Introduction: “Long Live the Glorious Union”

Abstract

The introduction states the book’s thesis—that throughout the Civil War and Reconstruction many northern white evangelicals subordinated particular concern for the four million African-American slaves (and then ex-slaves) to a larger vision for the Union’s persistence and continued flourishing as a specifically Christian nation. It defines evangelicalism, which was centrally important to both North and South, and suggests that the Civil War may be understood in part as a clash of competing visions for a properly Christian America. The introduction then situates the book within the context of current scholarship on northern evangelicalism and the Civil War and Reconstruction. Finally, the introduction relates northern evangelicalism to the concept of Union and contends that evangelical devotion to it may be understood more as a form of ethno-cultural nationalism than civic nationalism.