The Unitarians and the Reduction in the Church’s Influence in America

Since America’s independence, the Christian church has often become less involved in delivering services for society and the government more so. Here, Daniel L. Smith discusses the Unitarian Church, the decline in the Christian church’s role in education, and the growth of the state.

Daniel’s book on mid-19th century northern California is now available. Find our more here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Thomas Wentworth Higginson, an influential 19th and 20th century Unitarian.

American culture started where it was founded. It began in the heart of the North American colonist at the run-up to the American Revolution. Of course, over time, that changed. And as with any cultural change comes a stark political and religious divide. Historian Peter S. Field mentions that the "advent of a democratic political culture in the early American republic entailed the occasion of the first debates on the relationship between intellectuals and democracy in the United States.” Such was particularly the case in the 1830s in Brahmin Boston where, as Perry Miller once observed, "there could hardly be found a group of young Americans more numb to the notion that there were any stirring implications in the word democracy.”

Unitarian Church

Miller was right too. Americans in the 1830s were, for the most part, generally neutral in the way that American culture was beginning to shape out. There were ups and downs. With a new nation typically comes unlimited options on what direction to take the country regarding politics and culture. Mr. Field clarifies for us that the Unitarian Church is misleading church. It is a secular church body, and not a true Christian church. To understand how the religious fracture opened up a ‘Trojan horse’ for American thought, you must understand that "while the Bible is an important text for some Unitarian Universalists, many seek guidance from other sacred books and religious traditions." According to the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry (CARM), "Unitarian Universalists generally agree that human reason and experience should be the final authority in determining the spiritual truth." If you join a Unitarian church, you will meet people from many different belief systems including secular humanists, agnostics, Christians, Catholics and so forth. Unitarians believe in moral authority, but not necessarily the divinity of Jesus. Their theology is thus opposed to the trinity of other Christian denominations.

The Unitarian Church is then a more secular body that was formed in the 19th century ‘vacuum’ created when God was beginning to become separated in public schools, different from traditional teaching. Unitarian Congregationalism is another name for their secular "church body." Transcendentalism is the name to those who are engaged in practicing spirituality who felt "too intellectual" and "in control" of their fate to admit their personal destiny is actually guided by a single higher power. “Transcendentalism proved to be almost a byword for an otherworldly, inchoate intellectual community that only marginally traveled beyond the parochial confines of eastern Massachusetts. Whether the logical outgrowth of Unitarian Congregationalism or its dedicated nemesis, Transcendentalism seemed altogether too intellectual, too elitist, and too apolitical to be of any great relevance to the unfolding social and political drama of the Jacksonian era.”[1]

Hairline fracture

There was a hairline fracture that split the thinking of American traditionalists and progressive intellectuals. The Unitarian Church was the catalyst, following transcendentalism in close second. Traditionalists (such as the clergy and church) began to slowly stop providing leadership in public schools and universities (prior to this it was a purely Christian education). Harvard (originally a Christian church) was taken over by Unitarians and as the quality of public education began to change (and at times decline), Horace Mann (the "father of progressive education") would convince the state of Massachusetts that the best way for education to grow would be to have the government take control, instead of non-governmental groups (like families and churches).

What followed afterwards was the move to “self-culture,” a human thought process of “me, myself, and I” which closely follows materialism. To break open a political divide for control and power, there must be a catalyst to enable this cultural shift. Thus, secular humanism was born. “By self-culture, [...] personal striving for the intellectual and spiritual complement to material pursuits... to convey their [American individual] belief in the virtually limitless human capacity for development of their spiritual faculties through the study of culture.” [2] It is this idea that begins to remove the personal importance of having a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ - that is, Christianity.

As traditional American doctrines were neglected, the competing ideology of socialism took off. Karl Marx never had much influence in American society - until the country backslid from Christian principles and dabbled in greed. Thus, monopolies would form and grow. Wealth was accumulated, instead of employing the extra wealth to meet the needs of the poor and society. Self-culture (or individual interest), as Field would put it, began to replace the common good of the community.

The Trojan Horse

Marshall Foster writes that “in the loft restaurant above Peck’s restaurant at 140 Fulton Street in lower Manhattan, a group of young men met to plan the overthrow of the predominately Christian world-view that still pervaded America. At this first meeting five men were present: Upton Sinclair, 27, a writer and a socialist; Jack London, writer; Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a Unitarian minister; J.G. Phelps Stokes, husband of a socialist leader; and Clarence Darrow, a lawyer.

Their organization was called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Their purpose was to ‘promote an intelligent interest in socialism among college men and women.’ These men were ready to become the exponents of an idea passed on to them by an obscure writer named Karl Marx—a man who was supported by a wealthy industrialist who, inexplicably, believed in his theory of ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ Although a small group in the beginning, these adherents of socialism more than succeeded in their task.

“By using the proven method of gradualism, taken from the Roman general, Quintus Fabius Maximus, these men and others who joined with them slowly infiltrated” the public schools in America. By 1912 there were chapters in 44 colleges. By 1917 there were 61 chapters of student study groups of the League of Industrial Democracy. “At that time John Dewey, the godfather of progressive education, was the vice-president of the league. By 1941 Dewey had become president and Reinhold Niebuhr, the liberal socialist theologian, was the treasurer.”[3]

Conclusion

The beginning of the end of traditional America had become entrenched. Dr. Stephen K. McDowell says that “the loss Christian tradition, character, and responsibility led to the failure of many banks in the early 1900s. To remedy this situation, power was granted to a centralized Federal Reserve Board in 1913. But this unbiblical economic structure and lack of character produced many more problems. Within 20 years, the Stock Market had crashed, and America was in the midst of the Great Depression.”[4] With the propagation of socialism, people were ready for Roosevelt's “New Deal,” such as Social Security and other welfare agencies, which ultimately set up the state as provider rather than God. The rest is history.

You can read a selection of Daniel’s past articles on: California in the US Civil War (here), Spanish Colonial Influence on Native Americans in Northern California (here), the collapse of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (here), early Christianity in Britain (here), the First Anglo-Dutch War (here), the 1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak (here), and an early European expedition to America (here).

Finally, Daniel Smith writes at complexamerica.org.

References

[1] Dr. Beliles, Mark A., and Stephen K. Dr. McDowell. America's Providential History: Including Biblical Principles of Education, Government, Politics, Economics, and Family Life, 253. 1989.

[2] Field, Peter S. 2001. ""the Transformation of Genius into Practical Power": Relph Waldo Emerson and the Public Lecture." Journal of the Early Republic 21 (3) (Fall): 467-493.

[3] Foster, Marshall, and Mary-Elaine Swanson. The American Covenant: The Untold Story, xvii. Mayflower Inst, 1983.

[4] Ibid., Dr. Beliles, Mark A., and Stephen K. Dr. McDowell, 250-251.

The American Civil War: The Legacy of Social and Economic Control

The American Civil War ended in 1865, but its effects lasted a long time – and even linger to this day. Here, Daniel L. Smith returns and presents his views on how economic and social control emerged from the Civil War and last to the present in America.

Daniel’s book on mid-19th century northern California is now available. Find our more here: Amazon US | Amazon UK

Freedmen voting in New Orleans in 1867.

It's far from over. In fact, it was never over. Here's a historical clarification to give an insight and some background information into the political 'shadow-war' occurring today in Washington DC and within states nationwide. And that is just the fallout of the ongoing American Civil War. American historians James McPherson and James Hogue, both prominent intellectuals whose area of expertise are in the era of the Civil War and Reconstruction, gave an eye-opening account on the forecast of the Democratic Party’s intentions for America in 1857 and beyond.

​“Slavery lies at the root of all shame, poverty, ignorance, tyranny, and imbecility…” With a direct emphasis on the rogue political tactics used to obligate the whole mass of society, “the lords of the lash” (speaking of Democratic politicians and business elites) who “are not only absolute masters of blacks [but] of all non-slave-holding whites, whose freedom is merely nominal, and whose unparalleled literacy and degradation is purposely and fiendishly perpetuated.”[1]

R. H. Purdom would give an early warning: "Decided course for the speedy suppression of the intolerable abuses” taken on by workers was absolutely necessary for the “permanent welfare of the institution of slavery itself.”[2] Mr. Purdom was a master mechanic who stood up to address a meeting in Jackson, Mississippi. He gave a stark warning to the elite’s controlling the southern economy. By this point, even the poor working white class were ready to turn coat on their own institutions.

In September 1865, a prominent leading Democratic politician (just recently pardoned by the federal government after losing the Civil War) publicly scoffed at any idea of the Democratic Party remaining loyal or maintaining good relations with the newly re-established United States government. Even Wade Hampton, one of the South’s wealthiest elite farmers, would mention immediately after the Civil War that it “is our duty” (talking of the post-war Confederates who were legally pardoned of treason) to support the President of the United States; however their loyalty to the new government would only stay intact if “he manifests a disposition to restore all our rights as a sovereign State.”[2]

After war’s end

Even though rebellious military action ceased weeks after the loss, the Democratic Party of the post-Civil War period only declared a momentary political ceasefire. And although they had formally lost, they did not willingly capitulate to the federal government (the Union) at the moment of military surrender. Between April 9 and November 6, 1865, a nearly invisible ‘shadow war’ marked the 'beginning of the end' for the future of political and social cohesion within America.

Democrats had regained power in most Southern states by the late 1870s. Later, this period came to be referred to as "Redemption". From 1890 to 1908, the Democrats passed statutes and amendments to state constitutions that effectively disenfranchised most African Americans and tens of thousands of poor whites. They did this through devices such as poll taxes for voters and literacy tests to “qualify” to vote (among other underhand tactics). By the late 1950s, the Democratic Party began to embrace the Civil Rights Movement, and the old argument that Southern whites had to vote for Democrats "to protect racial segregation" grew weaker.

The Democratic Party realized that regardless of the outcomes of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the policy of "slavery-by-color" was over. Segregation also became incompatible with their party’s ethics, which is to oppress the poor regardless of color. So what did they do? Modernization had brought factories, national businesses and a more diverse culture to cities such as Atlanta, Dallas, Charlotte, and Houston. This attracted many northern migrants, including many African Americans. They gave priority to modernization and economic growth over preservation of the "old ways" of the Democratic Party, but they wanted social and economic control, a process which had started earlier.

Social and economic control

Between 1865 and the late-1880s, prices were falling and people's incomes increased six-fold, so offering American's more purchasing power.[3] The politicians of the New South began feeling the pressures of big businesses complaints that the increased wages were rising fast. It is because of this major economic shift that the attack on the greedy worker was to begin. There was another shift as well. A social one. Now the freedmen (former slaves) and previously non-slave-holding whites, were able to climb the free-market ladder unhindered. For the Democratic Party, it was time to shift the focus to social and economic control.

"Cut their wages to begin with. Make them work harder. To align their interests with their employers, put wage earners on piecework (part-time). Above everything, do something to stop skilled workers from setting the pace of production and spreading to co-workers their spirit of 'manly' resistance to speed-ups" (hostile resistance to forced increases in manual labor). Much like the post-Modern Institutions of Fast Food, Gas, and Retail, one laborer wrote: "You start in to be a man, but you become more and more a machine.... It's like any severe labor. It drags you down mentally and morally, just as it does physically."[4] Of course the Iron Workers during those times had it painstakingly hard physically, but the shift today has moved to being exhausting mentally.

With the Covid-19 Pandemic, Republicans are screaming at Americans to "get out and live!" They want to encourage financial independence and societal success. The Democrats are screaming at Americans to "stay home and save lives!" At this point, for what? One Democratic politician was quoted recently as telling Americans that they should just stay home and "get paid" with the federal government paying out a basic universal income for everybody. And in the future? Who knows, but the way things look, it could possibly be by something as simple as misleading everybody into eventually doing everything from home -and only home.[5]

It is apparent through history's evidence that control is the Democratic Party's modern end-game.

At least it seems that way.

​Enough said.

You can read a selection of Daniel’s past articles on: California in the US Civil War (here), Spanish Colonial Influence on Native Americans in Northern California (here), Christian ideology in history (here), the collapse of the Spanish Armada in 1588 (here), early Christianity in Britain (here), the First Anglo-Dutch War (here), and the 1918 Spanish Influenza outbreak (here).

Finally, Daniel Smith writes at complexamerica.org.

Bibliography

​[1] McPherson, James M., and James K. Hogue. "The Problems of Peace and Presidential Reconstruction, 1865." In Ordeal by Fire: The Civil War and Reconstruction, 543. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009.

[2] Beatty, Jack. "The Problems of Peace and Presidential Reconstruction, 1865." In Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900, 543. New York: Vintage, 2008.

[3] “Mechanical Association,” Mississippian State Gazette, Dec. 29, 1858, 3.

[4] Perrow, Charles. "A Society of Organizations." Theory and Society 20 (1991), 791. doi:10.1007/bf00678095.

[5] Chris Talgo, Opinion Contributor. "Universal Basic Income and the End of the Republic." TheHill. Last modified May 12, 2020.https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/497244-universal-basic-income-and-the-end-of-the-republic.

The Role of Women in the Confederacy during the American Civil War

The US Civil War (1861-1865) changed America in many ways. With many men fighting in the war, one such change was the role of women in society. Here, Kaiya Rai considers the role of women in the Confederate States, including a look at feminine ideals at the time, Belle Boyd, and Mary Chestnut.

Mary Chestnut, author a well-known civil war diary.

Women’s lives in the Confederacy were dramatically changed right from the breakout of war in April 1861. The very notion of womanhood underwent a transformation, as men were called up to fight in the army, and women from the upper-class were forced to look after slaves, women from the middle-class were forced to flee their homes and seek refuge, and women of the lower-class and widows gained social standing as a result. The idea of women having to takeover on the home front during a war is not a new one, but in the case of the American Civil War, this was an entirely new concept. Furthermore, women held no previous social standing. There was no growing suffrage movement as there was in World War One (WWI), it was the first time such an event had occurred, in contrast to World War Two (when many remembered WWI), and women from the upper reaches of society, did not generally have significant difficulties in their lives.

Much of the information gained about women in the Confederacy, and their changing identities, has come from the diaries that the majority of upper-class women wrote in. They provided a new way of self-discovery, as such writing required self-description as a result of self-understanding. Even when women began writing letters to officers, and even Jefferson Davis, it meant claiming a public voice, and so was incompatible with their definition and understanding of themselves as ‘women’.

Feminine ideals

The fragility of feminine ideals existing in the antebellum period appears to have served the women well, as it seems that ‘feminine weakness served as the foundation of female strength’ (Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War) in this case. Many women did what they could to play their part in the war, albeit covertly sometimes, as it wasn’t seen as being ‘feminine.’ Belle Boyd shooting the Union soldier entering her house is a key example of this; escaping punishment by claiming feminine fragility and fear was fundamental to the patriarchal nature of war. The hoop skirts that many upper-class women wore were used to hide jewelry, as they had no fear of being searched as women. This lack of threat is displayed in a Union soldier’s comment that ‘if she was a man I would whip her.’ The Nancy Hart regiment in La Grange, Georgia displayed a similar idea. When a Union regiment approached the town, the women-only regiment refused to back down, invited the soldiers in for tea and thus evaded the capture of the town! Elite women, in particular, hated the occupation of Confederate towns by Union soldiers, and were noted to have stepped in gutters to avoid passing Union soldiers on the pavement, and even wore thick veils to avoid eye contact with the officers! Students at a girl’s school in Georgia were recorded as emptying their chamber pots out of the windows onto soldiers’ heads, and Flag Officer Farragut was also subjected to this, in New Orleans. This hatred of the officers fuelled many women into action; despite their view of femininity, many wanted to play their part in forming a new nation and playing patriotic games against the country they believed had oppressed their ideals for so long.

However, their feminine helplessness has also been seen, to a large extent, to have been perpetrated by the women themselves. One of the first requirements for women in the Confederacy was as nurses and teachers, seen as traditionally female roles today, ironically! Yet, upon this call for help, many were writing to their husbands asking them to be forbidden to go. One woman even started addressing letters to her husband as ‘dear papa’ and ending them from your ‘daughter.’ Here, it seems that the patriarchy, whilst perhaps initiated by men, seems to have been upheld and continued by women. As McCurry noted that “no one, apparently, believed in women’s non-partisanship as fervently as the women themselves.” The need for protection was a big issue when men were called up to fight, and many made it a condition of them joining the war effort; they would do so, if the state could offer support for their families. 

Belle Boyd’s Role as a Spy

Belle Boyd, also known as ‘the Siren of the Shenandoah,’ was one woman who played a particularly noteworthy role for the Confederacy. A die-hard secessionist, she spied for the Confederacy during the Civil War and was able to use her role as an upper class ‘lady’ to cover her actions, and claim ignorance when needed. When she and her mother denied entry to some Union officers wanting to raise a Union flag over their house, and when one assaulted her mother as a result, Belle shot and killed the soldier, and became infamous as a result. Despite being a spy for the majority of the Civil War, the usefulness of her intelligence work is not nearly as significant as the symbolism of her doing the work itself. She informed General Jackson of the Union intentions to set fire to the bridges in Front Royal (Virginia) as they retreated, and also reported on Union action in the Shenandoah - these are considered by most as the only outcomes of her intelligence work to have had major effect. However, the uncertainty of women’s roles, especially upper-class women’s roles during the Civil War was hugely compounded by Boyd’s actions, and perhaps it can be argued that she represented an icon for the helpless Confederate woman. Their femininity was, to an extent, reliant on the view that women were husbands’ wives, not individuals in their own right. Boyd used this fragile need for women to her advantage, and many stories of her outrageous flirtations circled among Union and confederate officers alike. These, however, played an important role as Boyd identified in one diary entry, "I am indebted for some very remarkable effusions, some withered flowers, and last, but not least, for a great deal of very important information.” The notion of womanhood as dependency on a man, and the objection, to some part, of women, that men perpetrated by bringing flowers and ‘remarkable effusion,’ actually allowed Boyd to gain all the information she needed to effectively spy on the Union for her cause.

Belle Boyd, a Confederate civil war spy.

Mary Chestnut as the more common female experience

Mary Chestnut conversely played the role of the conventional, helpless Confederate woman abandoned by her husband, but she held real devastation in this, and truly felt lost. Many women in the Confederacy had similar experiences to Chestnut, as they were left with a plantation and possibly hundreds of slaves to manage. There was also the constant fear of servile insurrection, aggravated by abolitionist John Brown’s raid in 1859 in which he wanted to start an armed slave revolt. Chestnut was the embodiment of women’s beliefs that, as Faust identifies, the feeling of ‘a new sense of God’s distance and disengagement combined with a distrust of the men on whom they had so long relied,’ and as such, the necessity of war that forced Confederate women to behave in new ways, became the driving force behind the changing of their identities. The lives of the confederate women, not having undergone the innovations of society that were occurring in the north, had been so focused on marriage and child-bearing, with their identities so tied up with visions of themselves as wives and mothers, that when war overturned these norms, it meant that their fundamental self-definition was altered. Moreover, their emotional relations and experiences were so fixed on privacies of heterosexual love that the countless examples of female homosexuality recorded in diaries, were not seen as anything other than close female friendship, probably in part because the identity of a woman was so ingrained as part of a larger patriarchal sphere.

Related to this is the renewed view of the identities of widows during the war. As a result of huge casualties, with 260,000 Confederate deaths at the end of the war, many women became widows, and this notion became romanticized as they were seen as having ‘loved and suffered’. Widows were seen as the settlers of ‘the rejuvenating club’ of women who became self-confident in themselves and eligible for a state pension of $30 per year, on certain conditions. This brought with it a sense of independence for many women, as they no longer had the choice of relying on a husband, and now owned money themselves, an opportunity which most would not have previously had. Widows therefore became essential for women all over the Confederacy, in questioning the very nature of being a woman, because women actively seeking romance redefined marriage conventions. The stereotype of the faithful, heartbroken wife, and therefore the assessment that women only lived for their husbands, was deconstructed, as they showed that they would continue to live their life even without a husband. To court and remarry was to assert a claim to happiness, preceding the self-abnegation and altruism expected from a woman.

To conclude

It can be seen that, as Faust argues, necessity may have been the ‘mother of invention’ for women in the Confederacy during the Civil War, as the romantic notions of war and patriotism had been replaced with a selfishness due to a need to survive. The women themselves could have also been the ‘mothers of invention’ themselves, though, and the women’s property law of 1860, embodied a new ‘vision of masculine irresponsibility’ (Lebsock), perhaps consequential of the new gender ideology introduced as a result of the Civil War.

What do you think about the role of women in the Confederacy during the US Civil War?