Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the AmericanCivil War by C. C. GoenReview by: Susan M. BowlerJournal of the Early Republic, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 197-198Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmerican RepublicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3122573 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 197

Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the American Civil War. By C. C. Goen. (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1985. Pp. x, 198. Tables. $17.95; paper, $13.50.)

C. C. Goen notes that "the relationships of religious ideas and institutions to social and political realities" in early national and antebellum America were both "extensive and profound" and that there "seems to be a closer link between the denominational schisms and the coming of the [Civil] war than has been commonly recognized" (3). At one level, the division of the churches exposed the alienation of North and South that led to the Civil War. But the collapse of the national churches was more than a "portent," it was also a "catalyst of the imminent national tragedy" (6).

Evangelical Christianity, Goen argues, was one of the earliest bonds of nationalism for the American people. Beginning with the First Great Awaken- ing, Americans overwhelmingly accepted the evangelical commitment to a Christian life defined by personal experience of conversion and strenuous moral endeavor. These convictions were reinforced during the Second Great Awakening by institutions such as the revival and the benevolent or reform organization. In the early national period the evangelical bond was so strong and diffuse that it became "a dynamic force for social cohesion" in the young republic affecting everything from education to the structure of national ritual to the imagery and vocabulary of nationalist discourse (30). In the later period, the churches gained members at an auspicious rate: at the close of the American Revolution, Goen suggests, nine tenths of the population were for- mally unchurched, while by the middle of the nineteenth century the large Protestant denominations had gathered so many into their ranks that Prot- estantism was a "living analogue of the nation itself" (43).

The three major popular denominations-Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians-found themselves incapable of formulating a coherent theology that described the place and ethical value, or lack thereof, of slavery in a Christian commonwealth. That is, they had no systematic answer to the fun- damental problem facing their members in the antebellum period. Instead, the very religious commitment that reinforced nationalism in the early nine- teenth century generated strong sectional feelings, later making it impossible for the churches to breach the "yawning moral chasm between North and South" (65). The schism of the major Protestant denominations on the issue of slavery convinced many Americans that the sectional conflict was insolu- ble by any means but division. Finally, the rupture of the churches exacer- bated the growing alienation between the sections by providing each side with a moral arsenal and powerful rhetoric that distorted its opponent's claims and rendered compromise or peaceful solution still less likely.

Goen's work is a useful synthesis of the historiography of American denominationalism and his frank admission of the limitations of the volume is refreshing. Goen does not claim to have established an "inexorable linkage of causation" but to have examined a part of the national drama that culminated in the Civil War (13). Nevertheless, some disturbing questions remain. Why did American Protestantism succeed as spectacularly in breadth

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198 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC

as it failed in depth? How could it have reflected and given voice to so many national beliefs and aspirations and exercised so little normative influence on such basic national dilemmas? Why did an important source of American nationalism become the creature of political and social forces rather than their director? To ask Goen to explain the relationship between Protestantism and republicanism from the American Revolution to the Civil War is a tall order, but the structure of his argument invites it. In the final analysis, Broken Churches, Broken Nation describes far more than it explains.

Northwestern University Susan M. Bowler

White Society in the Antebellum South. By Bruce Collins. Studies in Modern History. (London: Longmans, 1985. Pp. xiii, 216. Maps. Paper, $12.95.)

This book is the latest attempt to present a coherent view of that frustratingly complex phenomenon known as the antebellum South. Focusing primarily on the decades immediately preceding the Civil War, Collins argues that the region was characterized by a unified social fabric, one which the vast majority of white southerners supported and one so intricately fashioned that an attack on any part of it could evoke a virulent defensive response. Slavery was an important, though hardly exclusive, aspect of this society. Just as central to Collins were the sense of community developed in clearing the land of trees and Indians, widespread economic opportunities which

guaranteed subsistence to all and wealth to many, open yet unobtrusive government, and the myriad rituals of family, church, and community.

To support his argument, Collins draws on the multitude of local and

topical studies of the antebellum South which have appeared in the last quarter century, supplemented by his own archival research. But while utilizing the recent literature, Collins is not hesitant to state his divergence from it. He is impatient with those who seek to understand white southerners by com-

paring them with Prussian Junkers, Scottish Highlanders, or South Africans. He finds "the argument over whether the South was modern or pre-modern, bourgeois or quasi-feudal . . . ultimately inane" (162). He also rejects the class analysis which pictures southern white society as divided between domi- nant and domineering slaveowners and aspiring, resentful yeoman farmers.

While Collins' book has the merit of calling historians to rethink their

interpretations and to synthesize the existing research, it is in the end flawed

by a pervasive unevenness and confusion of focus. There are sections of the work which sparkle with insight and point the way to fruitful future endeavor. For example, his discussion of the constant tensions between "respectables" and "roughs," an almost universal aspect of nineteenth century society that can easily by misrepresented as class antagonism, is well developed. On the other hand, his argument that the racial consciousness of white southerners was formed as much in their conflict with the Indian as in their contact with the slave is weak.

The unevenness is even more apparent in the author's inability to establish

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