America in 1861 presents a painful and complex chapter in history. God, however, had a plan for the American people, and God remained present during the painful chapter. God appears most in this period in the soldiers fighting the Civil War. Along the banks of the Rappahannock River in 1863, both armies faced one another in battle; however, both armies also faced a revival of religion. The paradox of revival in two armies facing one another presents an example of God’s ability to use revival to accomplish His purposes in spite of human conflict.
The revivals during the last half of the Civil War proved similarly effective in both armies, but I will primarily explore the revival among the Confederate armies. Extensive literature documenting the revivals in the Confederate armies exists, as Lost Cause supporters during Reconstruction used the revivals to support their ideology. I will use some of the documents arising from Lost Cause authors, but my focus remains on God’s work in the war among the soldiers not supporting a nostalgic or racist view of the antebellum or wartime south. My focus on the southern armies arises from the prevalence of documents rather than any attempt to prove the righteousness of the southern cause.
THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE REVIVAL
Pre 1861 America
While many modern interpreters of the American situation before the Civil War view the war as a simple moral war in which one party supported slavery and the other party arose as a benevolent deliverer of an oppressed people, the actual situation in America proved much more complex. Americans, from both north and south, had sanctioned or at least ignored slavery for nearly a century. White men ruled the country, and obvious examples of misogyny and racism rarely arose as issues in a land that voiced the values of liberty and equality. The powerful elites from both north and south worked to protect the prominent position of the light-skinned and masculine. The first and second Great Awakenings had revived religion in America, but paternalistic racism remained unaddressed. Religion focused mostly on benevolence within the paternalistic system rather than valuing or empowering all humans.
Slavery in America found support in the hermeneutical principles of American religion in both the North and the South. Mark A. Noll describes the unique hermeneutic of America:
Americans held to a hermeneutic that was distinctly American. The reason they held it so implicitly was precisely that this hermeneutic—compounded of a distinctly Reformed approach to the scope of biblical authority (“every direction contained in its pages as applicable at all times to all men”) and a distinctly American intuition that privileged commonsense readings of scriptural texts (“a literal interpretation of the Bible”)—had functioned as the vehicle through which the Bible was unleashed in the creation of the American civilization.[1]
Plain readings of the Bible led to silent, submissive women and obedient slaves. Radical abolitionists departed from the plain reading of the Bible supported by almost all Americans. Noll discusses the prevailing view in America that attacks against slavery were “infidel attacks against the authority of the Bible itself.”[2] The letter of the Bible does not prohibit slavery, and its many descriptions of slave-master relationships seemed to support the institution. America lacked a hermeneutic in which biblical principles could rise above the use of proof texts that seemed to support the existing order.
White male supremacy dominated life in America. The radical abolitionists pushed the issue of slavery as an ethical principle, but the abolitionists missed the larger issue of mass oppression of entire racial groups and females. America remained stuck in a world voicing the values of equality and liberty while using religion and social systems to maintain a white paternalistic system. Racism prevailed even among many abolitionists. George M. Frederickson describes the common view that abolition of slavery would eliminate those of darker skin from white America:
Sympathy for the black victims of “the peculiar institution” and forthright condemnations of racial inequality as the essence of slavery’s sinfulness were not the dominant themes in this emancipationist discourse. Some prominent northern clergymen even contributed to the Malthusian or proto-Darwinist racism that permitted white supremacists to support emancipation on the expectation that it would lead to a struggle for existence between the races that would end only with the elimination of the exotic African stock from the American population.[3]
Some northerners viewed slavery as evil in spite of the prevailing literal interpretation of the Bible, but few saw the larger issue of racism and sexism. African Americans like Frederick Douglas saw the problem in terms of racism, but the voices of African Americans had little power in antebellum America. As difficult as it might seem to modern minds, many Americans viewed slavery as a more benevolent way to care for the weaker working class than the northern system of paid factory workers. The North increasingly pointed to slavery as proof of moral superiority while the South pointed to the North’s abusive labor system as proof of moral superiority. The oppression of entire races and women rarely arose as the issue.
The Second Great Awakening had different effects on northern and southern religious practice. Northern evangelicals primarily expressed awakening through community transformation.[4] Revival led to community transformation, and the abolition of the evil institution of slavery arose in the minds of the abolitionist as a natural effect of awakening. Southerners, however, felt revival as personal rather than societal. To the southern mind the church existed as a spiritual entity, and social or political issues remained out of the realm of religion. The prevailing ethic of the North arose as social transformation while social preservation arose as the prevailing ethic of the South. The separation of church and state, a southern value, prevented the church from influencing politics, and slavery remained a political issue. The Great Awakenings arose in the South among common people, and southerners felt that religion or common people lacked the power to influence the elite slaveholding gentry.[5]
Issues Related to War
America in 1861 polarized around regional differences. “Each side saw itself as guardian of the nation’s heritage of liberty.”[6] Philip Shaw Paludan points out that the larger story of the war arises from the “transition of the United States from an agrarian society into a market-driven and more industrialized society.”[7] Shattuck believed the religion of America that had unified the nation increasingly formed “one of several ideological factors responsible for exacerbating the sectional conflict.”[8] Preservation of a white paternalistic structure lay at the heart of the issues separating the regions. Slavery arose as the primary issue midway through the war, but in 1861 the regions conflicted over which system best provided the labor needed to support the power elite. Paludan observes the dichotomy from leaders of each region. Southern leaders defended slavery as a benevolent family system of interdependent Christian communities where owners behaved more like parents than masters. The North “was a world where so-called economic equality hid in base hypocrisy the self-centered idolatry of the race for wealth. In fact, free society denied God’s admonition to love one another by atomizing it into a race of each against all.”[9] Two systems of preserving wealth through oppression of labor, class, race, and gender conflicted.
The common soldier, however, fought for different reasons. Charles Reagan Wilson observes the motive of the common person in 1861:
For the mass of southerners, the war was about freedom, the freedom of whites to control local institutions, to resist government interference, and to pursue economic opportunity. For northerners, the war was about preservation of the Union as the protection of self-government that enabled Americans to pursue economic opportunity and self-rule.[10]
The common soldier in the South justified the war as an honorable defense against northern aggression. The average northern soldier justified the war as a means of preserving a God-ordained union. Both sides felt as if God sanctioned their cause.
Religious impasse frequently leads to violence. When two sides feel ordained by God little room exists for compromise, and America in 1861 quickly moved toward war. Noll describes the impasse as it arose from American hermeneutics: “The obvious crisis that bore directly on the fate of the nation was that ‘simple’ reading of the Bible yielded violently incommensurate understandings of Scripture with no means, short of warfare, to adjudicate the differences.”[11] Noll continues, “Constructive orthodox theology was the major loser when American believers allowed bullets instead of hermeneutical self-consciousness to determine what the Bible said about slavery.”[12] In the underlying religious split, power elites from each region drove wedges between two similar views of religion. The nature of the split, however, remained elusive to the average soldier who fought for defense of his home in the South and preservation of the Union in the North. Common soldiers on both sides saw their cause as righteous, and the soldier soon began looking to God to support his cause. Summers describes the environment surrounding the common soldier in1861 as “a ready made congregation of kindling in need of a religious spark.”[13]
Soldiers on both sides remembered the Second Great Awakenings, and the common people who made up both armies came from simple religious groups that gained influence in the previous decades. Woodworth observes the relationship between the Second Great Awakening and the Civil War Revivals: “The forms, methods, assumptions, and terminology of the Second Great Awakening provided the framework and trappings for the religious beliefs and practices of the Civil War soldiers.”[14] Camp meetings and experiential religion remained key to the soldiers’ religious expectation.
1861-1862
Immorality quickly arose during the start of the conflict as men assembled together in an environment without the restraining forces of mixed company and social expectations. Summers observes the state of the southern soldier: “While it was true that the vast majority of the Confederate Army came from a nominal Protestant Christian background, or at least were familiar with the language and themes of the Bible, the typical southern soldier at the beginning of the war could be stereotyped as a ‘backslider.’”[15] Soldiers during the first years of the war engaged in drunkenness, gambling, cursing, and other immoral practice. Religion remained in the minds of the soldiers, but the temptations and challenges of morality during war prevailed. Woodworth observes the limited effect of religion in the early years of the war: “The Americans, an overwhelming religious people, were at war with each other, but the religion they shared in common was still with them—still vital to them—a discordant note in the midst of civil strife.”[16] Both sides felt the war would end quickly. Two years into the war with no end in sight and the costs mounting thoughts turned from celebrating victory to coping with the effects of war.
1863
The major conflicts of 1863 demonstrated carnage and horror past imagination, and the soldier found himself in a surreal world where faith would reenter his thinking. Both sides began taking chaplaincy seriously and the early chaplains who had joined the armies for an easy assignment had returned home. The few remaining chaplains exhibited genuine faith and zeal. Bible societies and colporteurs finally began producing materials related to the daily plight of the soldier. The protracted conflict also led both sides to proclaim national days of prayer and fasting to seek answers and God’s favor.
Victory at Chancellorsville for the South marked a decided turning point in the religious environment of the common soldier. General Jackson, the icon of religious piety and southern might, died in an accidental friendly fire, and the minds of the soldiers turned toward faith. Sidney Romero observes the religious fervor:
The revival tide flowed forcefully and rapidly throughout the armies of the Confederacy. Chaplain J. M. Stokes, Third Georgia Volunteers, expressed the belief that there never before had existed a greater revival spirit than the one that pervaded the Army of Northern Virginia in the spring of 1863. It was said that protracted meetings were in progress in every regiment.[17]
- W. Bennett quotes chaplain A. D. McVoy in the spring of 1863: “I have never found men listen with more profound attention to the word of God. We seem to be upon the eve of a gracious revival and outpouring of the Holy Spirit, for which we are praying, watching, and struggling.”[18] Revival had begun in the southern army along the banks of the Rappahannock, but the victorious celebration of Hooker’s retreat from Chancellorsville would soon turn to deep questions surrounding the loss of General Jackson, the fall of Vicksburg, and the horrors of Gettysburg.
Both armies returned to the banks of the Rappahannock after Gettysburg, and more permanent camps formed in preparation for the coming winter. The permanent camps created environments on both sides where camp meetings could prevail. Benjamin Lacy describes the growing revival: “During the fall of 1863 and the spring and winter preceding Grant’s attack on May 5, 1864, the revival reached its greatest heights, spreading from company to regiment, from regiment to brigade, from brigade to division, from division to army corps, until the entire Army of Northern Virginia was seriously affected.”[19] John H. Worsham describes the scene at Montpelier after the retreat from Gettysburg:
The interest manifested was so great that the seats were taken in the afternoon by such men as were not on duty; and when night relieved from duty those who had been drilling, etc., the men stood up in immense numbers around those who were seated…The gathering, each night, of the bronzed and grizzly warriors, devoutly worshiping, was a wonderful picture in the army, and when some old familiar hymn was given out, those thousands of warriors would make hill and dell ring.[20]
Revival in the Army of Northern Virginia erupted into the familiar form of camp meetings, and thousands found salvation. Troy D. Harman describes the tone of the revival:
After Gettysburg the revivals occurred on a much larger scale. This was evident almost immediately upon the army’s return from Pennsylvania, as there was a general sentiment within the rank-in-file of the need for repentance. There was a sense that the losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg were the results of God’s punishment for ongoing sins in both Lee’s army and the Confederate nation.[21]
A sense of repentance and expectation of renewal prevailed in both armies on either side of the Rappahannock. Some looked to God to advance their cause, but the revivals to the common soldier arose more from a need to seek religious solace in the horror of war than promotion of the corporate cause. Both sides demonstrated a growing sense of repentance for national sins.
Revivals appeared on both sides of the Rappahannock. Abundant reports of revival in the southern army exist within the works of witnesses who sought to promote the Lost Cause mentality during Reconstruction in the South. W. W. Bennett and J. William Jones provide extensive first hand reports of extended meetings in which thousands sought prayer and salvation. Jones relates one meeting in which 610 came forward for prayer and over 200 professed salvation. He estimates that over 500 found salvation each week in the late 1863 camps.[22]. J. F. J. Caldwell gives a typical description of the revival scene: “Now, however, almost everyone seemed to become concerned. The most ordinary preachers drew large congregations; scarcely a day passed without a sermon; there was not a night, but the sound of prayer and hymn singing was heard.”[23] Jones quotes Hugh Roy Scott concerning the peace of God felt in the late 1863 camps along the Rappahannock: “This was an evening never to be forgotten by any who were present. The Holy Spirit was evidently with us, working with power in many hearts; and Jesus was also there, manifesting His power and willingness to save.”[24]
The midpoint of the war and the lack of major conflict as winter approached created a sense of peace in God unusual for armies facing one another across a river. Bennett describes the unusual sense of peace from God found in the men remembering the horror and loss of war and facing the prospect of death and suffering in the coming year: “Such camp-meetings were never seen before in America. The bivouac of the soldier never witnessed such nights of glory and days of splendor. The Pentecostal fire lights the camp, and the hosts of armed men sleep beneath the wings of angels rejoicing over many sinners that have repented.”[25] Two armies faced each other while both felt the effects of revival.
1864-1865
At home, the people grew fatigued by the protracted war, and religious interest decreased. The soldiers, however, faced renewed carnage with religious expectation. The prevailing attitude arose that the war existed as a mystical judgment on the nation for its sins. Soldiers rarely saw slavery as the sin, but the soldiers faced mounting loss and suffering with a sense of religious penance. Woodworth observes: “The war was a punishment for sin, and the North felt that punishment as well as the South because the North had been part of a nation that had for four score and seven years tolerated slavery.”[26]
The revivals slowed due to renewed troop activity and the impossibility of large scale camp meetings, but the sense that God worked in the background to accomplish some unknown purpose through the horror of war prevailed on both sides.[27] Woodworth observes the mentality: “Sometimes the faith of the soldiers was simply that God was using the war to accomplish his purposes but that those purposes—not necessarily the emancipation or punishment of anybody—were probably unknowable at the present time.”[28] The war continued for two years after 1863, and the revivals allowed men on both sides to face death while increasingly helping the South to cope with mounting losses and destruction.
The Revial in General
Some observers today see the revival as a product of Lost Cause rhetoric in the South, but the effects of the revival and its impact on post-war life suggest that God moved among the common soldiers. Woodworth describes the revivals on both sides of the conflict:
The revivals in the armies, beginning in the summer of 1862 and continuing more or less through the end of the war, had been an amazing phenomenon. Such a thing never occurred in any other American war. Although it is customary to refer to what happened in the armies as a series of revivals, it is really more accurate to think of it as a single large revival, approximately two and a half years long, occasionally interrupted by military operations.[29]
Lacy calls the revivals in the southern armies “among the most unusual in history.”[30] He observes the revival alongside the immoral tendency of armies at war: “Therefore, to find a great revival maintained over a period of years in a body of troops spread throughout a large territory is an interesting and instructive phenomenon.”[31] Lost Cause supporters used the revivals to cope with southern defeat, but Bledsoe observes,
Unlike some elements of Confederate nationalism, revivalism was not a product of the elite or a tool for manipulation of the masses. It was, by most estimates, entirely sincere…the chaplains and the soldiers were mainly concerned with simple issues of personal salvation and repentance, and the message of the revivals remained sharply focused on these issues.[32]
In the history of American revivals, the Civil War revivals mark a continuation of the Second Great Awakening. Gene Brooks places the revivals historically within the Prayer Meeting Revivals of the 1850s and calls the revival the last of the nationwide revival movements.[33] Shattuck likewise places the revivals within the Prayer Meeting revivals of the 1850s: “The Army revivals of 1861-1865 did not arise in isolation from other religious trends in America. They were in fact, part of a greater revivalistic movement at work in the nineteenth century. The revivals in the Civil War armies were linked most closely to the so-called ‘businessman’s’ revival of 1857.”[34] The revivals arose as sincere men sought God amidst the prolonged horror of war. Most modern observers agree that 100,000 to 200,000 individuals found salvation on each side and that 5 to 10 percent of participants in the war found salvation.
Modern revisionist historians who paint the southern soldier as a racist defender of slavery obscure the revival in the southern armies. The common soldier fought for other principles. Bennett observes, “Whatever may be the judgment of the world as to the principles on which the southern people entered into strife, it must be admitted that they brought with them into it, and carried with them through it, a deep and strong religious element.”[35] A genuine move of God never occurs for the promotion of political agitators. The salvation of the common soldier facing death and horror forms the primary effect of the revival. Bennett observes, “Christianity visits and reforms every grade of human society; and some of its greatest miracles of grace are wrought upon the most wicked subjects, and in the worst localities.”[36] Thousands found salvation and entered eternity during the conflict.
The Civil War revivals provide an example of God’s grace to common men under distress. Bledsoe observes the nature of the revival as it arose from common men without prominent revival leaders: “Confederate revivalism was profoundly influenced by the personal nature of southern Christianity, and as a result its origins and momentum lay primarily with the common soldiers.”[37] Chaplains, evangelists, and colporteurs on both sides certainly aided the revival, but the revival itself sprung from the common participant. Lost Cause rhetoric focuses on religious influence from Confederate leaders, but the truth remains that most prominent leaders found religion in the war rather than bringing religion to the soldier during the war. General Lee, General Jackson, and J. E. B. Stuart expressed faith before the war, but most prominent leaders including Generals Ewell, Anderson, Bragg, Pender, Paxton, Hood, Hardee, and Joseph Johnston along with Confederate President Jefferson Davis expressed religious conversion during the revival. The revivals on both sides arose from common soldiers who influenced leaders and eventually the nation as the converted soldiers returned home. Woodworth observes the spontaneous move of God:
The Great Revival, as it came to be called, grew and flourished in nearly all the armies, North and South, East and West. It had no particular birthplace, and though religious awakening might spread from one regiment to another, it is impossible to trace any particular geographic flow or progression in a movement that seemed as spontaneous as the blooming of prairie wildflowers in the spring.[38]
He continues, “The revivals in the various armies were the sum total of a great many personal revivals in individual soldiers.”[39]
The significant obstacles to revival on both sides arose from troop movements, weather, lack of Bibles, lack of chaplains, and weak organization. Troop movements and engagements prevented the camp meetings. The final two years of the war involved almost constant movement and engagement, but the revival persisted as each soldier personalized their faith. The revival obviously ended with the war, but the effects of personal faith in the returning soldiers influenced religion across America in the coming decades.
The obvious immediate effect of the Civil War revival appears in the salvation and comfort of hundreds of thousands of suffering soldiers facing death. Although estimates of conversions range from 200,000, the number of marginal Christians who found faith in the revivals remains undocumented. Bennett estimates that one third of the Confederate Army became “praying Christians” during the conflict.[40] Many of the converted soldiers died and entered eternity before the conflict ended. The revivals also influenced American society. Bledsoe points to the societal effects: “The Great Revivals represent a profound influence upon the spiritual and social experiences of Confederate soldiers during the war.”[41] The stratified social structure of America that led to the conflict changed through the egalitarian and ecumenical nature of the revivals. Common men who had submitted to social stratum discovered power to influence their world.
After the revivals of 1863 along the Rappahannock the South seemed resigned to defeat and accepted defeat as part of a God ordained penance for societal sins. While most never admitted slavery as the sin, the concept of submission to God’s unknowable plan emerged. The observer might speculate that General Lee’s choice to surrender at Appomattox rather than enter a guerilla conflict stemmed from resignation to God’s chastisement of society as it arose in the revival. The sounds of prayer arising from opposite shores of the Rappahannock in 1863 certainly influenced southern ability to admit defeat to the North and the North’s later desire to reconstruct the nation rather than punish the defeated South.
Although the nation struggled for more than a hundred years to face the racism that both sides denied as the underlying cause of the war, the revivals prepared both sides to allow God to accomplish higher purposes in the nation than personal salvation or support of political interests. After the war, issues of national morality and equality rose to the surface. Women’s suffrage, prohibition, labor relations and unions, and national unity around larger purposes necessary for two subsequent world wars established their foundation in the underlying purposes of God in the revivals among opposing armies during the Civil War. Faust observes the effect on later American society:
And just as the Civil War brought a ‘moment of truth’—to borrow Genovese’s apt phrase—to master-slave interaction and to the evangelically based doctrines of paternalism, so too its social dislocations forced other groups to explore their social and spiritual identities, to look anew at their lives and experiences within the context of meaning that religious belief had always provided.[42]
Women in the South, for example, through the demands of war began “to see their identities and interests as distinct from those of their men.”[43]
Many men returning home from the war had faced horror and death and found strength in God. Prior to the war most saw religion as feminine, but after the war the masculine image of the warrior Christian prevailed. The returning men carried their newfound faith across America. The effects prove difficult to document as they arose from common and nameless persons, but the influence of 200,000 returning Christians would arguably affect American religion for decades. The South, for example, gave birth to the Bible Belt, an influential force today. The spiritualized church of the antebellum South transformed into a new center for American Christianity and social influence. Bledsoe observes the lasting effects of the struggle for faith in the Confederate revival: “At its heart, Confederate revivalism was a movement based upon the most fundamental issues touching the lives of individual soldiers; questions of providence, assurance, and redemption are as valid today as they were in the 1860s.”[44]
Many returning soldiers went on to lead churches and influence their communities. Summers observes, “For while the Civil War was a great harvest of death and destruction, it also brought a harvest of souls to the church. Many of the men who survived the war continued to lead churches and revivals themselves after the guns were finally silenced.”[45] The concept of acceptance of God’s will in temporal defeat arose in the Confederate revival also. Shattuck observes, “Religion in the South made its most useful contribution to Southern culture only after the war ended, when it emerged as a convincing symbol of the value of spiritual victory in the midst of earthly defeat.”[46] The Church in America emerged as a transformative agent in both the North and the South, and later missionary movements might trace their origin to the personal piety of the soldier as he returned home to transform his community. The ecumenical and egalitarian nature of the revival led to a national sense of faith and social justice that influenced America profoundly over the next century.
God works in the horror of human destruction to accomplish purposes that go past immediate understanding. America in the 1860s failed to deal with underlying inequality and exploitation of an entire racial class. Polarized and dichotomist views of history or of current social conflicts rarely reveal the actual sin underlying the issue. The Civil War in a way functioned as a national release of guilt for both northerners and southerners, and God’s concern for the individual soldier points to His ultimate plan. The revivals of 1861-1865 formed a unique move of God that influenced America in many ways. God works in the horror and pain of human society within a fallen world in the darkest of times, and the Civil War revival points to hope for a move of God today when Christian leadership seems hopelessly compromised and politics seem likewise hopelessly polarized. Hopefully, the move of God arises without the painful loss of war.
Bennett, William W. A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies During the Late Civil War Between the States of the Federal Union. Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1976.
Bledsoe, Andrew Scott. “‘We Are a Spectacle to God’: The Phenomenon of Confederate Revivalism.” Academic Forum 23 (2005-2006): 37-59.
Brooks, Gene. “The Revivals in the Confederate Armies as Part of the Great Prayer Meeting Revival 1858-1865.” Sunday in the South, 2008. Accessed July 11, 2015. http://www.oocities.org/genebrooks/mh520.html.
Caldwell, J. F. J. The History Of A Brigade of South Carolinians: Known First As “Gregg’s” And Subsequently As “McGowan’s Brigade.” Marietta, GA: Continental Book Company, 1951.
Faust, Drew Gilpin. “‘Without Pilot or Compass:’ Elite Women and Religion in the Civil War South.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 250-260. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. “Days of Judgment, Days of Wrath: The Civil War and the Religious Imagination of Women Writers.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 229-249. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Frederickson, George M. “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the Civil War Crisis.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 110-130. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Genovese, Eugene D. “Religion and the Collapse of the Union.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 74-88. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Harman, Troy D. The Great Revival of 1863: Effects Upon Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Edited by Kurtis Toppert and Walter Seager. Damascus, MD: Penny Hill Press, 2013. Kindle.
Jones, J. William. Christ in the Camp: The True Story of the Great Revival During the War Between the States. Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1986.
Lacy, Benjamin. “Revival in the confederate Army.” Heart Cry Journal 15 (2001). Accessed July 11, 2015. https://www.lifeaction.org/revival-resources/heart-cry-journal/issue-15/revival-confederate-army/.
McPherson, James M. “Afterword.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 408-412. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Michels, William. Beneath the Wings of Angels: Religious Revivals in the Army of Northern Virginia. N.p.: Amazon Digital, 2015. Kindle.
Miller, Randall M., Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson. “Introduction.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 3-18. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Noll, Mark A. “The Bible and Slavery.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 43-73. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Paludan, Phillip Shaw. “Religion and the American Civil War.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 21-40. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Romero, Sidney J. Religion in the Rebel Ranks. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983.
Shattuck, Gardiner H. A Shield and a Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987.
Stout, Harry S., and Christopher Grasso. “Civil War, Religion, and Communications: The Case of Richmond.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 313-359. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Summers, Mark. “The Great Harvest: Revival in the Confederate Army During the Civil War.” Religion and Liberty 21, no. 3. (2015). Accessed July 11, 2015. http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-21-number-3/great-harvest-revival-confederate-army-during-civi.
Wilson, Charles Reagan. “Religion and the American Civil War in Comparative Perspective.” In Religion and the American Civil War. Edited by Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, 385-407. New York: Oxford, 1998.
Woodworth, Steven E. While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001.
Worsham, John H. One Of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry. New York: Neale, 1912
[1] Mark A Noll, “The Bible and Slavery,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford, 1998), 46-47.
[2] Ibid., 44.
[3] George M. Frederickson, “The Coming of the Lord: The Northern Protestant Clergy and the Civil War Crisis,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford, 1998), 119.
[4] Gardiner H. Shattuck, A Shield and a Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 2.
[5] Ibid., 4.
[6] Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson, “Introduction,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford, 1998), 7.
[7] Phillip Shaw Paludan, “Religion and the American Civil War,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford, 1998), 21.
[8] Shattuck, 1.
[9] Paludan, 22.
[10] Charles Reagan Wilson, “Religion and the American Civil War in Comparative Perspective,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford, 1998), 396.
[11] Noll, 49.
[12] Ibid., 66.
[13] Mark Summers, “The Great Harvest: Revival in the Confederate Army During the Civil War,” Religion and Liberty 21, no. 3 (2015), accessed July 11, 2015, http://www.acton.org/pub/religion-liberty/volume-21-number-3/great-harvest-revival-confederate-army-during-civi.
[14] Steven E. Woodworth, While God is Marching On: The Religious World of Civil War Soldiers (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2001), 8.
[15] Summers.
[16] Woodworth, 4.
[17] Sidney J. Romero, Religion in the Rebel Ranks (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1983), 114.
[18] William W. Bennett, A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies During the Late Civil War Between the States of the Federal Union (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1976), 275.
[19] Benjamin Lacy, “Revival in the Confederate Army,” Heart Cry Journal 15 (2001), accessed July 11, 2015, https://www.lifeaction.org/revival-resources/heart-cry-journal/issue-15/revival-confederate-army/.
[20] John H. Worsham, One Of Jackson’s Foot Cavalry (New York: The Neale Publishing Company, 1912), 182.
[21] Troy D. Harman, The Great Revival of 1863: Effects Upon Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, ed. Kurtis Toppert and Walter Seager (Damascus, MD: Penny Hill Press, 2013), 9, Kindle.
[22] J. William Jones, Christ in the Camp: The True Story of the Great Revival During the War Between the States (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle, 1986), 338.
[23] J. F. J. Caldwell, The History Of A Brigade of South Carolinians: Known First As “Gregg’s” And Subsequently As “McGowan’s Brigade” (Marietta, GA: Continental Book Company, 1951), 112-113.
[24] Jones, 289.
[25] Bennett, 323.
[26] Woodworth, 263.
[27] Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address presents the best example of the prevailing attitude that God’s purpose in the war was unknowable.
[28] Ibid.
[29] Ibid., 253.
[30] Lacy.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Andrew Scott Bledsoe, “‘We Are a Spectacle to God’: The Phenomenon of Confederate Revivalism,” Academic Forum 23 (2005-2006): 42.
[33] Gene Brooks, “The Revivals in the Confederate Armies as Part of the Great Prayer Meeting Revival 1858-1865,” Sunday in the South, 2008, accessed July 11, 2015, http://www.oocities.org/genebrooks/mh520.html.
[34] Shattuck, 83.
[35] Bennett, 9.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Bledsoe, 37.
[38] Woodworth, 214.
[39] Ibid., 217.
[40] Bennett, 413.
[41] Bledsoe, 39.
[42] Drew Gilpin Faust, “‘Without Pilot or Compass:’ Elite Women and Religion in the Civil War South,” in Religion and the American Civil War, ed. Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout, and Charles Reagan Wilson (New York: Oxford, 1998), 251.
[43] Ibid.
[44] Bledsoe, 51-52.
[45] Summers.
[46] Shattuck, 12.
Life Change 