President Abraham Lincoln’s legacy looms large over our country’s history. During his time in the White House, he proclaimed no less than three days of fasting and humiliation, and six of thanksgiving—more than any other chief executive. Considering the tumultuous times through which the nation passed, it is perhaps not unexpected.
This detail can be found in a new book, Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union. The author, Richard J. Carwardine, Emeritus Rhodes Professor of American History and Distinguished Fellow of the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University, has previously written on religion and Lincoln, notably Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power, which received The Gilder Lehrman Institute’s Lincoln Prize in 2004.
In Righteous Strife, Carwardine places Lincoln at the center of cultural and political threads of religion. He holds that the Civil War reshaped the President’s thinking, and that its trauma gave him a new perspective on God and morality. This is the primary theme of the book.
There are two supporting themes. One, set in the decades leading up to the conflict, explores how American religious voices possessed the power to unify the country, but instead contributed to the deep divisions that tore it apart. A second theme, emerging from the first, focuses on the religious antislavery and conservative forces that fought for control of the political narrative—and how the antislavery forces ultimately gained the upper hand, as evidenced by the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, and the Thirteenth Amendment.
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.
Along the way, Carwardine weaves in the words and deeds of individuals caught up in the political-religious storm, including well-known figures John C. Frémont, William Lloyd Garrison, William G. “Parson” Brownlow, Anna Dickinson, and Clement L. Vallandigham.
In a brief epilogue, Carwardine follows the twisted path of religion and political ideologies of the Civil War period to today. The narrative does not dwell on modern times, but rather investigates the clashes between religious groups that divided its citizenry.
Righteous Strife is a unique study and a worthwhile read.
Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union
By Richard Carwardine
624 pages
Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Hardcover (available through major booksellers)
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