Righteous Strife

Praise

“There is no greater interpreter of how religious thought and imagery shaped Abraham Lincoln’s statecraft than Richard Carwardine, who has now turned his attention to broader questions of how a clash of theological worldviews gave us what Lincoln called ‘a new birth of freedom.’ With grace and insight, Carwardine sheds new and important light on issues of perennial significance in America’s past—and present.” —Jon Meacham, author of And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

“An extraordinary and indispensable book—with radiant prose, Carwardine evokes Americans’ profound yearning to divine the workings of Providence and to define the Civil War as a holy conflict.” —Elizabeth R. Varon, author of Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

“Not since James Moorhead’s American Apocalypse, almost fifty years ago, have we had so thorough an exposition of religion’s place as a motivator, a definer, and a divider in the American Civil War. No one has a more vast command of the intellectual geography of American religion in the mid-nineteenth-century than Richard Carwardine, and no one paints in more complex and comprehensive colors the labors of the American soul to come to terms with the war that wracked its national body from 1861 to 1865.” —Allen C. Guelzo, author of Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment

“Righteous Strife is the greatest work yet by one of our truly outstanding scholars of the Civil War era. How did a people that, as Lincoln put it, read the same Bible and prayed to the same God come to slaughter each other so? With his singular subtlety backed with a lifetime of learning, Richard Carwardine explains by embedding slavery, antislavery, and nationalism in the history of American Protestantism as never before.” —Sean Wilentz, author of No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding

“An extraordinary range of research supports Richard Carwardine’s riveting account of the competing Christian nationalisms that confronted Abraham Lincoln during the crisis of the Civil War. Righteous Strife excels in explaining Lincoln’s own complicated religious views and how those views shaped his cautious course toward supporting abolition and full rights for African Americans, while he was contending with at least three rival groups of Unionists who knew for certain what God had in mind for the United States.” —Mark A. Noll, author of America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911

“This compelling book adds luster to Richard Carwardine’s enviable reputation as an interpreter of Abraham Lincoln and the 19th-Century United States. A splendid reckoning of how religion interacted with politics, fostered different conceptions of nationalism, and shaped debates about emancipation, it highlights the daunting complexity of a profoundly consequential era.” —Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis

“Richard Carwardine’s Righteous Strife will stand as the authoritative volume on the fascinating and impactful debate between and among Christian denominations during the bloody American Civil War. A superb scholar of both Lincoln and American religion, Carwardine’s chapters highlight the growth of a triumphant and nationalistic northern religious sensibility that emerged in 1864 and 1865, presided over and curated by President Abraham Lincoln, and famously proclaimed in his Second Inaugural Address.” —Joan Waugh, author of U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

“Righteous Strife offers a strikingly novel perspective on the Civil War era. The author of the most astute account of Abraham Lincoln’s religious sensibilities, Richard Carwardine brings the same subtlety to bear on the clash of religious nationalisms through which Americans came to terms with the problem of slavery. Based on deep research and rendered in lucid prose, this is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand the greatest crisis in American history.” —James Oakes, author of The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

“An immensely informative account of the infusion of religion in civil and political culture in the decades before the secession of Confederate states and throughout the Civil War.” —Glenn C. Altschuler, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Remarkable.” —Philip Martin, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

“At the heart of Righteous Strife is Lincoln’s deepening belief in the role of Providence in his presidency, and the way this belief steeled him on the difficult path to emancipation. The halls of Lincoln’s White House were famously filled with those seeking something from him, and Carwardine demonstrates in overwhelming detail the number of petitions, resolutions, memorials, and visits from church groups and officials who sought to influence and instruct him.” —Robert Wilson, The American Scholar

“A portrait of an uncommonly introspective president. . . . Carving out his space in this crowded field, Carwardine nimbly pairs Lincoln’s religious evolution with a schism that divided what he terms “religious nationalists,” primarily Protestants from the North and Midwest who, although united in their opposition to the attempted secession from the Union of 11 Southern states, divided bitterly over the future of slavery.” —Tom Peebles, Washington Independent Review of Books

“An important and welcome addition to the growing historiography of Civil War religion.” —Max Longley, Emerging Civil War

“At a time when fears of Christian nationalism dominate political discourse, Carwardine’s Righteous Strife offers a powerful reminder that debates over the nation’s religious identity, the church’s role in public life, and the meaning of the gospel in American politics are nothing new. . . . By interweaving voices from across the nation, from abolitionist preachers to proslavery theologians to local clergy from both North and South, Carwardine reveals that the Civil War was waged almost as fiercely in pulpits, prayer meetings, and pews as on battlefields.” —Daniel N. Gullotta, Christianity Today

“[Carwardine] tackles a topic many Civil War scholars have tended to overlook: the influence of faith in wartime politics and nationalism. To understand how Lincoln and the broader populace viewed the Civil War and slavery through the lens of religion, Mr. Carwardine has studied underused primary sources, including pamphlets, sermons, church reports and newspapers.” —Amanda Brickell Bellows, The Wall Street Journal

“That Americans fighting to save the Union and Americans waging war to destroy it shared a common religious faith is arguably the greatest irony of America’s greatest trial. . . . The writing [in Righteous Strife] is clear and the scholarship impeccable—exactly what we would expect from its author.” —Tracy McKenzie, Current

“Authoritative . . . Lincoln is represented in an objective, even-handed manner, while chronicling his journey and development as Chief Magistrate.” —The Rail Splitter

“A unique study and a worthwhile read. . . . Carwardine’s themes are built upon a religious framework that undergirds the life of the nation. His meticulous research details the various factions, powered by dogma, battling with each other for moral domination in an era where the lines between secular government and its connections to Christianity were as much a part of the American experiment as any other aspect of government of, by, and for the people.” —Military Images Digital

“A fresh perspective on Civil War history and its resounding reverberations.” —Kirkus