Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If you think the culture wars are heated now, check out mid-19th century America. The Civil War took place during a period of pervasive piety when both North and South demonized one another with self-righteous, biblical language, one historian says.
Quote:
The war erupted not long after the "Second Great Awakening" sparked a national religious revival. Reform movements spread across the country. Thousands of Americans repented of their sins at frontier campfire meetings and readied themselves for the Second Coming. They got war instead.
Quote:
Goldfield says evangelical Christianity "poisoned the political process" because the American system of government depends on compromise and moderation, and evangelical religion abhors both because "how do you compromise with sin."
So would a system of compromise and moderation on slavery have been preferable? After all the abolitionists had a highly Evangelical element too. (Douglas and Garrison I think were fairly secular, but Beecher was a preacher and John Brown was kind of a religious extremist)
Actually I fear that came out sarcastic. I'm almost asking the question, "Would a system of compromise and moderation on slavery have been better?" The part of me that's really sympathetic to the African American situation says "no" but there's another part of me that's not sure. Other societies did manage to end slavery in a more gradual, less dramatic, fashion. I think even the "late banners", nations that abolished slavery relatively late, didn't do so quite as violently. Brazil had something of a coup or some such, but I don't think it was as violent.
Still I kind of think that although religion was an important factor it can be exaggerated. By the 1850s we already had pretty uncompromising, yet basically secular, abolitionists and also people who used some primitive form of biological science to justify slavery. (Blacks have "less skull capacity" so "are in need of guidance" or whatever it was)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
