The centrality of religion in the life of the Old South, the strongly religious nature of the sectional controversy over slavery, and the close affinity between

Throughout the Civil War, soldiers and civilians on both sides of the conflict saw the hand of God in the terrible events of the day, but the standard narrative

Reprint of the original, first published in 1840.

In the late 1800s, Southern evangelicals believed contemporary troubles—everything from poverty to political corruption to violence between African Americans