David Goldfield: Evangelicals, Republicans and the Civil War

David Goldfield is the Robert Lee Bailey Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, where he teaches courses on the American South. He is the author or editor of 16 books, including “Still Fighting the Civil War”; “The American Journey”; and, most recently, “America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation.”

We often hear the phrase “the party of Lincoln” ascribed to the Republican Party. The image conjures a political movement dedicated to the abolition or restriction of slavery and to saving the Union. A less well-known feature of the party’s early years was its grounding in the evangelical Christianity of the Second Great Awakening.

Not all evangelicals were Republicans, nor were all Republicans evangelicals. But many of its adherents brought a messianic zeal to the political issues of the day, particularly immigration and the extension of slavery into the western territories. The Republican positions on these political issues derived in great part from their belief that America was God’s Chosen Nation and before His blessing could be fulfilled, the nation must be cleansed of its sins. The nature of that cleansing is known as the American Civil War.

The first national Republican convention occurred in Philadelphia in July 1856. It was a time of great agitation on the slavery issue as well as mounting concerns about immigration, often expressed in violent clashes between Catholics and Protestants in the nation’s growing cities....