Righteous Strife

Praise

“There is no greater interpreter of how religious thought and imagery shaped Abraham Lincoln’s statecraft than Richard Carwardine, who has now turned his attention to broader questions of how a clash of theological worldviews gave us what Lincoln called ‘a new birth of freedom.’ With grace and insight, Carwardine sheds new and important light on issues of perennial significance in America’s past—and present.” —Jon Meacham, author of And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle

“An extraordinary and indispensable book—with radiant prose, Carwardine evokes Americans’ profound yearning to divine the workings of Providence and to define the Civil War as a holy conflict.” —Elizabeth R. Varon, author of Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

“Not since James Moorhead’s American Apocalypse, almost fifty years ago, have we had so thorough an exposition of religion’s place as a motivator, a definer, and a divider in the American Civil War. No one has a more vast command of the intellectual geography of American religion in the mid-nineteenth-century than Richard Carwardine, and no one paints in more complex and comprehensive colors the labors of the American soul to come to terms with the war that wracked its national body from 1861 to 1865.” —Allen C. Guelzo, author of Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment

“Righteous Strife is the greatest work yet by one of our truly outstanding scholars of the Civil War era.  How did a people that, as Lincoln put it, read the same Bible and prayed to the same God come to slaughter each other so? With his singular subtlety backed with a lifetime of learning, Richard Carwardine explains by embedding slavery, antislavery, and nationalism in the history of American Protestantism as never before.” —Sean Wilentz, author of No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding

“An extraordinary range of research supports Richard Carwardine’s riveting account of the competing Christian nationalisms that confronted Abraham Lincoln during the crisis of the Civil War. Righteous Strife excels in explaining Lincoln’s own complicated religious views and how those views shaped his cautious course toward supporting abolition and full rights for African Americans, while he was contending with at least three rival groups of Unionists who knew for certain what God had in mind for the United States.” —Mark A. Noll, author of America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794-1911

“This compelling book adds luster to Richard Carwardine’s enviable reputation as an interpreter of Abraham Lincoln and the 19th-Century United States. A splendid reckoning of how religion interacted with politics, fostered different conceptions of nationalism, and shaped debates about emancipation, it highlights the daunting complexity of a profoundly consequential era.” —Gary W. Gallagher, author of The Enduring Civil War: Reflections on the Great American Crisis

“Richard Carwardine’s Righteous Strife will stand as the authoritative volume on the fascinating and impactful debate between and among Christian denominations during the bloody American Civil War. A superb scholar of both Lincoln and American religion, Carwardine’s chapters highlight the growth of a triumphant and nationalistic northern religious sensibility that emerged in 1864 and 1865, presided over and curated by President Abraham Lincoln, and famously proclaimed in his Second Inaugural Address.” —Joan Waugh, author of U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

“Righteous Strife offers a strikingly novel perspective on the Civil War era.  The author of the most astute account of Abraham Lincoln’s religious sensibilities, Richard Carwardine brings the same subtlety to bear on the clash of religious nationalisms through which Americans came to terms with the problem of slavery. Based on deep research and rendered in lucid prose, this is a must-read for anyone hoping to understand the greatest crisis in American history.” —James Oakes, author of The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution