More a reflection of the times. Nevins' Ordeal of the Union has a few chapters in the 8 volumes that cover it very well. Applegate's The Most Famous Man in America is a terrific read and covers the topic through the life of Henry Ward Beecher (Lyman's son and Harriet Beecher's brother). Really good biography of a very interesting and conflicted person with a huge scandal (think tele-evangislist stereotype).

More pointed in what you may be looking for, Noll's The Civil War as a Theological Crisis .

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What role did religion play in the growing divide or was it just a reflection of the growing division?

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My understanding is that religion was the main factor, perhaps the exclusive factor, in the divide. The abolitionist movement did not start in the US, but its origins were in England, primarily with the Methodists. Abolition's roots were entirely based on religion; without religion it would never have occurred and certainly would not have persevered and won in the face of the almost impossible obstacles facing it.

Have you read much about Wilber Wilberforce? If not, I'd start there because without understanding the roots of the abolition movement in England one really can't fully understand it in the US.

This is of some interest to me because my dad, a southerner whose family owned slaves, married my mom whose family had been prominent Quaker and Methodist abolitionists in Ohio. I have the autobiography of my mom's gg-something-grandfather which describes both his deep faith and his commitment to the freedom of slaves.

On the other hand, religion in the South did not create slavery. Rather, it seems that the rhetoric from the southern pulpits changed and increased in intensity in support of slavery in reaction and opposition to the growing abolitionist movement in the North. Also, the rhetoric regarding slavery across all facets of Southern slavery, not just religion, changed dramatically once the cotton gin changed the economics of slavery.

Two groups of people reading the same words from the same book but coming up with very different conclusions about slavery.

Albion's Seed is not directly on point for this question but it is VERY relevant in a general sense. It helps understand the different religious traditions that were prevalent in various parts of the US and it thereby helps shed light on the cultural differences that helped fan the flames of secession. Religious tendencies definitely had a not insignificant influence on the etiology and conduct of the US Civil War.

The Scot-Irish descendants that made up a large portion of the leadership on both sides and were the single biggest group actually fighting on both sides hd a very Presbyterian tendency and were basically of the "Don't Tread on Me" mindset that once violated had no problem with going straight to guns to settle a dispute. It was a historically Christianized warrior culture that once triggered would not hesitate to strike.

Or at least that's my take …

And I don't think it's a novel idea to connect the English Civil War with the US Civil War. The legacy of the warring factions from one can definitely be traced to the other. There's a reason the U Va mascot is a cavalier and not a round head.

That's really amazing. I've never heard of a church in the south like that before. I'm surprised that the whites even let the blacks worship in the same building with them.

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My understanding is that religion was the main factor, perhaps the exclusive factor, in the divide.

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Well, it was huge, but not the main factor. Climate was the main factor in abolition, because climate was the main factor in slavery. If your climate supported crops that could be effectively harvested only with slave labor, you were for slavery, and if it didn't, you were at least open to the ideas of emancipation. Religion then picked up some of the latter with an emancipation message that they embraced because they had the luxury of not having slaves of their own to have to liberate. Outside of domestic servants, and that's a small number, so freeing them is no huge hurdle.

The North was not particularly more moral or noble. Slavery just didn't work there. It worked in the South because, as noted, you had a staple of crops that needed intensive labor. Now, let's add the humble mosquito, which did more to enslave people than almost anything. You see, when Virginia first started to try to grow crops in its tidewater areas, they used poor whites and Irish. But they died. Massive numbers of them. The reason? Malaria. They tried Indians. They didn't fare much better. But African Americans had genetic protection against Malaria. Few of them died.

As for religion, for many, it basically was a framework for establishing moral superiority for a viewpoint that you already had anyway.

But the bottom line is, if slavery had been the only way to economically harvest cod from the ocean, then the people of Maine would have been the most staunch advocates of slavery.

aalan94 said:

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The North was not particularly more moral or noble. Slavery just didn't work there. It worked in the South because, as noted, you had a staple of crops that needed intensive labor.

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This needs to be said, because so much modern historiography of the Civil War is simplified to South = evil racist traitors and North = the virtuous heroes.

Good hypothesis, but it's my understanding that that's not the way it worked. Anti-slavery sentiment did not grow gradually, but rather exploded across Great Britain and America in parallel with the explosive growth of Wesleyanism/Methodism. Many if not most of the leaders of the abolitionist movement were Wesleyan.

And Aalan's point is partially correct, but not entirely. Slavery did exist in the North until the abolitionist movement, driven by the underlying religious movement, forced it out. And slavery, of Africans or others, is not dependent on environmental conditions for its continued existence. Slavery has been the norm throughout the world for almost all of human history. African slaves were (and may still be) being sold in the Ottoman regions where the environmental conditions were radically different than in the US Southern states or in the Caribbean sugar plantations.

My dad was a history professor and liked to talk about the different perspectives historians used. The primary one relied upon is an economic perspective, and other common ones are geographical determinism (as clearly illustrated in the book Gun, Germs, and Steel) or the "great man" theory of history. My dad also believed in the power of ideas to influence history, a power that is often overlooked or minimized by other historians. The Protestant Reformation was certainly caused, in part, by economics, geography, and powerful personalities such as Luther. But one would be a very poor historian if one ignored the power of the ideas behind the Reformation.

Similarly, for some reason, our modern age wants to ignore the power of the ideas and beliefs that swept through Great Britain and the US with the Wesleyan movement, of which abolition was one part. William Wilberforce, the leader of the abolition movement in England, was clearly and explicitly motivated by his religious beliefs. Most of the leaders of the abolition movement in the US were either Quakers or Methodists.