to name just one, did not own slaves, and disapproved of slavery, yet fought for the South. It puzzles people today; they just cannot rationalize it in their minds because their entire premise for why the war occurred is incorrect.
Now, imagine for a minute that you’re one of the 93% of Southerners who did not own slaves. Even if you hate slavery, if people in the North, who are benefitting and profiting far more off slavery than you are announce that to end something that is legal they are going to invade the South and kill and destroy anything in their path in order to end this legal thing, then if you are sane, your response is, “Fuck that. They’re not going to burn my town and my house and kill my family” and you reach for a rifle. No one, no matter what their beliefs about slavery, would stand by and risk all they owned and loved when it was under dire threat by someone – in huge numbers and heavily armed – had declared they were going to destroy everything in their path in order to end something that was legal. You cannot refute this, because my ancestors from central Pennsylvania, 23 of whom enlisted in the Federal army, were Democrats, and they are all through local newspapers of the time, and I have their letters and diaries, in which they make it clear that they were willing to fight for the preservation of the Union, but found it abhorrent that Republicans were dragging them into war over something that was legal and protected by the Constitution – and thus it was a matter to be dealt with by Congress, not the army.
As for the Emancipation Proclamation, no one who knows the facts of the time can take it seriously. Here is the amount of slaves that the Proclamation freed: 0. And, in fact, the Proclamation did not end slavery, but protected it. What does it say? “[On January 1, 1863], all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be…free.” Thus, all slaves within any State or designated part of a State that is NOT in rebellion against the United States shall remain slaves.”
And Lincoln was true to his word: Because Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky and parts of Louisiana, etc. were not in rebellion against the United States, they were allowed to keep their slaves. Even worse, on June 20, 1863, nearly six full months after the issuance of the Proclamation, Lincoln admitted West Virginia to the Union…as a slave state. The Proclamation freed no slave, but ensured that tens of thousands remained in bondage – as long as the owners were not fighting against Federal Government rule. There is nothing in the Proclamation that is about freeing slaves; rather, it was a desperate attempt by Lincoln to turn the tide of the war he was losing, and heavily influenced – as he began writing it in the summer of 1862 – by the midterm elections. Lincoln was a great man and great President – and he was also a canny political beast, who more than anything else, wanted to retain power and get re-elected. As such, the Proclamation was never approved by Congress, ratified by any State, or would have stood any test in a court of law; Lincoln actually had no power to issue it. Thus, it can only be deemed irrelevant.
This is not theory, it is fact. You cannot argue against fact, even if you want to virtue signal about 19th century America in a 21st century society which in November thoroughly rejected the deep, pervading racist lies of Affirmative Action, DEI and CRT, opting instead for the true equality of treatment and opportunity the Founding Fathers clarified and codified in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And people knew it at the time. Read Zachary Frye’s ‘A Republic in the Ranks.’ The majority of my ancestors were outraged by the Proclamation and no, they were not racists. Rather, they respected the Constitution. As a result, the majority of them, those that were still living, did not re-enlist when their three years’ service was up.
Finally, so what if, in your view, the Democrats ran on a deeply racist platform in 1864? In terms relative to 2025, EVERYBODY in America was racist. The Republicans, Northern Democrats, Southern Democrats and Constitutional Unionists all ran on racist platforms in 1860 and/or 1864. You err in believing that because the Republicans wanted to end slavery – which they never got around to doing until after the war ended, curiously – they were not racist. Try this litmus test: What if, in 1864, the Republicans announced, “Elect us and we shall end slavery, win the war, give blacks the vote, allow racial intermarriage, and elect blacks to the House, Senate and White House!”? All perfectly reasonable things…in 2025. But why didn’t they announce this? Because they either had no intention of doing it, or, they knew that if they did so, the Republican Party would have vanished in a week – as Northerners, including Republican party members, would have shot, hanged or burned alive every single Republican politician in the land. And this is the problem with people that argue the Civil War was a Noble Crusade; it comes from overlaying 21st century views and beliefs on 19th century people, where they did not exist and would not have been allowed to belong.
Bit of a gish gallop here. But the 1864 election took place after anti-slavery became the policy of the Lincoln administration. Anti-slavery measures weren’t a result of the 1864 election, they preceded them. And while 2025 and 1864 are very difficult places in racial attitudes, it was the Democrats in 1864 who ran a campaign harping on fears of racial “amalgamation” as the phrase was, while the Republicans were pushing an anit-slavery agenda. They were not in the same place or going in the same direction. I suggest “The Battle Cry of Freedom” which has a good description of the 1864 campaign.
Wow. You’re desperate – grasping for straws. So, “anti-slavery became the policy of the Lincoln administration.” But besides the Emancipation Proclamation,, which freed no one and guaranteed the continuation of slavery where there was no rebellion against the United States, what documents exist to prove this? Did Congress declare war on the Confederacy for the purpose of abolishing slavery by force of arms? If so, please forward the documentation.
Meanwhile, you ignored the brutal facts – after the Lincoln administration supposedly adopted abolition as policy, they admitted a slave state to the Union and somehow didn’t get around to amending the Constitution to abolish it. Now that’s an awfully weak-hearted effort. What the hell were they doing all day in Washington?
As for ‘Battle Cry of Freedom,’ while well-written, one must read it with the understanding in mind that, by his own admission, James McPherson had never read Civil War at all before choosing it as his Ph.D. topic, and was a young adult at the height of the Civil Rights movement, so when he did take up Civil War studies and wrote the book, he considered the Civil War to be “the greatest civil rights action in American History.” Not only is this factually incorrect, but to McPherson’s great credit, he later admitted he was wrong. In addition, in his introduction to his ‘For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought in the Civil War,’ he states his great surprise, after reading thousands of letters by soldiers and officers, north and south and east and west, that the vast majority of them were not fighting for or against slavery.
Now this is a man of integrity – something lacking in a scarifying number of today’s historians and publishers. In the end, who decides what a war is about? The President? Lincoln with the greatest flip-flop in history? Congress, who declares war…but this Congress that never declared war on slavery? Laws? Laws are passed by Congress…who passed no law abolishing slavery until nearly four years after the war began, and did it with no representation from 11 of the states they claimed were still in the Union, and even then it had to be ratified by the states before it could become law…and the states that ratified it did not include the 11 states they claimed were still in the Union, so it may well have been struck down…and as it was, it only took effect eight months after the war ended. Do the newspapers decide what a war is about? Civilians? Preachers? Activists? Pick up a “history” book written in the 21st century and you’ll read all about the “massive anti-slavery movement sweeping the nation.” In truth, in 1860, only 2% of Northerners identified as anti-slavery, and only 0.5% ever joined abolitionist groups. Whoever declared war based on the desires of less than 1% of the population. Perhaps it’s the soldiers? Well, if you read primary source accounts by soldiers and officers on both sides of the war, as confirmed by McPherson, only a small minority were fighting over slavery. I trust those folks far more than any 21st century historian or publisher who is pursuing a political agenda…