Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln's Union

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 antislavery religious nationalists butted heads with conservative religious nationalists over their visions for America’s future.

At the centre 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.

In Righteous Strife, Richard Carwardine gives renewed attention to this crucible of contending religious nationalisms, out of which were forged emancipation, Lincoln’s re-election, and his second inaugural address. No understanding of the American Civil War is complete without accounting for this complex dance between church and state—one that continues to define the nation.

Richard Carwardine, is Emeritus Rhodes Professor of American History. His research and publications centre on the United States between 1776 and the Civil War. His chief interest is the interplay of politics and religion in a society that tolerated slavery and lacked a national church establishment. Winner of the Lincoln Prize, he has a special interest in the life, presidency, and international legacy of the sixteenth US president. 

He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 2006 and was a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2010. The Lincoln Academy of Illinois elected him in 2009 to the Order of Lincoln, the state’s highest honour.

In the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2019 he received a CMG for services to the study of American History in the UK and the USA.