The Revival of 1857-1858 influenced many young men who would later spark many revivals among troops during of the Civil War. Large and widespread revivals in both Union and Confederate armies occurred between 1862 and 1865. Conversions during the war were estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000 among Union troops and as many as 150,000 in the Confederate Army. [McClymond, pp. 117-118.]

One may ask how this can be—brothers fighting and killing each other while both called on God for protection and to save their immortal souls. To answer, we must remember that slavery was an institutional cancer on the national body. Regardless of slavery’s origins and protectors, it was slavery that was being cut from the body, not the Southern soldier and citizen. God was just as concerned for the individual Southerner as he was for those in the North.

The efforts to abolish slavery in America began early in the nation’s history as a result of the moral suasion of Christian people who saw slavery as morally unacceptable within the biblical worldview. It was a matter of right and wrong and not a matter of “rights” or equality. However, breaking the chains of injustice sometimes requires the hammer of state in the cause of brotherhood and fraternity. The Civil War cost 600,000 lives, billions of dollars, and loss of unity as the nation was tragically divided with few thoughts of Christian brotherhood on either side of the chasm filled with distrust.

The war and the years following the draconian Reconstruction Act of 1867 left the South lying prostrate and ravaged. Called the Tragic Era, Sherwood Eddy paints a picture of the dozen years of life in the South following the Civil War.

Often with flagrant disregard of civil liberties, Southern officials, courts, customs, and organizations were removed or swept away, and a government by Northern Carpetbaggers and Negroes was substituted under military tribunals. A Northern army of occupation of twenty thousand was aided by an irritating force of colored militia…The state administrations under Northern carpetbaggers were extravagant, corrupt, and vulgar. The state treasuries were systematically looted…The majority of the legislature and most of the important officers were Negroes and many of the rest were rascally whites from the North, or unsavory characters from the South. Taxes were levied by the Negroes, of whom 80 percent were illiterate, and were paid by the disfranchised whites…the future of the Negro was sadly prejudiced by these disreputable adventures in self-government. [Eddy, pp. 177, 179-180.]

The post-war product of the hammer of state that broke the chains of injustice was dis-unifying, absent Christian principles and brotherhood, and was anything but moral. Should Abraham Lincoln have avoided the assassin’s bullet, his post-war efforts at reconciliation of the divided nation could have forestalled much of the tragedy and anguish experienced during the Reconstruction period. Richard Weaver described the precipice upon which the nation teetered following Lincoln’s death at the end of the Civil War.

There was a critical period when, if things had been managed a little worse, the South might have turned into a Poland or an Ireland, which is to say a hopelessly alienated and embittered province, willing to carry on a struggle for decades or even centuries to achieve a final self-determination…As it was, things were done which produced only rancor and made it difficult for either side to believe in the good faith of the other. It is unfortunate but it is true that the Negro was forced to pay a large part of the bill for the follies of Reconstruction. [Weaver, p. 216.]

Therefore, we must ask how it was possible for the nation to survive the cataclysmic events of the Civil War and the subsequent Tragic Era in the midst of moral degradation and dashed hopes for brotherhood and unity. Once again we must look for the answer in the actions of Christians who originally provided the motivation and drive to end slavery and who, following the Civil War, would provide the motivation for the restoration and unification of the nation.

Restoration and unity would not come easily, and it would be decades before signs of healing would be evident. The Northern and Southern churches continued to have different interpretations of the war and its outcome. Northerners viewed theirs as a righteous victory and themselves as guardians of the ideals embodied in the Constitution which were based on the same principles as found in Christianity. [Shattuck, pp. 129-130.] Following the war main-stream Northern churches tended toward rectifying other ills of society through a social gospel with a consequent loss of focus as it “…switched its emphasis from perfecting the inner man to social justice.” [Johnson, p. 244.] In spite of loss of the war, Southern evangelicals comforted themselves with the thought that their goals were spiritual and not temporal which resulted in the rise of an other-worldly mood within Southern Christianity. Thus, Christianity allowed the Southern culture to focus on spiritual victory in the midst of earthly defeat. Religion in the South became the bulwark of Southern culture and “…never appeared stronger than it did at the end of the nineteenth century.” From this détente between Northern and Southern churches during the remainder of the century, old animosities began to wane as reconciliation became a common political, literary and religious theme in both the North and South. “Religion which once played a role in breaking the nation apart, now aided the reunification of the South with the North.” [Shattuck, pp. 12, 125, 127-128, 130-131, 135-136.]

In spite of differing views of the war and the rampant corruption and immorality that plagued both the North and South for decades after the Civil war, many of the faithful Civil War veterans who embraced Christianity during the war-time revivals returned to their homes with their religious fervor intact, filled the pews, spurred post-war revivals (particularly in the South), and brought healing to the nation. [McClymond, pp. 120-121.] Without the unifying common ground of Christianity and faithfulness of individual Christians who sheltered the flame of brotherhood amidst the secularism and materialism of the Gilded Age in the latter part of the nineteenth century, the rebirth of national unity would have been still-born which could have easily and likely led to a permanent balkanization of much of the South. But because of the Revival of 1857 and 1858 and its legacy of Christian revivals among the soldiers during the Civil War, the Republic was saved.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Michael McClymond, ed., Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, Vol. 1, A-Z, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp. 117-118, 120-121.

Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1941), pp. 177, 179-180.

Richard M. Weaver, The Southern Essays of Richard M. Weaver, Eds. George M. Curtis, III and James J. Thompson, Jr., (Indianapolis, Indiana: Liberty Fund, 1987), p. 216.

Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., A Shield and Hiding Place – The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies, (Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1987), pp. 125, 127-128, 130-131, 135-136.

Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 244.

The Third Great Awakening began in 1857-1858 has been called by many names including the Businessman’s Revival, the Layman’s Revival, and the Union Prayer Meeting. But it is most widely known as the Revival of 1857-1858. We must briefly distinguish between a revival and an awakening. Revivals tend to be localized events (church, village, town, or city), but an awakening affects a much larger area (district, county, or country), can last for years or decades, and significantly affects the moral standards of a society. [Backholer, p. 7.] Although popularly called the Revival of 1857-1858, it bore all the marks and qualifications of a general moral and spiritual awakening in America. Its distinguishing features were the absence of clerical leadership, broad inter-denominational support, and focus on prayer. However, the meetings included brief corporate prayers, religious testimony, and singing. [McClymond, p. 362.]

The revival sprang from an initial meeting at the noon hour on September 23, 1857 in the upper room of the Dutch Reform Church in lower Manhattan. Jeremiah Lamphier had advertised the prayer meeting, but only six came that first day. Three weeks later, a financial panic that had been building since August exploded on October 13th when banks were closed and did not reopen for two months. Attendance soon mushroomed as businessmen from nearby Wall Street began attending. The prayer meetings quickly spread to other churches, auditoriums, and theaters. [McClymond, pp. 362-363.] During the winter months the crime rate dropped even as in mass unemployment caused by the financial panic engulfed the large city and where one would expect the crime rate to rise under such circumstances. [Backholer, p. 62.]

The greatest intensity of the revival occurred between February and April of 1858. The initial effects of the revival were felt in New York City where the revival began. The prayer revival also sparked local church revivals in New England, the Midwest, and upper South (beginning particularly with New Year’s Eve “watch night” services); in separate women’s prayer groups; and on college campuses across the nation (including Oberlin, Dartmouth, Brown, Yale, Rutgers, Princeton, the University of Michigan, Ohio Wesleyan, the University of Virginia, Davidson, the University of North Carolina, and several others). Net growth in membership of Protestant denominations for the period 1857-1859 grew by 474,000, more than twice the number of the preceding three years. The greatest influence of the Revival of 1857-1858 was felt in the North, but the revival spread through the South, into the Canadian provinces, and crossed the Atlantic to the British Isles where it lasted until 1862. [McClymond, pp. 362-363.]

The character and results of the Revival of 1857-1858 were described by Matthew Backholer.

The lay influence predominated to such an extent that ministers were overshadowed. This awakening was not a remote piety in little corners of churches, but to the fore of everyday business life, college life and home life. It was right there in the nitty-gritty of everyday work, not just a Sunday affair. [Backholer, p. 63.]

This lay influence of the revival was remarkably demonstrated when a group of Pennsylvania lumbermen visited Philadelphia and were converted at a Charles Finney evangelistic meeting. The men returned to their families in the lumber region and five thousand people were converted in an area of about eighty miles without the attendance of a single minister. [Backholer, pp. 62-63.]

After considerable and careful research, J. Edwin Orr, one of the twentieth century’s foremost revival historians, confirmed estimates that over one million solid, long-lasting conversions occurred during 1858-1859 out of a population of less than thirty million. [Backholer, pp. 62-63.]

Historians have debated the impact of the Revival of 1857-1858 as it related to nineteenth century social reform efforts. Some historians strongly connect the revival with concerns for the ills of society and the need for social reforms that were beginning to ferment in the last half of the nineteenth century. Others pointed to the revival prayer meeting practice of avoiding any discussion of controversial topics such as slavery and abolitionism as evidence of little direct social impact caused by the revival. [McClymond, p. 365.] The reality was that the 1857-1858 Revival was about personal religious transformation but with which society greatly benefited. It must be remembered that the ordering of society and the addressing of its social ills must begin with the individual and an ordering of his soul in right relationship with God. This must certainly be the greatest impact of the Revival of 1857-1858 as the nation was soon to be immersed in its greatest struggle for survival. It was the Revival of 1857-1858 that caused men and women, in both the North and South, to be spiritually prepared for the coming struggle in which the nation would exorcize the demon of slavery and recover its national unity.

We have noted that the Great Awakening was the formative moment in American history and that the Second Great Awakening was the stabilizing moment that saved the new nation from political and moral destruction. We can also say that the Third Great Awakening was the sustaining moment that made possible the survival of the nation in the aftermath of the Civil War. We shall examine the consequences of this providential moment in Part II.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Matthew Backholer, Revival Fires and Awakenings, (www.ByFaith.org: ByFaith Media, 2009, 2012), pp. 7, 62-63.

Michael McClymond, ed., Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, Vol. 1, A-Z, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp. 362-363, 365.