by Sandy » Fri Feb 14, 2014 12:47 pm
If Baptists were as numerous as Methodists in the South just prior to the Civil War, their presence in the political leadership of the Confederacy was not nearly as large or influential, not even as much as Presbyterians or Episcopalians. And I think it is fair to point out that the Baptist governor of Texas at the time of its seccession from the union was Sam Houston, who was a Southern Unionist, resisted forming a convention to secede, including vetoing the original bill, and then refused to concede that the convention had the authority to join the confederacy. Ultimately, his refusal to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederate states led to his removal as governor. Neither his successor, Lt. Gov. Edward Clark, nor the next elected governor, F.R. Lubbock, were Baptists. Most of my reading has concluded that Southern Baptists, particularly the churches associated with the convention, were more of an influence in the preservation of Southern culture and heritage during Reconstruction than they were before or during the war, and that's where their theological perspective was skewed with regard to human rights and the issue of slavery. It is, ironically, Southern sympathy with that perspective that contributed to the growth of Southern Baptist churches, as well as to its ecumenical isolation.
Though Civil War history is one of my hobbies, there's not a whole pile of information accumulated on the religious involvement of leaders on either side of the war, other than a passing reference in some cases to pre-war life. A good portion of the Confederate leadership was Episcopalian, including both Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. I wonder if the post-war shame and remorse over the hostility and brutality of the war caused Christian leaders to censor the involvement of leaders, particularly those of the confederacy, in their churches. I tend to think that most Southern Christians, regardless of their denominational affiliation, were Confederate supporters before and during the war, and accepted some of the beliefs that resulted, including that abolitionist positions were "antichrist," and slavery was Biblically justifiable, but most of the mainline Protestants had a mechanism in the denomination that contributed to pulling them back and reforming those views after the war. The independent, autonomous nature of Baptist churches and conventions prevented that from happening among them.
Northern Christians were not unified in either their abolitionist views or their sympathy and assistance to escaping slaves and free men. The Quakers were organized to the point of deliberate deception of law enforcement officials in their efforts to help slaves who had escaped. There wasn't wholesale objection to slave-catching laws that were passed in the North, which essentially forced slaves to go all the way to Canada in the period just prior to hostilities, and which had the effect of confirming the belief that slaves were the property of their owners, not entitled to human rights.