Our Country - (North's Civil War) by Grant R Brodrecht (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br><i>Our Country</i> explores northern evangelical thought and sentiment regarding the concept of Union during the Civil War and Reconstruction. A primary aim of the book is to shift our focus back toward the Union's importance in relation to northern understanding during the Civil War-era.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><p>On March 4, 1865, the day Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, Reverend Doctor George Peck put the finishing touches on a collection of his sermons that he intended to send to the president. Although the politically moderate Peck had long opposed slavery, he, along with many other northern evangelicals, was not an abolitionist. During the Civil War he had come to support emancipation, but, like Lincoln, the conflict remained first and foremost about preserving the Union. Believing their devotion to the Union was an act of faithfulness to God first and the Founding Fathers second, <i>Our Country</i> explores how many northern white evangelical Protestants sacrificed racial justice on behalf of four million African-American slaves (and then ex-slaves) for the Union's persistence and continued flourishing as a Christian nation. <p/>By examining Civil War-era Protestantism in terms of the Union, author Grant Brodrecht adds to the understanding of northern motivation and the eventual failure of Reconstruction to provide a secure basis for African American's equal place in society. Complementing recent scholarship that gives primacy to the Union, <i>Our Country</i> contends that non-radical Protestants consistently subordinated concern for racial justice for what they perceived to be the greater good. Mainstream evangelicals did not enter Reconstruction with the primary aim of achieving racial justice. Rather they expected to see the emergence of a speedily restored, prosperous, and culturally homogenous Union, a Union strengthened by God through the defeat of secession and the removal of slavery as secession's cause. <p/>Brodrecht eloquently addresses this so-called "proprietary" regard for Christian America, considered within the context of crises surrounding the Union's existence and its nature from the Civil War to the 1880s. Including sources from major Protestant denominations, the book rests on a selection of sermons, denominational newspapers and journals, autobiographies, archival personal papers of several individuals, and the published and unpublished papers of Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S. Grant. The author examines these sources as they address the period's evangelical sense of responsibility for America, while keyed to issues of national and presidential politics. <p/>Northern evangelicals' love of the Union arguably contributed to its preservation and the slaves' emancipation, but in subsuming the ex-slaves to their vision for Christian America, northern evangelicals contributed to a Reconstruction that failed to ensure the ex-slaves' full freedom and equality as Americans.</p><p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><i>Our Country </i>makes a welcome contribution to the growing literature on religion during the Civil War era.-- "Civil War News"<br><br><i>Our Country</i> is the result of diligent, deep research, and its value is enhanced by its clear prose.-- "Journal of Southern History"<br><br>Brodrecht, perhaps better than anyone else to date, has ably demonstrated that white northern evangelicals' overriding political goal in the Civil War era was to make America 'a national Christian organism characterized by affective onneness.' ... Brodrecht's book is a model integration of nineteenth-century American political and religious history.<b>---D. H. Dilbeck, <i>The Journal of the Civil War Era</i></b><br><br>Grant Brodrecht's illuminating study shows how highly northern evangelical Protestants exalted their idea of the national Union before, during, and after the Civil War. With deep research and absolute mastery of standard historical scholarship, <i>Our Country</i> explains why this evangelical commitment to the Union as a providential, Christian nation exerted such influence during the war. Even more impressive is Brodrecht's account of how this evangelical vision of the Christian nation undercut the push for African American equality and hastened the end of Reconstruction. It is an unusually impressive book.<b>---Mark A. Noll, <i>The Civil War as a Theological Crisis</i></b><br><br>In this elegantly written monograph, Grant Brodrecht focuses our attention to Northerners' view of the Union. More specifically, Brodrecht examines influential white northern evangelicals and their conviction that 'the Union as Christian America was a sacred trust that must be preserved.' Unfortunately, this preoccupation with national unity eventually overshadowed the need to protect African American liberties in the late 1860s and early 1870s.... Readers cannot help but be impressed with Brodrecht's thorough approach .... [He] utilizes an impressive array of primary and secondary sources ... [and] is a master of Civil War era historiography.... <i>Our Country </i>is an excellent book. Not only does it describe a central issue in Civil War-era politics, the last chapter summarizes the progression of evangelical nationalist thinking from the late-nineteenth century to the present. As it turns out, the struggle between ethnocultural nationalism and civic nationalism is still very much with us.<b>---Curtis D. Johnson, <i>Church History</i></b><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br><b>Grant Brodrecht</b>, PhD, teaches history at the Geneva School, Winter Park, Florida.
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