'As good a right to pray': Copperhead Christians on the northern Civil War home front

The American Civil War was a religious and moral crisis for faithful Protestant Democrats in the North. The northern Republican Protestant majority defined the Civil War as a "Holy War" whereby the nation would be redeemed by the emancipating bayonets of victorious Northern armies. The Democratic Protestant minority was challenged to articulate an alternative religious interpretation of the war that would sustain both their standing as Christians and their political opposition to the policies and war aims of the religious and political majority.;This study has three major themes. The first is that pious northern Democratic Protestants viewed the conflict as an "Unholy War"--one that threatened the nation's spiritual moorings in a Divine order authenticated in Scripture and revealed in the social and political institutions of the old Union. By perceiving themselves as the protectors of the nation's true spiritual and moral base, Democrats maintained their self-conceptions as devout Christians.;A second theme concerns Copperhead Christians as victims of wartime social repression. Examination of a number of Civil War church trials and case studies of proscribed preachers reveal how church-going Democrats came under tremendous social and ecclesiastical pressure to conform to the political orthodoxy of the religious majority. The sources reveal that churches had an influential role in shaping the character and extent of an oppressive home front climate of fear, suspicion, and innuendo.;The concluding theme is the founding of various "new church" movements (dubbed "Copperhead Christianity" by Republicans) as a reaction to religious repression. It is the story of a significant Democratic insurgency within the northern Protestant Churches of the Civil War west (Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio), where a growing network of proscribed preachers attempted to channel religious dissent into a united, wide-spread movement that could challenge the seemingly monolithic support of Northern religious institutions for the Republican war agenda.;Taken as a whole, this study forces historians of the American Civil War to reassess the nature and scope of Democratic opposition to the Republican war effort, and acknowledge an important and overlooked religious dimension to the Copperhead movement.