LES CHAPLAINS PENDANT LA GUERRE CIVIL

Les chaplains ont joués un rôle important dans le moral des troupes.

Voici des photos diverses et variées:





chaplain babbidge

The Civil War was the most significant historical event affecting nineteenth century America, very much as the Revolution was in the eighteenth century. And just as the Revolution saw the involvement of the chaplain, so did the Civil War; but on a scale that dwarfed that of 1776. The size of the Civil War was of such a magnitude, and the destruction so great, that the conflict has been justly called the first modern war.


For almost four years huge volunteer armies of citizen-soldiers grappled with each other in a series of campaigns and battles over a vast geographical area. Governors, regimental or post officers, and the Federal authorities appointed an estimated 3000 chaplains to the Union forces. The names of slightly over 2300 of these chaplains are known to us. The largest number of chaplains serving at any one time in the listed 1079 on active duty. There were 930 regimental chaplains, 117 hospital chaplains, and 32 post chaplains. Sixty-six chaplains died in the service of their country during this conflict, including Chaplain U.P. Gardner of the 13th Kansas Infantry who, after identifying himself as a chaplain, was shot down by a member of Quantrell's guerrilla raiders on 22 November 1864, in the Cherokee country. The raider was a 17-year-old by the name of Jesse James. On the Confederate side existing army records are also incomplete as to the number of chaplains, but somewhere between 600 and 1000 served in that capacity. We know the names of 25 Confederate chaplains who died in the war.

Civil War chaplains fell into three general categories: regimental, post, and hospital. The 30 post chaplain positions mentioned earlier still existed, although with added war duties. The greatest influx of chaplains came with the calling up of troops from the States. According to the old militia laws, each regiment was to have a chaplain. On 22 July 1861, when 500,000 volunteers were called to the colors, there was a clear need for more chaplains. Appointment was vested in the regimental commander on a vote of the field officers and company commanders. A chaplain had to be a regularly ordained minister of a Christian denomination and received the pay and allowances of a captain of cavalry.

By the act of 3 August 1861, regimental chaplains were provided for the Regular Army. These were to be "regularly ordained ministers of some Christian denomination and were to be selected and appointed as the President may direct." The qualification section was changed on 17 July 1862, to read:

That no person shall be appointed a chaplain in the United States Army who is not a regularly ordained minister of some religious denomination, and who does not present testimonials of his good standing as such minister, with a recommendation of his appointment as an Army chaplain from some authorized ecclesiastical body, or not less than five accredited ministers belonging to said religious denomination.

This change was brought about as a result of a request made to President Lincoln by the Board of Delegates of American Israelites to make provisions for Jewish chaplains. The manner of appointing and commissioning chaplains in the volunteer regiments varied widely, and many served without commissions. Most states provided for commissioning by the Governor, using the same form of commission as that given to chaplains. Wisconsin and Rhode Island commissioned some but not others. New Hampshire gave a commission for the chaplain to hold office at the discretion of the colonel of the regiment.

Regular Army chaplains were commissioned in accordance with the provisions of the Articles of War. Hospital chaplains received a commission signed by the President and Secretary of War. No specific provision was made regarding commissions to post chaplains, except that the appointment was to be made by the Council of Administration of the post and that the appointment proceedings were to be forwarded immediately to the Adjutant General's office. The great diversity in the status of chaplains made it easy for unofficial chaplains to spring up. These were of three types: clergymen and lay evangelists who simply held services in the camps or even became followers of the Army, clergymen attached to the United States Christian Commission, and Presidential hospital chaplains.

Considerable improvement in the organization of the Chaplaincy resulted from an act approved on 9 April 1864. In it the "rank of chaplain, without command, in the regular and volunteer service of the United States" was recognized. Up to that time chaplains had been customarily treated as captains. As a result, the practice of some chaplains wearing a captain's uniform and insignia (often including a sword and pistol) caused controversy. General Order No. 102 (1861), had authorized that the "uniform for chaplains of the Army will be a plain black frock coat, with standing collar, and one row of nine brass buttons; plain black pantaloons, black felt hat or army forage cap, without ornament." This remained the standard approved uniform throughout the conflict.



First photograph of a religious service in the U.S. Army:
Mass in the field for the soldiers of the 69th New York Regiment prior to the first Battle of Bull Run in July 1861.

The Civil War saw the Army Chaplaincy develop in primitive form many of the procedures still in place. While in earlier periods the military clergy were preachers, pastors and combatants, the 1861-1865 period saw less emphasis on the "fighting parson" and more on a spiritual ministry. Also, the Civil War for the first time witnessed a large number of Roman Catholic chaplains in the field, the advent of the first Jewish chaplains, and the first Black and Indian chaplains.
The war's history is studded with spiritual heroes. Chaplain William Hoge, for example, ran the Union Blockade to bring Bibles from England to Southern soldiers. Chaplain William Corby (whose statue stands on Cemetery Ridge) administered the last rites to the dying under a hail of fire, giving General Absolution to the Irish Brigade minutes before 506 of those soldiers lay dead on the field at Gettysburg.


Chaplain Charles McCabe refused to escape during the retreat from Winchester in order to remain with the wounded, and later as a POW maintained morale in Libby Prison. Chaplain Robert Browne, of the 100th Pennsylvania Infantry, is credited in the history of that unit with walking the front in such a cool and courageous manner that he inspired the men to stand and fight.

Three chaplains won the nation's highest award in the Civil War — the Congressional Medal of Honor. Chaplain John M. Whitehead of the 15th Indiana Infantry won it for carrying wounded to the rear under very heavy fire at Stone River, Tennessee, in 1862. Chaplain Francis O. Hall gained his at Salem Heights, Virginia, in 1863, while serving as regimental chaplain to the 16th New York Infantry. The third Medal of Honor was won by Chaplain Milton L. Haney of the 55th Illinois Infantry during fierce fighting near Atlanta in 1864. Unlike chaplains Whitehead and Hall, Haney, according to his citation, "voluntarily carried a musket in the ranks of his regiment and rendered heroic service in retaking Federal works which had been captured by the enemy." The spirit of the fighting clergyman in the tradition of Bishops Turpin and Odo was still alive in this war. Some 97 Union clergymen served in a combat role prior to their appointment as chaplains. A number of clergymen moved the other way, serving as line officers. One, the Reverend William A. Pile, who was originally appointed as a chaplain to a Missouri regiment in 1861, ended the war as a brevet major general of infantry.

Chaplain Haney
(ca. 1900)


The Civil War, besides seeing a large number of Roman Catholic priests serving as chaplains, also saw the appointment of the first Jewish and Black chaplains. The first Jewish chaplain to serve was Michael Mitchell Allen, duly elected to that post by the officers of the 65th Regiment, 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry, known as "Cameron's Dragoons." When notice of this was taken, he resigned for "poor health" rather than suffer the humiliation of dismissal. Allen was disqualified from serving as a chaplain for two reasons: he was neither ordained nor a Christian, but a Jewish cantor. The regiment then elected Rabbi Arnold Fischel to test the constitutionality of the law's "Christian" proviso. His application for a commission was denied. Much petitioning and lobbying ensued. The result: on 17 July 1862, the law was changed by the Congress, thereby permitting Jewish clergymen to become military chaplains. The noted Jewish scholar, Bertram W. Korn, writes in American Jewry in the Civil War that to his knowledge this was the first victory for American Jews directly involving the Federal Government. Fischel served as a civilian chaplain during the war, giving "area coverage" to Jewish personnel in the Army of the Potomac.


Chaplain Frankel
The first authorized Jewish chaplain in the U.S. Army, Rabbi Jacob Frankel, of Philadelphia's Roden Shalom Congregation was commissioned by President Lincoln on 18 September 1862. He served until 1 July 1865. The first rabbi to serve as a regimental chaplain and to see combat as an American Army chaplain was Ferdinand Leopold Sarner. A native of Germany, he was elected chaplain by the officers of a predominantly German regiment, the 54th New York Volunteer Regiment, the "Schwarze Jaeger", serving between 10 April 1863 and 3 October 1864. His discharge was for medical disabilities resulting from a serious wound received at the Battle of Gettysburg.
The Civil War also marked for the first time the large-scale use of black troops in the Army on a regular basis, both in combat and support functions. By the end of the war there were 158 black regiments in the Union Army. Although all of the officers and most of the chaplains with these regiments were white, twelve of the regiments had black chaplains. The first black chaplain is considered to be the Reverend Henry McNeal Turner, a pastor from Baltimore, Maryland. In 1863 Turner became the chaplain of the 1st Regiment, U.S. Colored Troops. He served until 1865, and later "became a member of the Georgia legislature, a Bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, a founder of several religious journals, and a college president."

Henry Turner
First African-American
Regular Army Chaplain


Another milestone in this war was the service of Unaguskie, the son of a Cherokee chief and a Christian, who was the chaplain of the Cherokee Battalion raised in North Carolina by the Confederate Army. A second was the election of Mrs. Ella E. Gibson Hobart, a member of the Religio-Philosophical Society of Saint Charles, Illinois, as the chaplain of the 1st Wisconsin Regiment of Heavy Artillery. Chaplain Hobart, whose husband was also a chaplain, served in this position for a number of months in 1864, until Secretary of War Stanton refused to recognize her status because of her sex and the War Department's desire not to establish a precedent. President Lincoln wrote that he had "no objection to her appointment," but felt that the final decision was up to Secretary Stanton.
Ella Gibson Hobart
Female Civil War chaplain


Chaplains' duties in the Civil War encompassed many areas. Most important were the worship services they conducted in tents, outdoors or around campfires. Services often were ecumenical with Catholic and Protestant chaplains sharing duties. The themes of their sermons were either patriotism to the cause, or admonitions against "evil" behavior (i.e. swearing, gambling, drunkenness and so forth). Additional duties included evening prayer meetings, prayers at dress parades and officiating at weddings, baptisms, funerals and burials. Chaplains performed pastoral functions by counseling, providing guidance and comforting the sick and wounded. They formed temperance societies and opened informal schools to teach illiterate soldiers to read and write. Among other chores assigned to chaplains were those of postmaster, writer of letters for wounded and dying soldiers, writer of letters telling of a soldier's death, banker, ambulance driver, defense counselors and Army recruiters.

With the end of the conflict in April 1865, the great military machine that was the Union Army was quickly dismantled, and its mass of volunteer citizen-soldiers, including chaplains, returned to their old lives.

William Corbby,


L'office de l'US Christian Commission

Voici un article sur la religion et la guerre civil: en anglais, mais y faut vous y faire:

Recent Historiography on Religion and the American Civil War
by
Bruce T. Gourley
2002


Religion and the American Civil War is an underdeveloped field of study which has received relatively little attention until recent years. Previously considered a peripheral issue by most Civil War historians, religion emerged as a significant factor of the Civil War experience with the publication of Religion and the American Civil War (1998), a collection of essays edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout and George Reagan Wilson. Well-known historians such as Eugene D. Genovese, Daniel W. Stowell, Drew Gilpin Faust, Bertram Wyatt-Brown and Samuel S. Hill contributed to the ground-breaking volume.
The 1994 religion and Civil War symposium in Louisville that led to the Religion and the American Civil War volume stands as a watershed event in terms of religion and Civil War historiography. However, a survey of Civil War historiography from the mid-1970s to the present provides the larger context in terms of recent historical attention given to religion and the Civil War. Modern historians have approached the theme of religion and the Civil War in at least seven distinct, albeit sometimes overlapping, subcategories: 1) Religion in general during the Civil War, 2) Northern religion and the Civil War, 3) Southern religion and the Civil War, 4) Religion among the soldiers, 5) Civil War chaplains, 6) African-American religion and the Civil War, 7) Women and religion during the Civil War, and Religious denominations and the Civil War.
Any discussion of the American Civil War must take into account the issue of slavery, the underlying cause of the War. The sectional debates over slavery were frequently couched in religious language. Modern historians addressing the relationship of religion and the Civil War typically focus on slavery as the one defining issue of antebellum religion. As such, an important question begs our attention: should historical literature pertaining to the larger antebellum and Reconstruction eras, but not the Civil War itself, be included in a historiography of religion and the Civil War?
The editors of Religion and the American Civil War focus on the period of the late antebellum era to early Reconstruction. The same timeline will be utilized in this paper. Nonetheless, the earlier antebellum era shaped the religious beliefs which would impact the Civil War. Religion, especially of the Protestant variety, was an important factor in antebellum culture. The Second Great Awakening of the early 19th century in particular greatly impacted American society. This renewed interest in matters of faith led northerners to embrace a view of Christian perfection for individuals, a theology which in turn was applied to society in an effort to eradicate social ills. Southerners, on the other hand, reacted to the revivals by assuming a faith of personal piety which focused on a literal reading of the Bible, but expressed little concern for addressing society’s problems. Historians are increasingly identifying these differing approaches to religious faith, and the actions resulting from these views, as playing a foundational role in the Civil War. However, historians are only slowly recognizing the contributions of Catholics and minority religions in relation to the Civil War.
In analyzing the historiography of religion and the Civil War, this essay will follow the order outlined in the seven subcategories previously introduced. Accordingly, an analysis of religion in general is of first concern.

Religion in General and the Civil War
In Broken Churches, Broken Nation (1985), C. C. Goen was among the first modern historians to place primacy upon the influence of religion as a significant factor of the Civil War. Goen examines the themes of unity and separation, arguing that Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist divisions along North and South lines in 1837, 1844 and 1845, respectively, over the issue of slavery, along with the ensuing activities of the three denominations prior to the Civil War, both signaled and sealed the inevitably of war. According to Goen, the church splits broke the bond of national unity (as expressed in Protestant hegemony), established a model for sectional independence, reinforced alienation between sections via distorted images, and progressively elevated the level of moral outrage each section felt towards the other. American churches’ overemphasis on individualism, inadequate social theory and world-rejecting ecclesiology, according to Goen, failed to provide adequate leadership on the question of slavery, thus leading the nation to turn to politics in an effort to confront the slavery issue, which in turn led to war.
Richard J. Carwardine further examines the relationship between religion and politics in Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (1993). Carwardine posits that evangelical Protestants were among the principle shapers of American political culture in the decades prior to the Civil War. According to Carwardine, the waning of revivalist fervor led evangelical Protestants to ally with national political parties to further their social agendas. The political parties, in turn, made concentrated efforts to win the evangelical Protestant vote. Carwardine maintains that evangelical Protestants gave birth to ecclesiastical sectionalism, steered political discourse, and pressured politicians, thus leaving their mark on Whig and Republican politics. Carwardine roots the Republican Party ethic in a moderated Calvinism (emerging from the Second Great Awakening), optimistic postmillennialism, and an urgent appeal to action. The Republican Party drew heavily from evangelical Protestants of the North, even borrowing their language. Southern evangelicals, however, resisted the infusion of religion into politics, and fearful of northern evangelical attempts to equate the Kingdom of God with the Republican Party, lent their support to the Confederacy, following the perception of Republican impositions upon the Southern states. In short, Carwardine makes a compelling argument that religious language and imagery, as adopted by the nation’s political parties, contributed significantly to the coming of the Civil War.
Marty G. Bell contributes to this interplay between religion and politics in “The Civil War: Presidents and Religion,” Baptist History and Heritage (July / October 1997), concluding that the Civil War led the nominally religious Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis both to offer individual certitudes of God’s divine favor, and led to their enshrinement as “mythic figures in the history of American religion.”
Other scholars have also identified religion, as expressed in morality in particular, as a significant factor leading to the Civil War. Phillip Shaw Paludan, contributor to the Religion and the American Civil War volume with an essay of the same name, examines the inability of American churches to collectively address the issue of slavery because of polarizing concepts of holiness (expressed in social action in the North and in personal piety in the South) as a significant factor leading to the war. The Civil War, Paludan asserts, clothed in religious imagery, witnessed the sacrifice of death by both northerners and southerners to make men holy, even while the participants disagreed “over God’s views on making men free.”
In “Religion in the Collapse of the American Union” (Religion and the American Civil War), Eugene D. Genovese takes a somewhat similar approach, positing the struggle to define Christian society and morals, and the cosmic scope attached to this struggle by Christian leaders, as crucial to understanding the Civil War. The language of cosmic struggle was adapted by politicians and couched (by both North and South) in the terminology of the Kingdoms of Heaven and Satan warring with one another. Each side appealed to the “Higher Law” for ultimate authority in defining the issue of slavery, language which in turn contributed to secession and war. Terrie D. Aamodt, in Righteous Armies, Holy Causes: Apocalyptic Imagery in the Civil War (2002), demonstrates how the theme of cosmic struggle was embraced by North and South, free and slave, conservative and liberal, and religious and secular, in an effort to legitimate their respective causes, slavery and otherwise. Apocalyptic images were attached to the war’s horrors in song, poem, oral history, tracts and sermons. After the war, however, expectations concerning the end of the world became increasingly divergent.
Finally, in “The Bible and Slavery” (Religion and the American Civil War), Mark Noll asserts that the availability and widespread, unhindered use of the Bible in a fragmented, individualistic society framed the conflict – slavery – that led to war. Both North and South championed the Bible in answering the dilemma of slavery, but in radically opposite manners. Northerners appealed to the spirit of the Bible (liberalism) in opposing slavery, whereas southerners appealed to the letter of the Bible (literalism) in defending slavery. These competing biblical claims helped shape public perceptions that led to secession and war.

Northern Religion and the Civil War
Revivalist fervor swept the northern United States in the early 19th century. In North Star Country: Upstate New York and the Crusade for African American Freedom (2002), Milton C. Sernett focuses on “The Burned Over District of New York” (so named because of repeated revivals that swept through the area in the 1820s and 1830s) as a significant contributor to northern religious and political activism which precipitated the Civil War. Sernett credits the revivalist Charles G. Finney as providing the initial religious fervor against slavery in the region, and Beriah Green (1795-1874), a theologian and abolitionist educator who transformed Oneida Institute into a school for both whites and blacks, as spearheading the “comeouter” movement (Christian abolitionists who separated from the established churches and formed abolitionist-only congregations). The comeouter movement transformed religious opposition to slavery into the realm of politics, and the creation of the Liberty Party. From this movement Stephen Douglass rose as a spokesperson for African-Americans. The contributions of upstate New York led to the battlefields of the Civil War and into Reconstruction. Sernett’s contribution to the discussion of religion and the Civil War is found in his successful demonstration of how religious convictions on a local level contributed to the abolitionist movement and, ultimately, the framing of war rationale.
In War Against Proslavery Religion: Abolitionism and the Northern Churches, 1830-1865 (1985), John R. McKivigan examines on a larger scale the efforts of American abolitionists to persuade northern churches to endorse immediate emancipation. McKivigan concludes that the rise of the comeouter churches, which were few in number, signaled only limited success of abolitionists to recruit northern churches. The overall failure of abolitionists to convince the churches is attributed to theological undertones (emphasis on personal responsibility and suspicion of abolitionist religious principles), organizational structures (the decentralization of Congregationalists, Baptists and Unitarians was a hindrance, while Roman Catholic and Episcopal hierarchies quelled debate), demographics (religious immigrants found abolitionism foreign to their heritage), and traditional attitudes towards social order. Abolitionists failed to convince northern churches to discipline slave holders prior to the war, yet the presence of war and continued abolitionist agitation did finally lead all northern denominations, other than the hierarchical Catholics and Episcopalians, to embrace emancipation by war’s end. Abolitionists in turn used church endorsements to further influence public officials. McKivigan ultimately faults the northern churches, not abolitionists, for their own failure to embrace the abolitionist movement.
George M. Fredrickson, in “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the Civil War Crisis” (Religion and the American Civil War), broadly examines northern Protestant clergy, concluding that by the 1850s militant clerical opposition to slavery was significant. Fredrickson argues that although northern society turned to the leadership of clergy in the antislavery campaign and in legitimizing the war, the rise in clerical prestige was at the expense of embracing politics and secular methodology. Clerical popularity in the North after the Civil War waned as prophetic voices were indistinguishable from political, secular voices. James Moorhead, in American Apocalypse: Yankee Protestants and the Civil War (1978), also examines northern clergy, revealing the divines’ invocation of heavenly imagery in the nationalistic crusade against slavery and the South.
In “Lincoln’s Sermon on the Mount: The Second Inaugural” (Religion and the American Civil War), Ronald C. White Jr., locates “the finest presentation of the relationship between religion and the Civil War.” White equates the address to a sermon, rather than a state speech. In the wake of impending Union victory over the Confederacy, the public expected to hear victorious words, rather than words of reconciliation and Lincoln’s struggle to identify the hand of God in the darkest of times.
Interestingly, White does not offer even a cursory glimpse of clergy reaction to Lincoln’s second inaugural. However, in No Sorrow Like Our Sorrow: Northern Protestant Ministers and the Assassination of Lincoln (1994), David Chesebrough examines 340 northern Protestant sermons delivered in the seven weeks following Lincoln’s murder, concluding that the clergy, by this point, had embraced the northern political structure as their own. Chesebrough notes that the sermons collectively immortalized Lincoln’s character while blaming the South (not Booth) for his assassination, and angrily demanding that the South be harshly punished for Lincoln’s death. Chesebrough hints that this may have signaled the height of the influence of northern clergy. Yet, the angry cries of the clergy were oftentimes so extreme that even the Radical Republicans found them too offensive.
In short, a common theme found in many analyses of the Northern Church during the Civil War era is that of the Puritan and Calvinistic notion of Providence, i.e., the belief that God had a special plan for America, and that the United States, and the North in particular, was the crucible of that hope. This understanding was not unique to white Protestants. In Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1989), David W. Blight shows that Douglass also echoed this belief. James H. Moorhead demonstrates in “Between Progress and Apocalypse,” that Postmillennial hope in the North, united with Republicanism, symbolized the marriage of the sacred and the secular in northern society.

Southern Religion and the Civil War
Civil War historians have long pointed to pro-slavery views as central to southern religion of the Civil War era. In recent works, David Chesebrough (Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1996) points to the Nat Turner rebellion and William Lloyd Garrison’s Liberator in 1831 as cementing the nexus of pro-slavery sentiment among southern Christians. Goen identifies slavery as the principle issue which led Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists to split North and South by 1845. Genovese (The Slaveholders’ Dilemma: Freedom and Progress in Southern Conservative Thought, 1820-1860, 1992) provides irony, demonstrating that religious conservatives North and South were in agreement over most significant issues, other than slavery.
Slavery was rooted in a religiously-oriented, sectionalist southern culture. In Southern Evangelicals and the Coming of the Civil War (2000), Edward R. Crowther examines the intellectual and cultural history of the white, antebellum South and weaves together the themes of religion molding culture and culture shaping religion. Religion and culture were mutually reinforcing, with religious sentiments paralleling states’ rights ideology, collectively resulting in separation, secession and Civil War.
Modern historians differ somewhat on the relationship between religion and southern sectionalism, however. Some historians focus on sectionalism defining religion. Christine Leigh Heyrman, in Southern Cross: The Beginnings of the Bible Belt (1997), utilizing journals of late 18th and early 19th century Baptist and Methodist ministers, concludes that religious leaders accommodated slavery in order to gain ground in the South.
In Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause (1980), Charles Reagan Wilson concludes that by the antebellum era, southern religion had embraced the South and its customs as holy. Defeat in the Civil War led to the creation of a civil religion (the Lost Cause) based on antebellum culture and incorporated into southern evangelical churches. Mark Noll, in “The Bible and Slavery” (Religion and the American Civil War) meanwhile argues that inherent southern racism provided the framework within which southern Christians were immersed. The pro-slavery biblical exegesis that emerged served to accommodate and legitimize culture.
On the other hand, Mitchell Snay, in Gospel of Disunion: Religion and Separatism in the Antebellum South (1993), argues that southern religion helped shape antebellum southern separatism by transferring the caretaking of southern evangelical ideals onto the culture, in the process creating a moral consensus for slavery. The denominational schisms legitimized the emergence of southern nationalism. From that point onward into the war years, the churches reinforced and sustained nationalistic fervor.
Drew Gilpin Faust, in The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (1988), argues that religion played a central role in the shaping of a southern nationalism which both defended and criticized the South. Faust identifies the southern ruling class as planters, clergy, politicians and intellectuals, noting that “the authority of the clergy at least rivaled that of the new Confederate state,” while Christianity was the “most fundamental source of legitimation” and the “central foundation” of the Confederacy. Southerners were certain God was on their side; they were His chosen people.
In “Civil War, Religion, and Communications: The Case of Richmond” (Religion and the American Civil War), Harry S. Stout and Christopher Grasso, in an examination of religious jeremiads emitting from Richmond, point to religion as “the most powerful cultural system in the Old South,” concluding that secession and war would never have happened without the “clergy’s active endorsement.”
Yet, not all southern clergy automatically embraced secession and war. Some historians have examined southern religious dissent and dissenters of the Civil War era. David B. Chesebrough, in Clergy Dissent in the Old South, 1830-1865 (1996), concludes that most non-conformist clergy left the South between 1830 and 1861. Those who remained were oftentimes persecuted and sometimes killed. On the other hand, in “Church, Honor and Secession” (Religion and the American Civil War), Bertram Wyatt-Brown determines that most southern clergy reluctantly embraced secession, a situation attributed to long-standing ties to northern conservatives, a tradition of speaking softly on controversial public issues, and a hesitation to embrace southern manliness and honor. Not until early 1861 did most clergy whole-heartedly rally to the secession cause out of a sense of honor.
Preston D. Graham, in A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinsons’ Struggle to Distinguish the Sacred from the Secular During the Civil War (2002), examines dissent in the border states, where some clergy maintained a confessional theology and an apolitical church, reflecting the sentiments of Baptists in Revolutionary-era Virginia. On the other hand, John B. Boles, in The Irony of Southern Religion (1994), argues that the South as a whole disavowed its religious dissenter heritage in embracing the Confederate State during the Civil War.
Championing the southern institution of slavery did not necessarily imply unquestioned acceptance of the practice of slavery. Eugene D. Genovese explores the theme of doubt in A Consuming Fire: The Fall of the Confederacy in the Mind of the White Christian South (1999), noting that some southern clergy long struggled, in the face of abolitionist onslaughts, to justify the trust of slavery which God had placed upon them. By the 1850s, the South’s defense of slavery as Biblical and God-ordained rested upon the success of fulfilling certain Christian obligations to slaves (i.e., humane treatment and religious instruction). Yet, clerical calls for slave reforms via moral suasion failed, and legislatures and most southerners showed little interest in the matter through the 1850s and into the Civil War, expressing public guilt only when military defeat was visited upon the South.
As early Confederate victories on the battlefield gave way to a pattern of defeats, southerners were forced to ask why God was punishing them. Perhaps the essence of southern religion’s fears in relation to the institution of slavery is summed up by Daniel Stowell in, “‘We Have Sinned and God Has Smitten Us!’: John H. Caldwell and the Religious Meaning of Confederate Defeat,” Georgia Historical Quarterly, 78 (Spring 1994). Stowell sees Caldwell, a southern Methodist minister who had a change of heart about slavery in 1865, as the object of both derision and fear among southerners who were grappling with the concept of God’s judgment. Genovese (Consuming Fire) turns to Civil War era Baptist theologian John L. Dagg, who compared Israel’s violation of God’s covenant in the Old Testament with that of the South’s violation of God’s entrusted institution of slavery. Faust (Confederate Nationalism) portrays the envisioning of God’s plan as transcending defeat in calling for corporate repentance and return to morality and purity, at which time God’s chastisement would cease.
Daniel Stowell, in “Stonewall Jackson and the Providence of God” (Religion and the American Civil War), makes the important distinction between judgment and chastisement. Jackson’s sudden and surprising death was attributed to the providence of God and served notice that a displeased God was chastising His people for their unrighteouness. In turn this lesson prepared the South for the judgment of wholesale defeat in 1865, and the ensuing task of defining the painful loss.
Even when the war ended in defeat, signifying the failure of southerners to meet God’s test of slavery, admitting that slavery was wrong was unthinkable; both Faust and Genovese see southerners perceiving northern economic interests as the unholy rationale for Emancipation, with Faust expounding on the theme of extortion.
Genovese argues that southerners viewed their slave system as a valid system of bond-labor which created conditions favorable to Christian behavior and advancement, whereas demands of the northern capitalistic market forced people to choose between Christian ethics and materialism. In response to charges of racism from northerners, southerners replied that northerners were “scientific racists” (i.e., unbiblical evolutionists).
Kenneth Moore Startup, in The Root of all Evil: The Protestant Clergy and the Economic Mind of the Old South (1997), further develops the economic theme. Moore surveys the economic mind of the Civil War era South solely through the writings and sermons of southern preachers, presenting the divines, who frequently preached anti-materialistic sermons from a rigid biblicist perspective, as defining sin and evil in terms of greed. Slavery was championed but materialism was railed against as a national sin, putting clergy at odds with gentry initially, but later establishing an acceptable rationale for southern defeat in the Civil War.
Finally, David E. Harrell, in “The Evolution of Plain-Folk Religion in the South: 1835-1920,” Varieties of Southern Religious Experience (1988), examines southern religion as social history, arguing that the Civil War “blurred” developing class divisions and delayed further fragmentation by bringing temporary equalitarianism to southern white churches.

Religion Among the Soldiers
Within the armed ranks during the Civil War, religion expressed itself in the form of revivalism. Steven E. Woodworth, in While God is Marching On: the Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (2001), concludes that although religion permeated the lives of many ordinary soldiers, providing both assurance and chastisement, ultimately the War did not change sectional religious sentiments. Drew Gilpin Faust, in “Christian Soldiers: The Meaning of Revivalism in the Confederate Army,” (Journal of Southern History 53, no. 1, February 1987), explores the theme of Confederate army revivalism expressed in both personal piety and as a vehicle for corporate understanding of God’s plan in the midst of death, destruction, and defeat. Reid Mitchell, in “Christian Soldiers?: Perfecting the Confederacy” (Religion and the American Civil War), questions whether Confederate soldiers were more religious than Union soldiers. Philip Paludan, in “A People’s Contest:” The Union and the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1988), examines religion among Union soldiers and also concludes that Union revivals were common, albeit less publicized at the time.
Kurt O. Berends (“’Wholesome Reading Purifies and Elevates the Man:’ The Religious Military Press in the Confederacy,” Religion and the American Civil War), examines the religious life of Confederate soldiers through the pages of the southern religious military press. Berends concludes that by the second half of the Civil War, southern ministers were convinced that the key to sectional victory was a converted army. Christian denominations in the South proclaimed that the soldier was fighting for God and that manliness and commitment to the Confederate Cause were Christian virtues. Maintaining faith in the primacy of personal salvation, southern churches, through the religious military press, rallied for sectional victory, while at the same time providing rational for the possibility of defeat. Berends concludes that this message conveyed social implications far beyond the war itself, shaping the religion of the Lost Cause as a civil religion, but also perpetuating a manly Christianity.
Sidney J. Romero, in Religion in the Rebel Ranks (1983), explores the religious life of the Confederate soldier as portrayed through 20,000 plus letters, diaries and manuscripts. Romero’s sources discuss religion in terms of revivals, chaplains, officers, soldiers and daily army life. He concludes that religion was the greatest weapon of the otherwise disadvantaged South, providing the will to fight even against impossible odds. “There seems little doubt that the church was the single greatest institution in the maintenance of moral in the Confederate army.”

Civil War Chaplains
Military chaplains were commonplace in the armies of the North and South, particularly of the Protestant variety. Warren B. Armstrong, in For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War (1998), utilizes original documents (manuals, letters, diaries, reports, etc.) in arguing that the influence of Union chaplains extended beyond the realm of the spiritual as they advocated preservation of the Union, focused on slavery as the central issue of the war, and preached a pro-abolition message. James A. Fuller, in Chaplain to the Confederacy: Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South (2000), examines the life of a prominent Southern Baptist, slave-owning minister and Old South apologist who served as a Confederate chaplain. Phillip T. Tucker, in The Confederacy’s Fighting Chaplain: Father John B. Bannon (1992), and William B. Faherty, in Exile in Erin: A Confederate Chaplain’s Story: The Life of Father John B. Bannon (2002), explore the influence of an Irish Catholic Confederate chaplain in Missouri who championed the cause of the South, influenced Irish perceptions of the Civil War, and served as a personal emissary from President Davis to Pope Pius IX. Looking through a broader lens, William E. Dickens, Jr., in Answering the Call: The Story of the U.S. Military Chaplaincy from the Revolution through the Civil War (1999), argues that the Civil War served to standardize the role and functions of military chaplains.
In addition, autobiographies of a number of Civil War chaplains have been republished in recent years.

African-American Religion and the Civil War
The study of African-American religion during the antebellum and Civil War eras has been a fertile field in recent decades. Many such studies have focused on abolitionism and / or slave life in the antebellum era, with fewer works directly relating to the Civil War itself, despite the fact that African-American participation in and contributions to religious life of the Civil War era were substantial.
In Major Themes in Northern Black Religious Thought, 1800-1860 (1975), Monroe Fordham identifies the essence of the social gospel of African-American religion in the North as it related to the coming Civil War: the call to moral improvement in order to escape bondage; acts of charity and benevolence in order to help one another; focus on peace, hope and tranquility in order to deal with uncertainty and despair and to find strength and courage in the face of persecution; opposition to slavery and racism; and the universal equality of humankind. Eugene D. Genovese, in similar fashion, examines the role Afro-American religion in the South played in shaping an independent-minded slave community prior to and during the Civil War.
Some authors have focused on individual African-American leaders, such as Frederick C. Douglass. In Frederick Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (1989), David W. Blight shows that Douglass was certain of God’s divine favor for the abolitionist cause and acted with that certitude prior to and during the Civil War. In Black Apostles at Home and Abroad: Afro-Americans and the Christian Mission from the Revolution to Reconstruction (1982), David W. Wills and Richard Newman offer biographical sketches of lesser known African-American leaders, including Samuel Harrison (a Congregationalist who served as a chaplain during the Civil War), Rebecca Cox Johnson (a woman who established a black Shaker Church immediately prior to the Civil War), and James Lynch (a missionary to the South during the Civil War and a civil rights advocate following the war).
In Be Jubilant My Feet: African American Abolitionists in the American Missionary Association, 1839-1861 (1994) and His Truth is Marching On: African Americans Who Taught the Freedmen for the American Missionary Association, 1861-1877 (1994), Clara Merritt DeBoer examines African-American leadership in the abolitionist American Missionary Association. African-Americans played crucial roles in mission enterprises at home and abroad and in educating freedmen during and after the Civil War.
When the Civil War ended, African-Americans in the South established their own autonomous churches. In Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865-1890 (1993), William E. Montgomery traces the story of the founding and growth of black churches in the South, starting with the efforts of northern missionaries to organize churches in the South immediately following the Civil War, to the point of the establishment and prospering of distinct black denominations in the decades after the war. Church and Community Among Black Southerners, 1865-1900 (1994), edited by Donald G. Nieman, is a collection of essays which explore the theme of the growth and development of black churches in the South in more localized detail.
Samuel Hill, in “Religion and the Results of the Civil War” (Religion and the American Civil War), points to African-Americans’ religious experiences prior to the Civil War as contributing to the rapid rise and growth of African-American churches afterwards. Hill concludes that, “the formation of independent black congregations and denominations … proved to be the most profound religious change brought on by the Civil War.” Janet Duitsman Cornelius reaches a similar conclusion in Slave Missions and the Black Church in the Antebellum South (1999), pointing to the significance of antebellum slave mission efforts in particular as preparing the way for the growth of independent African-American churches following the Civil War.

Women and Religion During the Civil War
The subject of women and religion during the Civil War has been partially addressed by historians within the larger context of women reformers, or referred to occasionally against the backdrop of larger Civil War themes. Drew Gilpin Faust, in Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the Civil War (1996), directly addresses the subject, examining the relationship of Southern women’s faith and action. In the absence of men at home, women’s faith sustained them in difficult times, resulted in new spiritual leadership roles in the household, and ultimately led to greater leadership roles within the church.
Two essays in the Religion and the American Civil War volume shed further light on this underdeveloped subject: “Days of Judgment, Days of Wrath: The Civil War and the Religious Imagination of Women Writers” by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and “’Without Pilot or Compass’: Elite Women and Religion in the Civil War South,” by Drew Gilpin Faust. A third essay, “’From It Begins a New Era: Women and the Civil War” (Baptist History and Heritage 32, 3-4, July / October 1997) by Marlene H. Rikard and Elizabeth C. Wells, provides an overview of women in the Civil War era with an emphasis on religion. More work is needed in this field of study.

Denominational Histories
Little has been written in terms of specific denominational histories of the Civil War era. Historians have paid scant attention to the subject, while in-house denominational historians have treated the Civil War as a brief, unfortunate event within the larger history of their respective denominations. Nonetheless, a few works do exist.
Ed Crowther, in his dissertation, “Southern Protestants, Slavery and Secession: A Study in Religious Ideology, 1830-1861” (1986), concludes that the Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations significantly influenced the culture and society of the South in terms of championing slavery and embracing secession. Daniel W. Stowell, in Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877 (1998), traces the post-war growth of Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians in Tennessee and Georgia. Samuel S. Hill’s, “Religion and the Results of the Civil War” (Religion and the American Civil War), examines the post-war activism of Methodists, retrenchment of Southern Baptists, and birth of the Holiness and Pentecostal movements.
Baptists North and South were prominent in the Civil War era. Paul Harvey, in “’Yankee Faith’ and Southern Redemption: White Southern Baptist Ministers from 1850-1890” (Religion and the American Civil War), traces the rise of white supremacy among Southern Baptists during the Civil War and Reconstruction in correlation with Baptist activity in the political arena, contrasted to political reticence prior to the war. On the other hand, Martin Lyndon McMahone, in Liberty More than Separation: The Multiple Streams of Baptist Thought on Church State Issues, 1830-1900 (2001), argues that Baptists in the Civil War era were willing to allow the state to recognize Christianity if no preference were shown for a specific denomination. James Fuller, in the aforementioned Chaplain to the Confederacy: Basil Manly and Baptist Life in the Old South, examines the immense contributions of Baptist minister, slave owner, and Confederate chaplain Basil Manly. Finally, Daniel W. Stowell explores the theme of Baptists, God’s Providence and competing nationalisms in “The Ways of Providence: Baptist Nationalism and Dissent in the Civil War” (Baptist History and Heritage 32, nos. 3-4, July / October, 1997).
Methodist contributions are examined by Gerald J. Smith in Smite Them Hip and Thigh!: Georgia Methodist Ministers in the Confederate Military (1993), and in an essay by Richard Carwardine (“Methodists, Politics and the Coming of the Civil War,” Methodism and the Shaping of American Culture, 2001) which explores Methodist willingness to use politics to perfect society.” Clarence E. Walker, in A Rock in a Weary Land: The African Methodist Episcopal Church During the Civil War and Reconstruction, chronicles the black Methodist experience.
Presbyterian views of the Civil War are examined by James O. Farmer Jr., in The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (1999). Thornwell was an influential, outspoken Presbyterian minister and pro-slavery apologist from South Carolina whose views represented much of the southern mindset concerning slavery and secession.
The Catholic faith and the Civil War is explored by Randall M. Miller in, “Catholic Religion, Irish Ethnicity and the Civil War” (Religion and the American Civil War), and “Catholics in a Protestant World: The Old South Example” (Varieties of Southern Religious Experience, 1988). Stephen J. Ochs, in A Black Patriot and a White Priest: Andre’ Cailloux and Claude Paschal Maistre in Civil War New Orleans (2000), examines a Catholic priest’s ministry to blacks in and southern racial and social dimensions in Louisiana. William B. Faherty and Phillip T. Tucker, in their aforementioned volumes (Exile in Erin and The Confederacy’s Fighting Chaplain, respectively), explored the extraordinary contributions of Irish Catholic Confederate Chaplain John B. Bannon, Jefferson Davis’ personal emissary to Pope Piux IX.

In conclusion, religion and the American Civil War is a field of study which has recently begun to bear increased scholarly fruit. The publication of Religion and the American Civil War in 1998 reflected this growing interest that has led to many new works. In terms of publishing houses, Mercer University Press (Macon, Georgia) and Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge) are currently leading the way in this field of study.
Although no aspects of this field have yet reached full maturity, several areas are notably lacking. Foremost among these are women and religion during the Civil War era, as well as denominational histories of the Civil War era. Regarding the later, Civil War-related histories of minority religious groups (such as Unitarians, Quakers and Jews) and minority sects of large denominations (such as Primitive Baptists), as well as Civil War era social histories of denominations in general, are conspicuously lacking in terms of recent historiography.

pour les références bibliographiques:

http://www.brucegourley.com/writings/Religion%20and%20the%20American%20Civil%20War.doc

Je pose une question peu être stupide, mais un chaplain est un prètre catolique ou un pasteur protestant ?

Un chaplain est un représentant de l'Eglise, donc peut être catholique, orthodoxe, protestant calvinniste, luthérien, évangéliste, israélite, etc

Le choix était fonction des croyants intégrés dans l'armée

En principe l'Amérique profonde est protestante et plutôt tendance évangélique, mais ce n'est pas un absolu loin de là!