Role Of The Clergy During The Civil War

In 1994, McPherson wrote the book, What They Fought For: 1861-1865, about his exploration on the motivations of the soldiers that fought in the Civil War (“James M. McPherson” par. 6). He analyzed the letters and diaries of twenty-five thousand soldiers, ultimately determining the reasons for the soldier’s continuance to fight during the Civil War.

Umberto Eco once wrote that “The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.” In Warren Lee Goss’ first person narrative, “Recollections of A Private ,” and Robert E. Lee’s letter, “Letter to His Son,” both demonstrate each of their relationships with the war. Their firsthand accounts share similar feelings and attitudes, at some points, although they fought on opposing sides. One can infer that many young men were eager to join the Union Army because they knew they had nothing to lose versus a “new nation” in a state of anarchy. Goss explained how he was first anxious by writing, “I had a fluctuation of desires; I was fainthearted and brave; I wanted to enlist, and yet - Here I turned the knob, and was relieved…” (Goss 500). War

Thomas Jefferson wrote of the Catholic Church in France: ‘History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government.’ Jefferson, in his own book of biblical stories, suggested that religion was a set of moral conventions that promoted social harmony. But with antipathy between America’s Protestant and Catholic populations at the time, social harmony had yet to be promoted. Howard Zinn writes that the prejudice apparent in the Civil War period included not only ‘racial hatred for blacks’ and ‘nativist fury against immigrants’, but also ‘religious warfare against Catholics.’

During the time of the American Civil War, the new Confederate States of America formed out of the previous Southern states. This new Confederacy formed its mission partially on a religious basis, with the Christian ministers leading the way. The South was a very Christian society, formed of a variety of Southern Protestant churches, and this stayed at the heart of who the Southerners wanted their new nation to be. When the Civil War started, the Southerners also looked to their religious leaders to help guide them through a difficult time, filled with heavy losses. Christian ministers began to preach about God’s plan for the Civil War, making their battle into more of a Crusade to protect their holy values. By speaking about religious issues

For Cause and Comrades is a book written by James McPherson, with the help of diaries and letters written by soldiers from the Confederate and Union forces, he is able to formally detail accounts on why men fought in the civil war. Consequently, McPherson is able to shed light on the mentality and motives that soldiers possessed that made them fight in the war. Although we will never truly know why soldiers fought in the civil war, this book most definitely gives readers evidence that soldiers had certain values and morals that gave them reason to fight.

The wave of conversions had a profound impact on America for many years following the war. Notably, in the South, their faith was almost all they had left after a humbling defeat. I will close with the prayer of a Confederate soldier, William Russell, which describes the beliefs and attitudes many Southern and Union soldiers displayed during the war after the Great Revival: “Oh Lord, if we should go into battle, be thou our shield & hiding place. If it is consistent with thy will, that any of us should be killed, may we have a happy admittance into thy Kingdom

In the novel "The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara, the story is told from the perspective of the men that fought in the war of Gettysburg in Pennsylvania on July 1863. We are able to see both sides of the combatants, their struggles they faced, friendships acquired, losses, personal stories and their views. In history we only learn the superficial information of how it occurred in the battle and the outcome of it, but we do not know how it happened and how much effort it took to fight in that war. Sharra enables the reader to feel as if the reader is living the war with her description of each of the characters and actions they did. We are able to know their religious views of each individual. In each they were religious although some more than others. Some had their reasons as to why they were "religious" and some as to why they had lost their faith in God. Some will face challenges that will change their views of religion and some to question if what they believe is correct or what their friend is correct.

This shows the important of conversion, that is was an event worthy of writing to her son. This follows along with the common trends of religion throughout the Civil War, and the effect that the war had on religion. The war turned people towards religion, which is understandable due to the amount of loss of life, goods, and property. Christianity gives hope to those who need hope in the fact that after an ‘earthly’ life, there is a wonderful ‘heavenly’ life. In the events of the destruction of the Civil War hope was necessary to have

The United States has always had a rocky history and at much more often instances than we would like to admit because of controversial actions of its own citizen’s with regard to the Constitution. The Civil War of 1861 up until 1865 was one of America’s first industrial modern conflict involving very sensitive social issues on slavery that divided the nation and pitted American men against other American men. Prior to the Civil War, many slaves were brought from African territories to work in plantations as a free labor force. As a justification to owning slaves, it was imbedded that slaves where inherently inferior and as in many cases, treated less kindly than an animal would be. Much of these influences where brought from the European counterparts that the Americans had broken apart from, and unlike America, Europe was in a process of changing slaves into a force of wage labor, although they were still treated as subhuman. Since the Southern part of the United States had such a strong dependency on wealth through slave labor, many new equality ideologies and industrialization from the north caused great rifts and tensions between competing and opposite ideologies were one attempted to influence the other. Thus, the Civil War was a conflict of slavery due to a changing market revolution, the manifest destiny, and new found ideologies on concepts about slavery and freedom.

In 1642, Civil war broke out in Britain. On one side was Parliament. On the other side was the King. Ever since the beginning of his reign, there was unease between the king and the parliament. The reasons for this were money, religion and power. Money was an issue for Charles because he was a very flamboyant person and spent large amounts of money unnecessarily. This lead to him running out of it and Parliament did not approve. Religion was an issue as Charles was obliquely trying to change the country back to Catholicism. This wasn’t a good thing to do because the nation had finally settled on Protestant beliefs. Power, and who gets it, was an issue as Parliament believed

According to the author, Evangelical revivalism was the dominant form of religious expression in early nineteenth century. The separation of church and state was one of the main reasons for the rapid rise of revivalism as stated the author, along with the hunger for intense religious experience and eagerness for a sense of community, people joined together in search of religious salvation. It gave the people the conversion experience that they so yearned for, and also the popular, emotional and less constrained religion. At cane ridge were twenty five thousand people gathered between August 6 and the 12th, it was said that people had these physical conversion experiences were they moaned and cried for mercy. People yearned for experience like this which was not offered by the Quakers or any another religious sect from the previous century. A minister at cane ridge named James Campbell was quoted as saying: ”’Sinners dropping on every hand shrieking, crying convoluted, professors praying agonizing falling down in distress.’” This just goes to show how intense the experiences were. This was one of the differences between the zeal of the transformed American religion and the old

The way a president or world leader can affect their respective countries or others with one decision or action is intriguing. They often have to make difficult decisions that can be often become controversial depending on the beliefs and views of the country’s citizens. Although the president has advisors, congress and the rest of the government; I find the amount of consideration and pressure that they put into decisions to be interesting. The code and conduct of how a world leader should act and make decisions is extremely important; with the lives of their citizens on the line, each moral and ethical decision needs to be made clearly and effectively. “Because the presidency of the United States entails great power, the decisions of individual

“The War Prayer” by Mark Twain is set in a southern American church during wartime. This church has gathered in the spirit of patriotism, and is praying and pleading with God to not only help them to victory but to smite their enemies. The preacher and his congregation see only from their own perspective, they want God to ensure their own triumph. The “messenger” from the story tries to warn the congregation that their prayers are back-handed, a prayer for one success is a simultaneous prayer for another’s defeat. Christians aren’t supposed to pray for the murder and destruction of others, it is in conflict with everything we believe in. Twain tries to emphasize the hypocritical nature of such “Christian” practices. The church from the story

Lincoln was successful also in inspiring supporters to endlessly make personal sacrifices for the goodwill of civilization. According to the scholarly article, “ Power Motivation, Activation, and Inspirational Speeches,” written by Robert Steele, it gives, “detailed account of evidence of Inspirational Motivation quality of Abraham Lincoln” (Steele, 1977). One of the most convenient groups on which to measure the impact of Lincoln’s leadership skills are the Armed Forces of the Army of the Potomac. Abraham established his inspiring quality when Southern Armed Forces maintained the struggle for four long years Confederate Armed Forces had a tremendous motivational advantage over their counterparts in the North. He believes the fact that they

The battle at Fort Sumter sparked the birth of the Confederacy. Eleven states joined together to stand up for their viewpoints; forming the Confederate States of America. They believed each individual state should have the power to govern itself; second, the belief that slavery was ordained by God and evidence of support could be found in the Bible. The Christian religion had its part in shaping the Civil War.