7/:8 Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union Hardcover – by Richard Carwardine (Author)

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🗓️ 29 March 2025

⏱️ 15 minutes

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7/:8 Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union Hardcover – by Richard Carwardine (Author)

1865 ENTERING RICHMOND

The first major account of the American Civil War to give full weight to the central role played by religion, reframing the conflict through Abraham Lincoln’s contentious appeals to faith-based nationalism

How did slavery figure in God’s plan? Was it the providential role of government to abolish this sin and build a righteous nation? Or did such a mission amount to “religious tyranny” and “pulpit politics,” in an effort to strip the southern states of their God-given rights? In 1861, in an already fracturing nation, the tensions surrounding this moral quandary cracked the United States in half, and even formed rifts within the North itself, where anti slavery religious nationalists butted heads with conservative religious nationalists over their visions for America’s future.

At the center of this melee stood Abraham Lincoln, who would turn to his own faith for guidance, proclaiming more days of national fasting and thanksgiving than any other president before or since.These pauses for spiritual reflection provided the inspirational rhetoric and ideological fuel that sustained the war.

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0:00.0	Animals can't speak to drivers.
0:05.2	But if they could, they would be asking us,
0:07.7	telling us by the sounds of it,
0:09.8	to put our litter and fruit waste in the bin.
0:13.6	Because roadside litter kills an estimated 3 million animals every year.
0:18.5	No wonder they sound miffed.
0:20.2	So let's lend them a poor. Let's take our rubbish
0:22.8	with us and bin it properly. National Highways. And what's that? They said thanks very much.
0:30.0	I'm John Batser visiting with Professor Richard Carrowdeen. The new book is Righteous Strike.
0:35.2	The Battle of the Pultons in the Civil War, the makeup of the war is changing as the battles go on.
0:44.9	There is, in the spring of 64, a resolution by Grant to turn south, not to back off chasing Lee.
0:57.8	That leads to enormous casualties all through the battles called the wilderness to the siege of Vicksburg and Richmond. The battles dominate the
1:04.5	story of the Civil War, but the professor has identified what was happening in between the battles, the comments, and the resolution of both the north and the south.
1:16.3	Exhausted would be the word, but there had to be an end to this, and they stayed with it even though there was talk of making peace or talking peace.
1:27.1	At one point, Lincoln, who did not believe the Confederacy was going to relent,
1:33.5	did send Horace Greeley to Nagra Falls to talk to Confederate commissioners for peace.
1:39.4	It came to nothing.
1:40.8	It was not going to come to anything.
1:42.4	Jefferson Davis and the Southern Command were not looking to back off in any fashion whatsoever. And Lee was very effective in the field, even through retreat to Richmond. At the same time, all of this is being watched by Lincoln and his cabinet and the voters of the north because they're going to go through the election
2:03.7	in november of sixty four
2:05.8	and in august of sixty four
2:08.1	abraham lincoln writes
	...

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