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.

In Part I, we noted the ebb tide of religious fervor and an increase in secularism and irreligion following the American Revolution, especially in the decade of 1790s. The Constitution creating the United States of America had just been ratified in 1787 and the Bill of Rights was added in 1791. Washington was President and there was an air of optimism regarding the nation’s future. But, at the same time morality at all levels of society was spiraling downward and threatened the survival of the young nation.

Following years of moral decline, the shameful debacle of the presidential campaign of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson illustrated the threat to the nation’s survival. Both candidates were vilified and slandered by their political opponents and operatives. Jefferson was accused of swindling clients as a young lawyer and charged with cowardice during his time as governor of Virginia. Pamphlets and newspapers called Jefferson a “…hopeless visionary, a weakling, an intriguer, intoxicated with French philosophy, more a Frenchman than an American…carried on with slave women…a howling atheist…” Adams was portrayed as being “…old, addled, and toothless…procuring mistresses… a vain Yankee scold, and, if truth be known, ‘quite mad’.” [McCullough, pp. 543-544.] Such was the political and immoral atmosphere that permeated the nation at the close of the century.

A society cannot avoid destruction if political ties are relaxed without a corresponding tightening of moral ties. [Tocqueville, p. 344.] The Political ties so painfully forged over a quarter century were in danger of permanently unraveling in the campaign wars of 1800 between the Federalist and anti-Federalist partisans. Destruction of the new nation was imminently possible without a corresponding tightening of moral ties. The republic had to be saved.

Thirty-one years following the end of the eighteenth century, a young Frenchman of the aristocracy traveled extensively in America and subsequently wrote of his impressions. Alexis De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America has been called one of the most influential political texts ever written about America.

Americans so completely identify the spirit of Christianity with freedom in their minds that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive the one without the other…

On my arrival in the United States, it was the religious atmosphere which first struck me. As I extended my stay, I could observe the political consequences which flowed from this novel situation.

In France I had seen the spirit of religion moving in the opposite direction to that of the spirit of freedom. In America, I found them intimately linked together in joint reign over the same land. [Tocqueville, pp. 343, 345.]

How do we reconcile these two disparate pictures of America? Here we have a nation sinking into immorality—a cesspool of secularism, irreligion, political expediency, and debauchery following the Revolutionary War through the end of the century. Thirty-one years later Tocqueville described America as having a highly religious atmosphere in which the spirit of religion and freedom are inextricably entwined. Something must have happened to dramatically alter the course of the nation. We call that happening the Second Great Awakening.

In 1791, through the Union of Prayer that was begun with the efforts of William Carey, Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliffe, and other church leaders, the Second Great Awakening began sweeping Great Britain. It was a New England Baptist pastor named Isaac Backus that played a pivotal role in igniting the Second Great Awakening in America. Backus was both a product of and participant in the Great Awakening led by Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield. Born in 1724, he began preaching in 1746, initially as a Congregationalist. Struggling with the issue of the incompatibility of infant baptism and salvation through grace, Backus and a number of his church members organized a Baptist church in 1756 at which he was the pastor for fifty years until his death in 1806. [McClymond, pp. 43-44; Johnson, p. 410.]

With spiritual conditions in America at their worst in 1794, Backus sent an urgent plea to pastors of all churches of every Christian denomination in America. His plea for prayer for revival was widely adopted, and a network of prayer meetings on the first Monday of each month soon led to revival. By 1800, revival had reached the western extremities of civilization in Logan County, Kentucky, if the wild and irreligious people of Rogue’s Harbour (as it was known) could be called civilized. Lawlessness was so rampant that local citizens formed themselves into regiments of vigilantes that fought outlaws, often unsuccessfully, to establish a measure of law and order for the settlements. It was here that Presbyterian minister James McCready settled and became pastor of three small churches. All through the winter of 1799, McCready and several of his congregants joined the national monthly Monday meetings to pray for revival as well as holding weekly Saturday evening to Sunday morning prayer meetings. Following months of prayer, revival came in the summer of 1800. The spiritual hunger was so great that eleven thousand came to a communion service. Overwhelmed, McCready called for help from all denominations. [Orr; Johnson, p. 410.]

Next came the famous Cane Ridge camp meeting in southern Kentucky during the summer of 1801. Six or seven ministers preached simultaneously from various points to reach crowds that were estimated to exceed 10,000. To give perspective to the significant size of the crowds, the largest city in Kentucky at the time was Lexington with a population of only 2,000. [Fishwick, p. 19; Johnson, p. 410.]

The Second Great Awakening provided spiritual and moral regeneration and initiated other civilizing influences on the young nation. These influences included popular education, Bible Societies, Sunday schools, the modern missionary movement, and ultimately sowed and nurtured the seeds that led to the abolition of slavery. [Orr; Johnson, pp. 410-411.] Just as the Great Awakening was the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible, it is also fair to say that the Second Great Awakening was the stabilizing moment that saved the new nation from political and moral destruction.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

David McCullough, John Adams, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001), pp. 543-544.

Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 343-345.

Michael McClymond, ed., Encyclopedia of Religious Revivals in America, Vol. 1, A-Z, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007), pp. 43-44

J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival,” ochristian.com. http://articles.ochristian.com/ article8330.shtml (accessed November 26, 2010).

Marshall W. Fishwick, Great Awakenings, (New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995), p. 19.

“No country on earth was ever founded on deeper religious foundations,” wrote Sherwood Eddy in his 1941 The Kingdom of God and the American Dream. The persecuted refugees from Europe landed on the shores of a vast wilderness and established thirteen colonies, practically all on strong religious foundations, during the first decades of the seventeenth century to the first decades of the eighteenth century. The tremendous hardships, deprivations, and loss of life did not diminish their religious zeal and quest for religious freedom. They were the followers of Wycliffe, Luther, Calvin, Puritans and non-Puritans, Anglicans, separatists, Baptists, Quakers, and many others groups seeking religious freedom. The fruit of their efforts was a “priceless heritage” which they left for the Founders of America. In 1765, John Adams recognized this heritage when he wrote of the settlement of America, “I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth.” [Eddy, pp. 76-77, 147.]

By the end of the 1600s and beginning of the 1700s, interest in the colonists’ hard-won religious legacy was eroding due to a decline of religious fervor and to a lesser extent because of the assault by the forces of deism and French rationalism. However, the decline of religious life in the colonies was dramatically reversed as new religious forces exploded on the scene in the 1730s. This formative event became known as the Great Awakening and was a major influence that crafted the worldview of the founding generation. [Larry Johnson, pp. 123-124.] Paul Johnson captures the importance of the Great Awakening in the founding of America.

…There was a spiritual event in the first half of the 18th century in America, and it proved to be of vast significance, both in religion and politics…The Great Awakening was the proto-revolutionary event, the formative moment in American history, preceding the political drive for independence and making it possible…The Revolution could not have taken place without this religious background. The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event.” [Paul Johnson, pp. 109-110, 116-117.]

However, many any if not almost all of the early historians of the American Revolution gave little credit to religion’s role preceding and during the Revolution. Expanding on that assumption, many present-day historians generally believe that religion was displaced by politics as lawyers replaced the clergy as leaders which effectively “…secularized the intellectual character of the culture.” However, it was the dislocations caused by the war that affected the colonists’ church attendance, and it was natural that publications devoted to religious matters would be reduced considerably during the Revolutionary years as the pressing discourse on the war and political matters would take precedence and therefore gave an appearance that religious interest and fervor had subsided. With the decline of religion in the public arena during the revolution, historians have leaped to the conclusion that the American people were significantly less religious. This is a blatant misreading of the mood and character of Americans in the Revolutionary period. Protestantism in whatever form it took remained the principle means by which Americans perceived and explained the world and ordered their lives. [Wood, pp. 174-175; Larry Johnson, p. 131.]

A brief look at the growth in the number of churches during 1760-1790 refutes historians’ assertions that religion declined during the Revolutionary period. It is true that state-oriented churches declined or failed to gain during this period as the total number of all congregations doubled between 1770 and 1790. The Church of England-Anglican in the South and Puritan churches in New England accounted for more than forty percent of all American congregations in 1760 but declined to less than twenty-five percent by 1790. New denominations spawned by the Great Awakening were alive and well and growing—popular people’s churches including Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. The Baptists grew from ninety-four congregations in 1760 to 858 by 1790. During the same time period the Methodists grew from no adherents to over seven hundred congregations. Gordon Wood wrote of this period, “The revolution released more religious energy and fragmented Christendom to a greater degree than had been seen since the upheavals of seventeenth century England or perhaps since the Reformation.” Others would call the period a “…Revolutionary Revival.” [Wood, pp. 185-188; Eddy, p. 147; Larry Johnson, p. 132.]

History has proven that the years following protracted wars are generally periods of significant moral decline. This was true of the remaining years of the eighteenth century following the Revolutionary War (1776-1781). All denominations began to feel the effects of the war years, especially during the last decade of the century. [Larry Johnson, p. 132.]

The Methodists were losing more members than they were gaining. The Baptists said that they had their most wintry season. The Presbyterians in general assembly deplored the nation’s ungodliness. In a typical Congregational church, the Rev. Samuel Shepherd of Lennos, Massachusetts, in sixteen years had not taken one young person in fellowship. The Lutherans were so languishing that they discussed uniting with Episcopalians who were even worse off. The Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York…quit functioning; he had confirmed no one for so long that he decided he was out of work, so he took up other employment. The Chief Justice of the United States, John Marshall, wrote to the Bishop of Virginia, James Madison, that the Church “was too far gone ever to be redeemed.”…Tom Paine echoed, “Christianity will be forgotten in thirty years.” [Orr]

The churches had become almost totally irrelevant in curbing the nation’s downward spiral into immorality. During the last decade of the century, out of a population of five million Americans, six percent were confirmed drunkards. Crime had grown to such an extent that bank robberies were a daily occurrence and women did not go out at night for fear of assault. [Orr]

Christianity at the universities was just as destitute. Students at Harvard were polled, and not one Christian was found. Two admitted to being Christians at Princeton while only five members of the student body were not members of the filthy speech movement of the times. Few if any campuses escaped the denigration of Christianity and general mayhem. Anti-Christian plays were presented at Dartmouth, a Bible taken from a local church was burned in a public bonfire, students burned Nassau Hall at Princeton, and students forced the resignation of Harvard’s president. Christians on college campuses in the 1790s were so few “…that they met in secret, like a communist cell, and kept their minutes in code so that no one would know.” [Orr]

Yet, the last decade of the eighteenth century also saw the planting of seeds destined to flower as the Second Great Awakening.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

Sherwood Eddy, The Kingdom of God and the American Dream, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), pp. 76-77, 147.

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), pp. 123-124, 131-132.

Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997), pp. 109-110, 116-117.

Gordon S. Wood, “Religion and the American Revolution,” New Directions in American Religious History, ed. Harry S. Stout and D. G. Hart, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 174-175, 185-188.

J. Edwin Orr, “Prayer brought Revival, ochristian.com. “http://articles.ochristian.com/article 8330.shtml (accessed November 26, 2010).