Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920

Eight. A Harvest of Heroes: Reconciliation and Vindication

THE LOST CAUSE provided the rationale for Southerners maintaining a culture separate from the rest of the nation's. Nonetheless, Southerners eventually regained pride in being Americans, as well as citizens of Dixie. The dream of a separate political nation died among most Southerners with Confederate defeat, even though it died hard. Gradually replacing the political dream was the culturaldream, and as the latter took hold Southerners found that they could honor the American political nation if it honored the Southern civilization,including a degree of local self-government. Reconciliation with the North did not, of course, happen overnight .1 While reunification had progressed by 1890, perhaps the key period of reconciliation, judging by ministerial attitudes, was after 1890 and especially after 1900. The Spanish-American War and World War I provided the perfect context for Southern ministers to identify again with the values of the American nation. After 1900 the American civil religion began fully functioningin the South for the first time since the Civil War. At the same time, the Southern civil religion continued as the dominant value system of the region. Despitemarked evidence of sectional reconciliation, the Southern churches in 1920 remained among the South's most distinctly sectional institutions. Although Southern Episcopalians reunited with Northerners, their pastors still embodied sectional values as faithfully as preachers in the popular churches. The Baptists, the Methodists, and the Presbyterians all retained a sectional structure and influence. The period from around 1900 to 1920 is therefore essential for understanding the peculiar situation in the South—the interaction of two well-developed civil religions. Chapter Eight RECONCILIATION AND VINDICATE A HARVEST OF HEROES 162 A HARVEST OF HEROES The Lost Cause entered its most highly organized and institutionalized phase after 1890, with the United Confederate Veterans, the United Daughters of the Confederacy, and the United Sons of the Confederacy all launching their activities. Paradoxically, this intensification of memory did not signal increased Southern isolation from the nation. War had been the occasion of national division; appropriately , it provided the crucial context for the promotion of NorthSouth reconciliation. J. L. M. Curry, speaking before the veterans' reunion in 1896, had pledged that if a war came in the future, Southerners would stand up for their country. When war did break out in April, 1898, Southerners, including the regional churches, supported it. While Northern Christians also supported the Spanish-American War, Southerners had a special need to relate the conflict to their own past and to the question of nationalism. Bishop Warren A. Candler insisted, for example, that the sight of Southern youth marching enthusiastically to fight in the war would have been impossible, if Confederate memories had been despised and Confederate history spat upon during all the years since 1865. Visions of heroic sires inflamed the courage of gallant sons. Men who since the war between the States have struggled through orphanage and poverty inflicted by Federal arms looked on faded gray jackets pierced by minie-balls, gazed on dented swords and rusted muskets, and were fired to patriotism by those holy relicsof illustrious fathers. They dared not be less than brave men in the presence of such sacred treasures. Candler thus believed that Confederate virtuehad inspired the Southern young to endorse national virtue.2 The Reverend A. N. Jackson pondered how Southerners could "honor the Union that our fathers combated," and yet honor Southern heroes in the Spanish-American War. He came back again to the mysteries of the Lost Cause. "Here is the South's holy of holies. The veil is not rent, and only they can know what is within whose own have been to the sacrifice. And they are legion. The blood of our fathers are on the lintels and doorposts of thousands of these Southern homes where death passed not by; what boots it if we linger under the inspiration of the incense so long as the sons go bravely up to new baptisms of blood?" The Lost Cause was thus an inspiration for South- RECONCILIATION AND VINDICATION 163 ern youth who had partaken of its sacraments and participated in its ceremonies.3 While Candler and Jackson stressed the effect of the Lost Cause as an inspirational force on the young, other preachers emphasized the related point that the Spanish-American War marked an end to sectionalism . The Methodist Christian Advocate of Nashville argued that the events of 1898 had destroyed u the lingering remnants...