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  • Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War
  • Steve Longenecker
James O. Lehman and Steven M. Nolt. Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Pp. xi, 353. Illustrations, maps, tables, index, bibliography. Cloth, $39.95.)

This book by two renowned Mennonite scholars examines the experience of Mennonites and Amish during the American Civil War. Advertised as the "first scholarly treatment of pacifism during the Civil War" (jacket cover), Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War adds to the understanding of both the Confederate and Union homefronts and to religion during the war, but its most significant contribution is to Anabaptist studies. Mennonites and Amish occupy two branches of the Anabaptist family tree. Another stem, the Brethren, or Dunkers, is not part of this study.

Lehman and Nolt emphasize adjustments made by the pacifist Mennonites and Amish in response to the Civil War, and they spin a complex account in which Mennonite and Amish communities in three regions reacted differently. In Pennsylvania prior to the war, the lines that separated the two kingdoms, that is, the traditional Anabaptist teaching that kept Christians apart from the sinful world, especially government, had blurred. Pennsylvania Mennonites voted—first Whig, then Republican—and they held local public office. Consequently, Mennonites there felt comfortable with the civic world. During the war they navigated a middle course in which they paid commutation fees in exchange for draft exemptions. In the Shenandoah Valley, however, striking a deal with civil authorities was much more difficult. Most valley Mennonites were antislavery Unionists, which made their situation particularly precarious, and the Confederacy only partially recognized their rights as conscientious objectors. John Kline, a Dunker, was the principal Anabaptist advocate, but he was briefly imprisoned in 1862 and assassinated [End Page 74] in 1864, an indication of the difficulties Anabaptists faced in the valley. In the second year of the war, Confederate law exempted church members who paid a $500 fine, but many young men were not yet members because membership normally came with marriage in the early to mid-twenties. An Underground Railroad through the western Virginia mountains spirited away many unprotected conscientious objectors. For midwestern Mennonites and Amish the lines between the two kingdoms were sharp, and, consequently, they lacked the tradition of public involvement that Pennsylvania Mennonites had. Instead, midwestern Mennonites and Amish articulated no middle ground and defined their situation as a stark choice between participation and nonparticipation. Not surprisingly, then, midwestern Mennonites and Amish joined the military in larger numbers than in the other two regions. Thus, the Mennonite and Amish narrative in each region differed, leading the authors to conclude that these two Anabaptist fellowships do not "share a singular Civil War story" (3).

Further complicating the adjustments required of Mennonites and Amish was their opposition to slavery, probably more consistent than that of the famed Quakers, and they also were Unionists, eager to see the rebellion suppressed. Mennonites and Amish, therefore, struggled to reconcile support for the great cause with their nonresistant principles, another quandary as they found their way in troublesome times.

Although favoring complexity over common threads, Lehman and Nolt acknowledge that Mennonites and Amish remained consistent with their nonresistant scruples despite the occasional Anabaptist who performed military service. The authors support this assumption with very detailed and impressive research that produced long lists of soldiers and conscientious objectors.

The power of the assembled data leaves a desire for doing a little more with it. The book's thoughtful conclusion describes the importance of the Civil War experience for Mennonites and Amish, but the absence of concluding analytical paragraphs to chapters and the lack of a subtitle for the book suggests that room might remain for big ideas. Lehman and Nolt, for example, do not draw large lessons about the homefront because they believe that the Mennonite and Amish story is unique. Also, it might be interesting to know if Mennonite and Amish conscientious objectors during the Civil War faced modern nation-states and emerging nationalism or if this episode is merely another chapter in Anabaptist nonresistance, little different from their refusal to patrol the walls of early modern European towns. [End Page 75]

These qualms...

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