Furst Thesis Bind

THE OLD SCHOOL PRESBYTERIANS,
FAST DAY SERMONS: OR THE PULPIT AND THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY (1861),
AND THE COMING OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
BY
JONATHAN KARL FURST
B.A., Columbia International University, 2007
A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF CHRISTIAN STUDIES
with a concentration in
CHURCH HISTORY
_____________________________
Supervisor: Donald M. Lewis
_____________________________
Second Reader: Iwan Russell-Jones
REGENT COLLEGE
Vancouver, British Columbia
May 2013
Jonathan Karl Furst

RIGHTS OF PUBLICATION AND LOAN
In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirement for an advanced degree at
Regent College, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and
study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly
purposes may be permitted by the Librarian. It is understood that copying or publication
of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission.
_____________________________
Jonathan Karl Furst
i

ABSTRACT
Many have noted the relationship between the schisms among Protestant
denominations during the antebellum period and the coming of the American Civil War.
Few have focused exclusively on reasons for the schism among the Old School
Presbyterians in 1861. This thesis uses the sermons of James H. Thornwell, B.M. Palmer,
Robert L. Dabney, Henry J. Van Dyke (Sr.) and Robert J. Breckinridge included in the
1861 collection Fast Day Sermons: Or, the Pulpit on the State of the Country to argue
that in 1860-61, the Old School was experiencing an ecclesiological crisis due to an
overemphasis on subjective spirituality––encompassing both ecclesiology and
anthropology––that led to contradictory conclusions within the denomination regarding
the social issues facing the United States. This ultimately hindered the ability of the Old
School to take a decisive stance on slavery, thereby causing them to divide into Northern
and Southern factions. This work looks at the sermons thematically, beginning by
examining each figure’s adherence to and interpretation of the Old School’s official
stance of the “spirituality of the church” (chapter one), and then suggests that each shared
an ecclesiology that projected ecclesial ideals onto the state rather than the church, which
left them only able to call for Christian influence in the social sphere on the basis of
individual volition (chapter two). This individualistic anthropology in turn led to
ii

mutually exclusive conclusions about the biblical teaching on slavery (chapter three).
This thesis concludes that the root problem in the division of the Old School was a crisis
over authority and how the individual was to relate to the church.
iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS
...............................................................................................................INTRODUCTION 1
.....................................................CHAPTER ONE: THE LONG WINTER OF 1860-61 16
...........................................The Strength and Spirituality of the Presbyterian Church 18
..............................................Mounting Tension and the Election of November 1860 25
R.L. Dabney, “The Christian’s Best Motive for Patriotism,” Hampden Sidney,
Virginia, November 1, 1860. 25
........................................................................................The Old School Takes Sides 28
James H. Thornwell, “Our National Sins,” The Presbyterian Church, Columbia,
South Carolina, November 21, 1860. 28
B.M. Palmer, “Slavery a Divine Trust: Duty of the South to Perpetuate it,” First
Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 20, 1860. 31
Henry J. Van Dyke (Sr.), “The Character and Influence of Abolitionism,” First
Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, New York, December 9, 1860. 36
Robert J. Breckinridge, “The Union to be Preserved,” Lexington, Kentucky,
January 4, 1861. 39
CHAPTER TWO: CIVIL MILLENNIALISM, THE CHURCH, AND THE
....................................................................................................................INDIVIDUAL 42
....................................American Protestantism and Scottish Commonsense Realism 44
........................................................................Civil Millennialism and the Individual 48
James Henley Thornwell 48
Benjamin Morgan Palmer 54
Robert Lewis Dabney 60
Robert J. Breckinridge 65
Henry J. Van Dyke 69
iv

.....................................CHAPTER THREE: THE BIBLICAL CRISIS AND SLAVERY 76
.............................................................................The Hermeneutic of the Old School 78
.................................................................................................Dabney’s Hermeneutic 83
............................................................................................The Proslavery Argument 86
..............................................................Breckinridge and the Antislavery Argument 102
................................................................................CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION 108
................................................................................The Old School Schism of 1861 109
...................................................The Despiritualization of the Southern Old School 112
........................................................The Old School and The Crisis Over Authority 116
............................................................................................................BIBLIOGRAPHY 122
v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Over the course of writing, a number of people were instrumental in helping me
to complete this thesis. My grandfather, Dean Fredrikson, was a wonderful
encouragement throughout my graduate program, including this thesis. Jeff Furst, John
Pauling, Paul-David Young and David Gentino were gracious to read drafts and interact
with the argument. Thanks to John Stackhouse for providing guidance and feedback in
the early stages of formulating the thesis. I am indebted to Mark Noll for suggesting Fast
Day Sermons as a primary source collection. A deep and heartfelt thank-you to Don
Lewis for his extensive comments on drafts, as well as for the privilege of being able to
work with him over the past three years.
Thank-you to my daughter, who, as a toddler, refuses to let me take myself too
seriously. Most of all, I want to thank my wife, Bethany, for encouraging me to take on
this project, even though it might not have been the most direct or convenient route to
graduation. I could not have done it without her patient support.
vi

INTRODUCTION
One of the puzzling features of the first half of the nineteenth century in America
is the dichotomy between the church’s cultural influence and its inability to avert the
coming of the Civil War.1 Even in an era that has often been called “Christian America,”
there remains a profound and tragic irony over the events leading to the conflict that took
place between April 1861 and April 1865.2 In 1864, in the midst of the War, the
Presbyterian minister R.L. Stanton wrote:
Politicians, secular and religious journals, pamphleteers, men in all classes of society,
freely lay the blame for the Rebellion, in great measure, or wholly, at the door of the
Church; charging the ministry, more especially, with having caused it. This is a very
prevalent sentiment, if we may judge from what has been said and written. There is
undoubtedly justice or injustice in the charge, according to the direction given to it. It
is then essential that the matter be probed, so that if the Church or its ministers are
improperly impugned, they may have justice done to them; and that the really guilty
may be held responsible.3
1
! 1 This influence has not always been reflected in the numbers. According to one study,
church adherence in 1860 hovered around 34%, unimpressive when compared to 62% in 1980.
Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, “Turning Pews into People: Estimating 19th Century Church
Membership,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 25, no. 2 (June 1986): 187, Table 4.
! 2 Mark A. Noll, “‘Christian America’ and ‘Christian Canada’,” in World Christianities c.
1815-c.1914, ed. Sheridan Gilley and Brian Stanley, vol. 8, The Cambridge History of Christianity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 359.
! 3 R.L. Stanton, The Church and the Rebellion: A Consideration of the Rebellion Against
the Government of the United States; and the Agency of the Church, North and South, in Relation
Thereto. (New York: Derby and Miller, 1864), vii; Quoted in C.C. Goen, Broken Churches, Broken
Nation: Denominational Schisms and the Coming of the American Civil War (Macon Ga.: Mercer
University Press, 1985), 1.

Even in the decade before the war it was not uncommon to hear similar sentiments. In
the conclusion to her famous 1852 novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe
(sister of Fast Day Sermons contributor Henry Ward Beecher) wrote:
Both North and South have been guilty before God; and the Christian Church has a
heavy account to answer. Not by combining together, to protect injustice and cruelty,
and making a common capital of sin, is this Union to be saved,––but by repentance,
justice and mercy; for, not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks into
the ocean, than that stronger law, by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations
the wrath of Almighty God!4
Stanton and Stowe were not alone, as many other commentators made similar
observations. The question posed was an important one. Were the churches culpable for
the war? Could they have averted it?
Unfortunately, at least two problems have muddied the historiographical waters
since the Civil War, ultimately hindering our ability to answer this well. On the one hand,
at the scholarly level the tendency has been to treat the religious component as a quaint,
but ultimately irrelevant, eccentricity of the period––a mere accessory to the broader
ethical and social struggle. As George Marsden puts it, “Standard accounts of nineteenth-
century America spoke much of Emerson and Thoreau but relegated the dominant
religious tradition to minor sections, implicitly suggesting that its significance was
perhaps on par with canal building or the popularity of Little Women.”5 Likewise, as
2
! 4 Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Or, Life Among the Lowly, vol. 2, 2 vols.
(Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1852), 822 (emphasis original).
! 5 George Marsden, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience:
A Case Study of Thought and Theology in Nineteenth-Century America (Eugene Or.: Wipf &
Stock, 2003), ix. See also David Walker Howe, “Religion and Politics in the Antebellum North,” in
Religion and American Politics: From the Colonial Period to the Present, ed. Mark A Noll and
Luke E Harlow (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 121.

David Cheseborough has suggested, of the multitude of primary sources available from
the mid-nineteenth century, sermons are perhaps the least utilized by historians due to
their theological complexity and seeming irrelevance.6 Thus, a kind of historical
anachronism occurs in which the values of contemporary scholarship override those of an
earlier era, thereby causing us to misunderstand critical causes of the War. In this case,
the period up to and including the Civil War cannot be understood apart from reckoning
with religion generally, and Protestantism more specifically.7 On the other hand, popular
depictions tend to sentimentalize the War. As in the 2003 film Gods and Generals, one is
left with the impression that every historical figure spoke entirely in pithy, quotable
statements, with a full orchestral accompaniment.
In any case, both the negligence of the academy and the sentimentality of popular
media have not helped in adequately dealing with the religious questions raised by the
War. Mark Noll observes that, because of the War,
it has been harder for deep religiously rooted moral convictions to exert a decisive
influence on the shaping of public life––be it … against unfettered capitalism, against
violent ethnic discrimination, for environmental protection, for the unborn human
fetus, for equal educational opportunity, or for universal medical protection. In other
words, since the Civil War … theological arguments have only rarely been able to
overcome the inertia behind institutions and practices sanctioned by the evolving
usages of voluntaristic, democratic consumerist culture.8
3
! 6 David Chesebrough, “The Civil War and the Use of Sermons as Historical Documents,”
OAH Magazine of History 8, no. 1 (Fall, 1993): 26-29.
! 7 For an analysis of the religious nature of the War, see William A. Clebsch, “Christian
Interpretations of the Civil War,” Church History 30, no. 2 (June 1961): 212–222; For a helpfully
curated collection of primary source material on Christian interpretations of the War, see David
Chesebrough, “God Ordained This War”: Sermons on the Sectional Crisis, 1830-1865 (Columbia
S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1991).
! 8 Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina,
2006), 45.

If Noll is correct that the War was the antecedent of many of our present societal
struggles, and the church’s inability to speak decisively about them, then we ignore such
engagement to our peril.
Fortunately, recent scholarship has begun to make important inroads into the
study of American religion at the time of the Civil War. Given Marsden’s observations
(which were originally made in the early 1970’s, before the publication of many of the
major works on religion in this period), if the recent surge of interest in religion in
nineteenth century America is any indication, there has been a seismic shift in the way in
which American history is being interpreted. While this thesis was being written, the
South Carolina Confederate Relic Room hosted a major conference on the Spirituality of
the Civil War. Several notable books, articles, and dissertations have been published in
the last twenty years, including (but certainly not limited to) Richard Carwardine’s
Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America, Harry S. Stout’s Upon the Altar of a
Nation, and George C. Rable’s God’s Almost Chosen Peoples.9 At last, the religious
component of the War is being given its due.
This thesis will not attempt to resolve all the theological questions raised by the
War. The notoriously difficult feature of American Protestantism in this period has been
in its multitudinous manifestations. In 1860 there were at least 24 major denominations,
4
! 9 Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America (Knoxville:
University of Tennessee Press, 1997); Harry Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History
of the American Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006); George Rable, God’s Almost Chosen
Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2010).

and a multitude of smaller sects.10 To thoroughly examine the questions raised by the
War would require serious engagement with each of the individual denominations––a
tedious task to be sure. Even the major works on this subject wisely isolate their studies
to a sample of denominations. Thus, a major work such as C.C. Goen’s Broken
Churches, Broken Nation restricts itself to the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians,
while Lewis Vander Velde’s The Presbyterians and the Federal Union focuses on the
various Presbyterian groups.11 The aim of this thesis is to look at one group––the Old
School Presbyterians––in the context of one collection of sermons––Fast Days Sermons:
or the Pulpit on the State of the Country (FDS)––in one corner of American Protestant
Christianity, nestled as it is in one country, in one brief period of time, albeit a
tremendously important one.12
In light of the importance of studying the religion in this period, there are at least
three reasons why FDS is a worthwhile document for close examination. First, the
document presents a fascinating cross-section of American Protestantism during the
antebellum period, capturing the duality of religious opinions regarding the looming
national crisis. Ten sermons and one journal article are included, all from different
authors. Numerically preeminent in the collection are Old School Presbyterians, but also
5
! 10 This ﬁgure only represents groups that held property. Ninth Census [1870]: The
Statistics of the Population of the United States, vol. I (Washington: Government Printing Ofﬁce,
1872), 526.
! 11 See esp. Goen, 43-63; Lewis Vander Velde, The Presbyterian Churches and the
Federal Union (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932).
! 12 One other work has attempted to take a focused look at FDS. See Xaris A. Martinez,
“Minds in Place: Thornwell, Palmer, Dabney, and Breckinridge in Fast Day Sermons: Or, The
Pulpit on the State of the Country (1861)” (M.A. thesis, Oxford, MS: University of Mississippi,
2011).

included are a Dutch Reformed professor (Tayler Lewis), Congregationalist (Henry Ward
Beecher), Episcopalian (Francis Vinton), Unitarian (Henry W. Bellows), and New School
Presbyterian (William Adams) ministers, and a Jewish Rabbi (M.J. Raphall). Taken
together, the contributors canvas seemingly every opinion regarding the controversy over
states’ rights, “fanaticism,” and slavery.13
Second, inasmuch as FDS is an intriguing cross-section of the American religious
landscape in the middle of the nineteenth century, it also contrasts starkly with the
religious demographic of that period. Presbyterians, while significant in number, were
third in membership to Baptists and Methodists.14 Congregationalists had been a leading
denomination in the latter half of the eighteenth century but by the 1850s were a marginal
group. Unitarians, being a subset of the Congregationalists, were even smaller, while the
Jewish presence was even more minimal. The inclusion of these groups in FDS in favor
of Baptist or Methodist sermons could mean a couple of things; either these groups were
more socially prominent than the Baptists or the Methodists, and so one might get a sense
of who people were listening to as the conflict heated up, or the intended audience of this
book was mainly drawn from a particular class of people, represented by these
denominations.15
6
! 13 “Fanaticism” typically referred to the Abolitionists.
! 14 See Edwin Scott Gaustad and Philip L. Barlow, New Historical Atlas of Religion in
America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); 374, ﬁgure C.15.
! 15 Goen writes that, “The higher, educational level of Presbyterian clergy enabled them to
appeal to the entrepreneurial and business classes; and as a result, Presbyterians became
something of an elite church among the evangelical denominations.” Goen, 61. Except for the
evangelical distinction and their presence in education, the Episcopalians, Unitarians, and
Congregationalists shared in this prestige.

A third and final reason for a close study of FDS is that, as Goen describes it, the
whole event plays out like “a high tragedy in the classic sense.”16 This is vividly seen in
FDS. Published in 1861, a scant few months before the first shots were fired on Fort
Sumter, it covers sermons given by some of the leading clerical personalities of the
period.17 Most sermons were given on national fast days held between November 1,
1860 and January 4, 1861. Thus, the book occupies that brief dramatic moment when the
country hit a fever pitch “on a question … of National existence.”18 These fast days hung
thick with the expectation of the War to come, the air heavy and charged as before a great
storm. The sermons, then, offer the reader an opportunity to glimpse the nation from the
vantage point of the pulpit at the very moment before the moral question of slavery
would be decided, not by ink and rhetoric, not in the synods and conferences of the great
Churches, not by way of systematic theology and biblical exegesis––these having been
tried in the 1830s and 1840s––but on the battlefields of Shiloh and Bull Run, in bayonets
dusted with gunpowder and coated in blood. For the historian of the American church, it
presents a quandary as dramatic and problematic as Constantine is for the broader church.
As it relates to the Old School in FDS, the quandary posed is this: why did the
Old School remain a single body longer than the Baptists or Methodists, but still fail to
remain united when the war came in 1861? Much of the answer to this is tied to the
7
! 16 Goen, 65.
! 17 The precise dating of the document is not given, but we can be certain that the book
was published sometime after the fast day held on January 4, 1861 and before the start of the
war on April 12, 1861. The preface of the book does not mention the War, suggesting that it was
published before it began. Rather, it describes being “on the very brink of dissolution,” while
never giving any indication that ﬁghting had actually begun. FDS, vii.
! 18 FDS, vii.

cultural composition of the United States. The period beginning in the Revolution and
leading up to the Civil War was marked by its struggle over the question of what exactly
defined the American people. As one historian put it, the United States was a “roof
without walls,”––possessing an ideological roof (in the Constitution) even while the
cultural walls were still yet unformed.19 It has been suggested that the common
experiences of the first and second Great Awakenings were crucial in the formation of an
American national identity, placing the Protestant church in an important social position
as a provider of cultural cohesion.20 Thus, beginning in the late 1830s, as these major
ecclesial cords that helped bind the nation together began to snap, one by one, until only
the Old School was left, it was watched by outsiders with increasing anxiety. Finally, that
last cord did snap, although the country would split first, but its strained fibers can be
seen in the FDS of 1860-61.
A frequent interlocutor in attempting to arrive at an answer to this question has
been C.C. Goen’s excellent study Broken Churches, Broken Nation: Denominational
Schisms and the Coming of the American Civil War. This book has done much to frame
the current discussion of the role of the churches in the coming of the War, and was the
first to argue that, “the division of the churches and their subsequent behavior reinforced
8
! 19 John M. Murrin, “A Roof Without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity,” in
Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, ed. Richard
Beeman, Stephen Botein, and Edward C. Carter (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1987), 333–48.
! 20 On the role of revival language in the formation of democratic culture, see Harry S.
Stout, “Religion, Communications, and the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,”
William and Mary Quarterly 34, no. 4 (October 1977): 519–541. See also Donald G. Mathews,
“The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis,” American
Quarterly 21, no. 1 (Spring 1969): 23–43.

a growing sectionalism that led eventually to political rupture and armed conflict.”21
Goen does a masterful job of distilling the major issues involved while succinctly
surveying a complex ecclesiastical landscape.
A number of other works have been instrumental in the development of this thesis.
Mark Noll has given much careful thought to the interaction between theology and
American culture and politics. Notably, his Civil War as Theological Crisis is an
excellent study of the role of biblical hermeneutics in the course of the War, while his
magisterial America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln is a vital study
of a critical gestational period in American religious history, encompassing the one
covered in this thesis.22 Similarly, Nathan O. Hatch’s The Democratization of American
Christianity offers a helpful survey of the cross-fertilization of American politics and
Christianity.23
A handful of works have been written that focus on the Presbyterians in the
antebellum and Civil War eras. First, Elizabeth T. Adam’s Divided Church, Divided
Nation is a helpful, succinct article focusing on the Old School Presbyterian schism.24
Second, and especially important for this thesis as it relates to “the spirituality of the
church” has been Jack P. Maddex’s article “From Theocracy to Spirituality: The Southern
9
! 21 Goen, 3.
! 22 Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005).
! 23 Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale
! 24 Elizabeth T. Adams, “Divided Church, Divided Nation: The Presbyterian Schism,
1837-1838,” Historian 54, no. 4 (Summer 1992): 683–96.

Presbyterian Reversal on Church and State.”25 The topic of the spirituality of the church
is a contentious one, as much has divided both critics and proponents of this doctrine that
still holds sway in many corners of Presbyterianism.26 Even in spite of the differences
between critics and proponents, as Maddex points out (and challenges), “All writers have
agreed … that Southern Presbyterians embraced ‘the spirituality of the church’ before
1861[.]”27 Maddex counters that, “Antebellum Southern Presbyterians did not teach
absolute separation of religion and politics, or even church from state.”28 In agreement
with Maddex, chapter one of this thesis demonstrates that there was little consistency on
this matter, and that Southern Presbyterians did make forays into politics. However, this
thesis differs from Maddex by pointing out that the occurrence of such political
involvement needs to be tempered by the Old School’s official statement at the 1845
General Assembly, that by defining the church’s role as primarily “spiritual” there was a
theoretical sense in which its members were acting inconsistently with the doctrine as
they spoke ex cathedra.29 In other words, Maddex may be overstating his argument by
not taking the official Old School stance more seriously. If any meaningful conclusion
can be drawn from the debate over what spirituality actually meant in the period before
the War, it is that it was an ambiguous doctrine that was open to various interpretations.
10
! 25 Jack P. Maddex, “From Theocracy to Spirituality: The Southern Presbyterian Reversal
on Church and State,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976): 438–57.
! 26 For a helpful survey of the doctrine’s history, see Ernest Trice Thompson, The
Spirituality of the Church (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1961).
! 27 Maddex, 438.
! 28 Maddex, 438.
! 29 Curiously, Maddex does not mention this meeting in his article. Minutes of the General
Assembly of the (Old School) Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (Philadelphia:
William S. Martien, 1845), 16; originally quoted in Goen, 78.

A third critical work on the Presbyterians in the period leading up to the Civil War
is Lewis Vander Velde’s authoritative The Presbyterian Churches and the Federal Union.
A great strength of this work is its careful examination of the various manifestations of
Presbyterianism surrounding the Civil War. One challenge to studying Presbyterianism
in this period has been the tendency to treat all Presbyterians as belonging to the same
denomination. Thus, when one historian writes that “Presbyterians, of the three great
churches to split, took [their] fateful step in 1857,” there is a failure to appreciate that the
Old and New School, and also the host of smaller Presbyterian denominations (such as
the Cumberland Presbyterians) all viewed themselves as distinct, independent
denominations.30 Only the New School split in 1857, and the Old School would not split
until 1861. The difficulty for the historian comes in that their records do not often self-
identify themselves as being of a particular Presbyterian fold. Vander Velde’s work is
critical for distinguishing and understanding the various parts of Presbyterianism and
how they related to the State.
By building on the work begun by others, this thesis attempts to come to a
conclusion about the factors that led to the schism in the Old School Presbyterian Church.
This required careful parsing of the ecclesial situation, and this is also where challenges
have arisen in the historiography.
In asking why the churches split in the period before the War, the tendency has
been to be distracted by slavery as the all-consuming issue. Thus, when Goen concludes
that the division in the churches represented a “failure of leadership” to emancipate
11
! 30 Quoted in Elizabeth T. Adams, “Divided Church, Divided Nation: The Presbyterian
Schism, 1837-1838,” Historian 54, no. 4 (Summer 1992): 683–96.

slaves, he appears to fall into this trap. This failure, he argues, was seen in “An
overemphasis in individualism, an inadequate social theory, [and] a world-rejecting
ecclesiology,” which provide clues as to “the inability of churches to achieve liberty and
justice for enslaved Afro-Americans and at the same time preserve the other fundamental
values that slavery threatened.”31 Indeed, the gravity and moral repugnancy of slavery
makes it easy to focus on, but can also distract from other, deeper problems.
If the question is why the churches split in the decade before the Civil War, then
one cannot look to slavery alone, as morally objectionable as the practice was. There are
two reasons for this: first, American Catholics did own slaves, but were also the only
sizable Christian group not to split,32 and second, the Quakers were able to effectively
rule against their members owning slaves, but still split. It is true, as Goen points out,
that of all the major denominations the Quakers were “sufficiently resolute on [slavery] to
show what could be done, and their behavior demonstrates that the popular
denominations did have, for a while at least, other alternatives.”33 Highlighting the
Quakers for their decisive stance against slavery is certainly noteworthy––few
denominations did this unilaterally. However, if denominational schisms were a chief
cause in the coming of the Civil War, the Quakers are of little help. They were hardly the
paradigm of unity. Throughout the nineteenth century, their denomination was as
12
! 31 Goen, 169.
! 32 One example of a proslavery Catholic was Bishop Patrick Lynch of Charleston who
was a proliﬁc apologist for the institution as well as a slaveholder himself. See David C.R.
Heisser, “Bishop Lynch’s People: Slaveholding by a South Carolina Prelate,” The South Carolina
Historical Magazine 102, no. 3 (June 2001): 238–262; Heisser, “Bishop Lynch’s Civil War
Pamphlet on Slavery,” The Catholic Historical Review 84, no. 4 (October 1998): 681–96.
! 33 Goen, 186.

fissiparous or more so than nearly any other denomination, with several notable splits
occurring throughout the nineteenth century, beginning in 1827.34 Slavery then, while
important, cannot be posed as an answer for why the churches split. Another cause must
be sought. This thesis will discuss slavery, but only after addressing significant
foundational problems.
This thesis maintains that deeper than the issue of slavery, were theological and
anthropological impulses that shaped the more visible controversies over slavery, the role
of state sovereignty, and the Bible. Even while this thesis takes exception with Goen’s
conclusion as it pertains to slavery, it agrees that a major reason for the Old School split
was a “failure of leadership.” It expands on his conclusion by suggesting that part of the
problem in the American scene, defined as it was by a democratic anthropology, was that
“leadership” was displaced to the level of the individual, rendering a remedy to church
conflict nearly impossible. Moreover, in the case of the Old School, it is argued that the
Old School, as represented in FDS by James Thornwell, Benjamin Morgan Palmer,
Robert Lewis Dabney, Henry Van Dyke and Robert J. Breckinridge, was ultimately
hindered by the very doctrine it adopted to stave off division, namely, the “otherworldly
ecclesiology” of the “spirituality of the church.”35 By the winter of 1860-61, this doctrine
proved too ambiguous to preserve the Old School as its representative members defaulted
to contradictory and mutually exclusive conclusions regarding the present crisis. The real
13
! 34 On the schism of the 1820s between Hicksite and Orthodox Quakers, see Bruce
Dorsey, “Friends Becoming Enemies: Philadelphia Benevolence and the Neglected Era of
American Quaker History,” Journal of the Early Republic 18, no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 395–428. For
an overview of Quaker splits in the nineteenth century, see Thomas D. Hamm, Quakers in
America (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 37-63.
! 35 Goen, 186.

weakness, as exemplified by these five figures, came in an emaciated ecclesiology––
lacking any meaningful sense of the church as the effective locus of authority––that
defaulted to a bloated individualism. In 1860-61, they knew no better course than to
limply appeal to the individual consciences of their constituencies.
To demonstrate this, chapter one sets up the foreground of the sermons,
suggesting that the Old School contributors to FDS exemplify the degree to which
“spirituality” was incapable of preventing the division of the Church due to its myriad
interpretations. Chapter two argues that, even in spite of ostensive appeals to a separation
between church and state, their ecclesiology was closely tied to national identity, leaving
them without an institutional means of critiquing the present situation and only able to
appeal to individual consciences. Chapter three builds on the conclusion of chapter two,
and argues that their individualistic anthropology led to hermeneutical deadlock over the
interpretation of the Bible and an inability to act decisively on the issue of slavery.
The conclusion attempts to build on Goen’s conclusion that the schisms amounted
to a “failure of leadership.” It does this by suggesting that within the scope of FDS, all
the Old School contributors shared a view of the individual in the church that left them
unable to remain unified when the rest of the country split. It was a “failure of
leadership” in that effective leadership, beyond the more visible pastors and theologians,
was situated primarily with individual men. It was these men who were prone to assume
a regional orthodoxy, be it North or South, and remained unable to rise above the
provincial allegiances, thus contributing to the division of the Old School in 1861.
14

Finally, it is hoped that this work will make a small contribution to the growing
corpus of work on religion around the Civil War. The danger of both bracketing out
religion and of sentimentalizing the period are still with us. In either case, to ignore the
religious component is to miss a central impulse behind the War. As much as it was a
socio-political-economic War, it was also a religious War––albeit in a way never seen
before in Christendom––and needs to be read as such. This means historians ought to
utilize theological categories such as ecclesiology and anthropology in the study of the
Civil War. Meanwhile, glorifying the War distracts from its lessons, and sentimentalizing
it turns the morality of the War on its head. We are still wont to forget, amidst the fog of
a lingering American civil religion, that, as one editorial put it, “The Civil War was not a
glorious chapter in American History; it was bloody, unnecessary, stupid fratricide.”36
15
! 36 “Let’s Forget the Civil War,” The Christian Century, January 11, 1961, quoted in Ernest
Trice Thompson, 23.

CHAPTER ONE:
THE LONG WINTER OF 1860-61
The following Discourses are collected in a volume in the belief that they will have a
historical interest. These are Revolutionary times. The country is profoundly
agitated, not on a question of party, but of National existence. On the brink of
dissolution, we are led to pause and review the causes that have brought us to this.1
–Preface, Fast Day Sermons, 1861
Fast Day Sermons: Or The Pulpit on the State of the Country (FDS) was
published in early 1861, mere weeks before the start of the American Civil War. Its
included sermons present a picture of the United States rife with tension, anxiety,
contention, fear, and excitement about the possibility of an interstate war. It was the
Union on a knife edge, and most were beginning to feel the cool of the blade pressing up
the Mason-Dixon line and down the Ohio River Valley. However, as the contents of FDS
suggest, even by the late date of winter 1860-61, allegiances and convictions were not so
easily delineated as simply “North” and “South.” This was especially true within the Old
School Presbyterian Church. Its clergy were presented with a complicated morass of
16
! 1 FDS, vii.

issues, chief among which was slavery. But while this was certainly the most visually
prominent issue in FDS, underlying it were deeper impulses, loyalties, and convictions
that would eventually cause the Old School Presbyterian Church to split in roughly the
same manner, at the same time, and generally over the same major issues as the rest of
the country.
This thesis will argue that the official Old School Presbyterian doctrine of the
“spirituality of the church” was inadequate to prevent the fracturing of the Old School
Presbyterian denomination in 1861 over the institution of slavery, just as the Baptists and
Methodists had fractured in the mid-1840s. This inadequacy is clearly evident in the
FDS preached in 1860-61 by the prominent Old School Presbyterian ministers James
Henley Thornwell, Benjamin Morgan Palmer, Robert L. Dabney, Robert J. Breckinridge,
and Henry J. Van Dyke (Sr.). The inadequacy of the doctrine was rooted in its ambiguity
manifested in the varied and contradictory understandings of it as expounded by these
five proponents. Each defaulted to appeals to the individual and lacked any substantial
role for the church as a locus of unity. It will be argued that they shared an insufficient
ecclesiology undergirded by a distorted anthropology.
The following chapters will seek to trace this pattern. The inadequacy of the
stance of “spirituality” was manifested in diverse interpretations of the Old School
doctrine of the spirituality of the church (chapter one) and the projection of church ideals
into the realm of civil society which relegated the church’s voice in the public sphere to
that of the individual (chapter two). It was these characteristics that shaped the way they
read their Bibles and formed their positions on the question of slavery and Abolition
17

(chapter three), but ultimately prevented them from taking an effective stance that might
have stayed the tide of war.
This chapter will set out to do two things. First, it will set up the foreground of
the argument by briefly sketching the history of the Old School as it relates to the FDS.
This will be done by looking at each of the Old School contributors chronologically in
light of the context surrounding their sermons, seeking to reconstruct the events of winter
1860-1. Second, it will pay special attention to the manner in which they used their
pulpits as a means of political or social influence in contradistinction to the official line of
the Old School Presbyterian Church made in 1845, that “The church of Christ is a
Spiritual body.”2 This begged the question: how were Christians, as those members of
this “spiritual body” to relate to state? The implication of this doctrine was that if the
church is primarily spiritual, then the state must be primarily physical. Being men of
flesh and blood, the Old Schoolers were left to decide what it meant to be a member of
the physical state. In the case of some, such as Breckinridge, this meant political
involvement was never something to be avoided. In the case of others, such as Thornwell
and Palmer, this meant an abstention from all political talk from the pulpit––that is, until
their FDS in 1860.
The Strength and Spirituality of the Presbyterian Church
To understand the context surrounding the FDS, it is necessary to understand who the
Old School Presbyterians were and what happened in the quarter century leading up to the
winter of 1860-61.
18
! 2 Minutes of the General Assembly of the (Old School) Presbyterian Church in the United
States of America (Philadelphia: William S. Martien, 1845), 16; quoted in Goen, 78.

The Old School was the slightly larger half of what had been the largest and most
influential body of Presbyterians in America.3 At the turn of the nineteenth century,
internal debates arose regarding the proper response to the new wave of revivalism that
was sweeping through the land. Two camps developed within the Presbyterian Church––
an Old and New School. The former favored a conservative interpretation of the
Westminster Confession, while the latter favored a theology sympathetic to revival and
the consolidation of denominational resources that made it easier to join with the
Congregationalists. In time, the differences between these two groups became more
pronounced until 1837 and 1838, when the Old School succeeded in jettisoning “the more
theologically and socially liberal wing” of the New School.4 In a move to maintain
doctrinal purity, the Old School separated from the New School, effectively securing the
Old School as, “the embodiment of Calvinist doctrine and social conservatism.”5 This
also had the effect of removing the element that would have been most vocal on the
slavery question (although the New School also struggled with slavery), thereby
19
! 3 In 1840, two years after their division, the Old School had 116,583 members while the
New School had 102,060. Besides the Old and New Schools, there were several smaller
Presbyterian groups who divided earlier over the question of revival. Notably, the Presbytery of
Transylvania and the Cumberland Presbytery responded by relaxing their ordination standards,
thereby expediting the process of raising up new ministers to meet the evangelistic need. The
largest body of Presbyterians, the one including the Old and New Schools, was less willing to
dispense with the rigorous theological training that had been the hallmark of Presbyterianism.
See Vander Velde, 9.
! 4 James O. Farmer, “Southern Presbyterians and Southern Nationalism: A Study in
Ambivalence,” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 75, no. 2 (Summer 1991): 280.
! 5 Farmer, 280. The Old School’s legitimacy was further bolstered by an endorsement by
the Irish Presbyterian Church and the Free church of Scotland as the rightful heirs to Presbyterian
Orthodoxy in the United States. Robert Ellis Thompson, A History of the Presbyterian Churches
in the United States, Third. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1902), 137.

preserving it from a split on the order of what other major denominations would face in
the mid-1840s.6
Following their split from the New School, the Old School continued to enjoy
strong national influence, but they knew they were susceptible to the same social
conflicts plaguing other American churches.7 Witnessing the fissures among the Baptists
and Methodists in 1844 and 1845 over the question of slavery, the Old School scrambled
to set into place doctrines that would prevent the same from happening to them. Thus,
they developed what later became known as “the spirituality of the church.”8 At their
National Assembly in 1845, the question was raised whether slave ownership ought to be
an issue of church discipline. It was recognized that slavery was a “question which is
now unhappily agitating and dividing other branches of the church,” to which they
responded by taking a position of quiescence.9 Considering the current social strife, they
decided that “The church of Christ is a Spiritual body, whose jurisdiction extends only to
20
! 6 Although slavery was not the primary reason for the Old/New School split, the debate
was beginning to become more heated during the time of the schism. For instance, in 1837, one
member of the Presbytery of Illinois, Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, was murdered by a Missouri mob for
publishing “moderate articles against slavery.” Thompson, 132.
! 7 Thompson, 137.
! 8 Ernest Trice Thompson points out that the doctrine emerged in a primordial form during
the ﬁrst quarter of the nineteenth century before the the Old/New School split as a way of arguing
against slavery. It was believed by men such as John Holt Rice of Virginia that,
There is much of opinion on the subject [of slavery], which would, if uninterrupted, at no
distant date, annihilate this evil in Virginia… . But as soon as the ministers of religion take
hold of it, the old jealousy is revived, and people determine that the clergy shall not interfere
in their secular interests, and their rights of property … ; I have long had it as an object to get
Virginia free from slavery. I feel that the direct exertions of the church hinder this work.
Rice felt that, if left alone by the church, the topic would not be agitated and simply die out on its
own. Conversely, if the church continued to meddle in the question of slavery, the problem would
be exacerbated. Later, what had been developed in opposition to slavery would come to be used
to support the institution. John Holt Rice, quoted in Ernest Trice Thompson, 21.
! 9 Minutes (1845), 16. This was a considerable reversal of an 1818 General Assembly
denunciation of slavery that mandated Presbyterians who owned slaves to take steps towards
emancipation. Robert Ellis Thompson, 133.

the religious faith, and moral conduct of her members. She cannot legislate where Christ
has not legislated, nor make terms of membership which he has not made.”10 Thus, when
it came to the slavery issue, which was deemed by many to be a civil institution that was
nowhere condemned by scripture, it was outside of the jurisdiction of the church. The
church only had room to interfere where slavery presented issues of morality and sin
(and, it was conceded, that it often did).11 This stance of “spirituality” allowed the Old
School to stave off schism for nearly 15 years longer than their Baptist and Methodist
brethren.
Coming into the 1850s, there was a growing fear that the country itself was
heading toward disunion in the same way that the churches had split. The Methodist
schism of 1844 and the Baptist schism of 1845 were interpreted by many as a harbinger
21
! 10 Minutes (1845), 16. The report presented at that assembly listed three legitimate
positions held within the Old School in 1845. First, “Those which represent the system of Slavery,
as it exists in these United States, as a great evil, and pray this General Assembly to adopt
measures for the amelioration of the condition of slaves [i.e. those who called for its eventual
abolition]. Second, “Those which ask the Assembly to receive memorials on the subject of
Slavery, to allow a full discussion of it, and to enjoin upon the members or our church, residing in
States, whose laws forbid the slaves being taught to read, to seek by all lawful means the repeal
of those laws [i.e. those who sought an alleviation of the slaves’ condition, but without necessarily
abolishing the practice]. Third, “Those which represent Slavery as a moral evil, a heinous sin in
the sight of God, calculated for the exercise of discipline in the case of those who persist in
maintaining or justifying the relation of master to slaves [i.e. those who deemed it an unmitigated
sin worthy of church discipline].” It is worth noting that in every case, even those who supported
the institution, there was an awareness that the system was party to many forms of abuse and
corruption, and that the practice was at least in need of reform. By 1860, men such as Palmer
had added a fourth category that held that slavery was not only not reprehensible, but a positive
trait of Southern society. Minutes (1845), 16.
! 11 Farmer, “Southern Presbyterians and Southern Nationalism: A Study in Ambivalence,”
281. Farmer also notes that “While this concept would become a cornerstone of Presbyterian
orthodoxy after the Civil War, there is considerable debate as to how strong it was before 1860.”
For the purposes of this thesis, it is only important to note that the doctrine was ofﬁcially accepted
at the 1845 General Assembly, even as its adherence was inconsistent. Farmer, Metaphysical
Confederacy, 256; See also Jack P. Maddex, “From Theocracy to Spirituality: The Southern
Presbyterian Reversal on Church and State,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976): 438–57.

of the country’s inevitable rending.12 The Old School was interested in doing whatever it
could to avoid this outcome, but it recognized the divisiveness of the slavery question. In
1851, James Thornwell produced a widely read pamphlet in which he warned of the
probable outcome of the growing cleavage:
We are solemn and earnest, not only because we deplore a schism in the body of
Christ, but because we deplore a schism among the confederated States of the Union.
We … declare our deliberate conviction, that the continued agitation of Slavery must
sooner or later shiver this government into atoms.13
A decade later and on the eve of war, this concern had only grown more intense. In his
November 20 FDS, Benjamin Morgan Palmer observed that,
The question … which now places us upon the brink of revolution, was, in its origin,
a question of morals and religion. It was debated in ecclesiastical councils before it
entered legislative halls. It has riven asunder the two largest religious communions in
the land; and the right determination of this primary question will go far toward fixing
the attitude we must assume in the coming struggle.14
Palmer’s insight reflected a popular awareness that in a place where, as Tocqueville put it,
“religious zeal warms itself at the hearth of patriotism,” the logical outcome of an
ecclesial split was a national split.15 The issue of slavery had been acutely present in
American church councils long before it had come to a head in politics.
A contrast needs to be seen here. Even as people grew more concerned about war,
evangelical America in the 1850s seemed to be enjoying unparalleled spiritual prosperity.
22
! 12 Goen, 75.
! 13 James Henley Thornwell, “Relation of the Church to Slavery” (1851) in The Collected
Writings of James Henley Thornwell, ed. John B. Adger and John L. Girardeau, 4 vols.
(Richmond, 1871-1873) 4:394-96, quoted in Goen, 75.
! 14 Palmer, “Slavery, A Divine Charge: Duty of the South to Preserve and Perpetuate It,” in
FDS, 61.
! 15 Alexis Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey Mansﬁeld and Delba
Winthrop, Paperback ed. (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2002), 281.

The end of the decade had seen the farthest reaching wave of national revival to date.
Contemporaries described the revivals of 1857-8 as “The Great Revival” and “the event
of the century.”16 Many believed the revivals represented “a great and wonderful day in
the Ch[urches] of Christ, and a precursor to some great event.”17 More significantly for
the Old School it represented a victory for “socially conservative revivalism” over the
excesses of revivals occurring earlier in the century.18 In his FDS given just before the
1860 presidential election, Robert Lewis Dabney seemed concerned that this revival
spirituality should be threatened by “agitating secular topics” and the way such topics
provoked “angry and unchristian emotions.”19 Agitation in the secular sphere disturbed
“the tender dew of heavenly-mindedness” as it was “speedily evaporated by the hot and
dusty turmoil of the popular meeting and the hastings.”20 A war would see the undoing of
whatever positive fruit the revivals might have produced. Thus, in 1860, Dabney recalled
what was at stake for the whole of the American church (not just the Old School) should
the Union go to war:
Christians of America––Brothers––Shall all this be? Shall this Church of thirty
thousand evangelical ministers, and four millions of Christian adults––this Church, so
boastful of influence and power; so respected and reverenced by nearly all; so
crowned with the honors of literature, of station, of secular office, of riches; this
Church, which moulds the thought of three-fourths of our educated men through her
schools, and of all, by her pulpit and press, this Church; which glories in having just
23
! 16 Quoted in Kathryn Long, The Revival of 1857-58: Interpreting an American Religious
Awakening (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 3.
! 17 George Dufﬁeld, quoted in Richard Carwardine, Evangelicals and Politics in
Antebellum America (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997), 292.
! 18 Long, 95.
! 19 Robert L. Dabney, “The Christian’s Best Motive for Patriotism,” in FDS, 82.
! 20 Dabney, in FDS, 82.

received a fresh baptism of the Spirit of Heaven in a national revival––permit the
tremendous picture [of war] to become a reality?21
As Dabney exemplifies, ministers in 1860 were left with the challenge of ensuring that
the spiritual fruit of recent years not be trampled by war.
Moreover, the Old School was particularly situated such that its actions could
have a profound influence on the rest of the country. At a time when so much in America
seemed to be on the brink of ruin, the Old School appeared stable. They were among the
only denominations that had avoided schism over slavery and in the 1850s, their
seminaries were still churning out a large number of clerics, Presbyterian and otherwise,22
and they had a sizable presence in Northern and Southern politics.23 A popular aphorism
attributed to Cyrus McCormick declared that, “the two great hoops holding the Union
together were the Democratic Party and the Old School Presbyterian Church.”24 The
Democratic Party had already been sundered by the time of the first FDS, so only one
24
! 22 Vander Velde, 22. The Old School thus played an important role in the development of
American higher-education. Vander Velde continues,
Its theological seminary at Princeton was the most famous institution of its kind in the land,
with some 2500 graduates to its credit. With five other seminaries, twenty-four colleges, and
fifty-nine academies under its control, with Congregationalists, Episcopalians, and members of
other sects flocking to its seminaries for theological training, the Old School could lay claim to
intellectual leadership which it would have been difficult for any other denomination––except,
perhaps, its New School rival––to challenge.
Vander Velde, 22. However, it is important to note that the predominance of Presbyterian
seminaries was in the midst of a time when many leaders of the Baptists and Methodists––the
two largest denominations––were highly critical of seminary education. It has been estimated
that “at least two thirds of the ministers” of the Baptists and Methodists opposed theological
training, even while both of these denominations set up their own seminaries. See Roger Finke
and Rodney Stark, “How the Upstart Sects Won America: 1776-1850,” Journal for the Scientific
Study of Religion 28, no. 1 (March 1989): 36.
! 23 Elizabeth Adams observes that, “Of the 651 Confederate leaders listed in the
Biographical Dictionary of the Confederacy, 107 were Presbyterian, [while only] 37 were
Methodists, and 32 were Baptists.” Elizabeth T. Adams, “Divided Church, Divided Nation: The
Presbyterian Schism, 1837-1838,” Historian 54, no. 4 (Summer 1992): 685.
! 24 Quoted in Vander Velde, 21.

“hoop” was left. On the eve of their General Assembly in 1861, just after the war had
begun, one of President Lincoln’s cabinet members told the delegates gathering in
Philadelphia that the best thing they could do for their country was to keep their
denomination united.25
The culmination of this period led into the one encompassed by the FDS. All the
sermons were given during the long winter of 1860-1, which proved to be a pivotal
antecedent to the Civil War, and for the position of the Old School.
Mounting Tension and the Election of November 1860
R.L. Dabney, “The Christian’s Best Motive for Patriotism,” Hampden Sidney, Virginia,
November 1, 1860.
Robert Lewis Dabney (1820-1898) was the first of the contributors to the FDS to
deliver his sermon. On November 1, 1860, five days before the presidential election, he
was serving as pastor of the College Church in Hampden Sidney, Virginia. He was a
longtime resident of that state, having been educated at the University of Virginia and
now serving as a professor of theology at Union Seminary (then located near Hampden
Sidney).
November of 1860 was a decisive month for the Southern cause.26 Dabney
painted a grim picture of the high stakes involved in the coming election. “When the two
25
! 25 Vander Velde, 22.
! 26 For a survey of Southern perspectives of the events surrounding secession, see
Harrison W. Daniel, “Southern Protestantism and Secession,” The Historian 29, no. 3 (May 1967):
391–438.

lands,” he told his congregation, “which now lie so intimately side by side, parted by a
line so long, so faint, so invisible, that it does not separate, begin to strike each other, the
very nearness and intimacy make each more naked to the other’s blows.”27 His call, then,
was for Christians to attend to the potential crisis, to avert the “fratricidal blows” of civil
war by means of prayer and repentance.28
Dabney preached in an increasingly tense political and social climate. National
disunion seemed a very real possibility ever since the Democratic national convention of
the previous May, and the possibility only intensified as the days went by.29 As the
election grew nearer, and the Republican party’s victory became imminent, the Southern
vitriol grew more intense. One South Carolina politician described the Republican party
“as a fungus which will continue to grow and ultimately elect a president,” while another
called them a “foul God-defying party.”30 The Baptist minister Richard Furman warned
his congregants that if Lincoln were to win the election, “every negro in South Carolina
and every other Southern State will be his own master. … If you are tame enough to
submit, abolition preachers will be at hand to consummate the marriage of your daughters
to black husbands.”31 Such rabid warnings would have been less common in Dabney’s
Virginia, but in the states of the Deep South, the air was thick with it.
26
! 29 At that meeting, held in Charleston, eight states walked out in protest. The result was
two different Democratic parties: the National Democrats (who met later that summer in
Baltimore) and the Southern Democrats (who met in Richmond). This fracturing in the
Democratic party would ultimately make the Republican victory inevitable. See Walter Edgar,
South Carolina: A History (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998), 349-50.
! 30 Quoted in Edgar, 350.
! 31 Quoted in Edgar, 350.

If any of the contributors appear to hold to a pure position of the “spirituality of
the church” it was Dabney. Dabney’s moderate tone was not unusual in the days
immediately preceding the election. It has been observed that immediately before the
election, there was not “a single religious newspaper or denominational leader which
officially and openly espoused secession prior to the election of Abraham Lincoln.”32
Instead, it was commonly urged that Christian men remain calm and pray for a righteous
candidate.33 Thus, Dabney’s intention in his sermon, “The Christian’s Best Motive for
Patriotism,” was not to avoid secular matters. Rather, it was a last ditch effort to diffuse
an increasingly explosive situation.
However, Dabney was far from apolitical. According to his biographer, “He
sucked in the political organization of his section, and made it a part of himself. He was
intensely interested in politics from a child … .”34 In a letter written to Moses Hoge in
the January following his November 1 sermon, Dabney wrote that, “My conviction has
all along been that we ministers, when acting ministerially, publicly, or in any way
representatively of God’s people as such, should seem to have no politics.” He goes on to
describe the mood surrounding his November FDS and others that followed it: “our
people were abundantly touchy and wakeful concerning aggression, and that there were
27
! 32 Daniel, 392.
! 33 Dabney was not alone in his call for prayer and caution. One New Orleans Methodist
journal recommended caution in the coming election. Even if Lincoln, the “Black Republican”
were elected, Southern institutions need not fear. He would only be in ofﬁce four years. Daniel,
391.
! 34 Thomas Carey Johnson, The Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney (Richmond:
Presbyterian Committee of Publication, 1903), 24.

plenty of politicians to make fire burn hot enough without any help to blow it.”35
However, he continued “I have my politics personally, and at the polls act on them.”36
He “considered the state of Northern aggression as very ominous for many years (as you
know, having stronger views of this four years ago than most of our people).”37 He was
troubled by the election of Lincoln, but even in January of 1861 considered the actions of
South Carolina to be “treacherous, wicked, insolent and mischievous. … Yet regard to
our own rights unfortunately compels us to shield her from the chastisement which she
most condignly deserves.”38 Dabney indeed held strong political views, but he kept them
distinct from his position as a pastor. For him, the primary function of the pulpit was a
meliorating one for society, but only as a kind of balm to assuage a troubled polis. The
“spirituality of the church” thus resided uneasily in Dabney as he stepped in and out of
his clerical position.
The Old School Takes Sides
James H. Thornwell, “Our National Sins,” The Presbyterian Church, Columbia, South
Carolina, November 21, 1860.
A week after Dabney’s sermon, and much to the dismay of the South, Lincoln was
elected. It was in the midst of this disappointment that James Henley Thornwell
28
! 35 R.L. Dabney to Moses Hoge, Hampden-Sydney, Va., 4 January 1861, in Johnson, Life
and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney, 221.
! 36 Dabney, in Johnson, 221.
! 37 Dabney, in Johnson, 221 (emphasis original).
! 38 Dabney, in Johnson, 222.

(1812-1862) gave his sermon entitled, “Our National Sins” at the First Presbyterian
Church in Columbia, South Carolina.39 A general fast day was declared by Governor
William Henry Gist on November 21, and throughout that capitol city sermons were
accordingly preached. According to one New York Times correspondent,
[The] sermons [were] bordering more or less on the same subject. Every one is for
secession, the motors of the Gospel not even excepted, although the most of them
treat the subject in its mildest form, and all, as far as I am able to learn most
eloquently invoked Divine interposition in the present crisis.”40
Thornwell was no exception, although he represented something of a moderate voice.
Thornwell was a figure of monumental influence in the Old School Presbyterian
Church. He had been called “our Southern giant” and “the Calhoun of the Church,”
because of both his social influence and because of his being from John C. Calhoun’s
home state.41 The FDS editors were keenly aware of this: “In the front of the book is
placed the discourse of Dr. Thornwell, the leading minister, if not the leading man, of
South Carolina––one who is regarded as being, by his intellectual ascendency and
influence, the natural successor of John C. Calhoun.”42 Even beyond the bounds of the
Old School, he possessed a formidable national reputation as an author, scholar, and
debater. He had been president of South Carolina College, general editor and frequent
29
! 39 See James H. Thornwell, “Our National Sins,” in FDS, 9-56.
! 40 “Our Own Correspondence.-South Carolina. a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer
the Coming Session of the Legislature Arguments in Favor of Secession the Federal Court the
New-York Volunteer. Georgia. What Is Likely to Be Done the State Convention Secession
Probable,” New York Times (New York, November 27, 1860), http://www.nytimes.com/1860/11/27/
news/our-own-correspondence-south-carolina-day-fasting-humiliation-prayer-coming.html
[accessed October 20, 2011].
! 41 Vander Velde, 30; Farmer, 41. That Thornwell so favored “the spirituality of the church”
suggests the irony of being compared to South Carolina’s leading politician.
! 42 FDS, vii.

contributor to the Southern Presbyterian Review, and his collected writings were enough
to fill four large volumes.43 Eventually he gained a kind of celebrity status, such that
“Whenever he was present in the Assembly, he was always the first person pointed out to
a stranger.”44 Even his harshest critic and opponent, Henry Ward Beecher, praised him
as, “The most brilliant minister in the Old School Presbyterian Church, and the most
brilliant debater in the General Assembly.”45
Thornwell’s November 21, 1860, FDS represented a major turning point in his
political involvement. He had just returned from Europe to find the country “already
circling in the eddies of a mighty revolution.”46 Until this time he had been relatively
successful in avoiding secular topics in the pulpit, but here he began to speak openly
about his support for the Confederate cause.47 Thus, although he had “never introduced
secular politics into the instructions of the pulpit,” the scene that greeted him as he
arrived back in America was sufficient to drive him to political action.48 Now there was
“sufficient moral principle,” to justify what he was about to do.49 He went on to deliver a
30
! 43 Palmer, The Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell (Richmond: Whippet &
Shepperson, 1875), 355, 397.
! 44 Farmer, 177.
! 45 Henry Ward Beecher, quoted in Farmer, 177.
! 46 Palmer, Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell, 467.
! 47 Farmer adds, “Still he was, in effect, rehearsing for this moment of his career almost
from the moment he was ordained into the Presbyterian ministry in 1835.” Farmer 177.
! 48 Thornwell, in FDS, 10.
! 49 Thornwell, in FDS, 12.

critical presentation of the, “whole argument of Disunion,” from his South Carolina
pulpit.50 Momentarily, Thornwell took the “spiritual” church into the political sphere.
B.M. Palmer, “Slavery a Divine Trust: Duty of the South to Perpetuate it,” First
Presbyterian Church, New Orleans, Louisiana, November 20, 1860.
As Thornwell lamented Lincoln’s victory in South Carolina, so did Benjamin
Morgan Palmer (1818-1902) in New Orleans.51 In the face of Lincoln’s promises to
“administer the government in a conservative and national spirit,” Palmer saw little hope
for anything good happening: “Allowing him all credit for personal integrity in these
protestations, he is, in this matter, nearly as impotent for good as he is competent for
evil.”52 The machinations of a corrupt political system rendered Lincoln “nothing more
than a figure on a political chess board … a silent figure upon the checkered squares,
moved by the hands of an unseen player.”53 The question facing the South, as Palmer
saw it, was how to respond to a now thoroughly corrupted political situation.
31
! 50 FDS, vii.
! 51 Palmer, in FDS, 57-80.
! 52 Palmer, in FDS, 73.
! 53 Palmer, in FDS, 73

Like his mentor Thornwell, if Palmer was not politically active before 1860, he
was afterward.54 As the first rustlings of secession began in South Carolina, Palmer
reacted quickly.55 Before the date of his FDS he made a point of not dabbling in political
issues. Keeping with the official Old School stance of “spirituality,” his role was to
preach the gospel, not to intermeddle “with political questions.”56 He was, however,
according to his biographer, “intensely patriotic,” and when word of secession reached
him in New Orleans, “A patriotic fire burned in his bones.”57 Perhaps more dramatic was
the way in which the years following the 1860 sermon and the formation of the
Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America in 1861 would see his active
leadership in the push for a kind of Confederate theocracy.58
Palmer gave his sermon on November 20, 1960, at the First Presbyterian Church
of New Orleans. Although “Slavery, A Divine Trust,” was reported to be sedate in its
delivery, it was explosive in its effect. One observer, William Rogers, noted that the
sermon did not possess Palmer’s characteristic theatrical flourish––Palmer was
32
! 54 As Thornwell’s disciple, Palmer greatly reﬂected the thought of his mentor. The two
had met in 1839 in South Carolina while Palmer was studying at the Columbia Theological
Seminary and Thornwell was professor at the nearby College of South Carolina and a frequent
preacher at First Presbyterian Church. The primary difference between the two lay not in their
thought, but in their articulation of it. Palmer’s biographer writes: “Palmer excelled in his
capacities as a word painter and in dealing with the sentimental and pathetic; Thornwell in the
power of reasoning, and speculative thought,” (Thomas Johnson, The Life and Letters of
Benjamin Morgan Palmer [Carlisle: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987], 67). These two characteristics
are abundantly illustrated in FDS, in which the editors include them primarily because they both
offer two sides to the same coin. Thornwell’s sermon “contains the whole argument of Disunion
[while] This abstract reasoning is carried out in the sermon which follows, by Dr. Palmer, of New
Orleans, a native of South Carolina, and a former pupil of Dr. Thornwell.” FDS, vii.
! 55 Johnson, Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 205.
! 56 Palmer, in FDS, 60.
! 57 Johnson, Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 205.
! 58 See Maddex, 444-46.

apparently not one to rely on his manuscript. Instead, the subject of his sermon caused
him to read “slowly, carefully, with a constrained voice––without a single gesture,
without elevating his voice in any sentence during the hour of its delivery.”59 Rogers
goes on to illustrate the effect this uncharacteristic delivery had on its audience. Before
the sermon, he observed, New Orleans had been unsure of where it stood on secession.
After all, “New Orleans was a commercial city and had large interests in the North.”60 It
was not eager to jeopardize its source of wealth. But after Palmer gave his benediction,
“in solemn silence, no man speaking to his neighbor, the great congregation of serious
and thoughtful men and women dispersed; … afterwards the drums beat and the bugles
sounded; for New Orleans was shouting for secession.”61
The sermon spread virally in the media. Three days later, the Daily Delta
republished the entire sermon, prefacing it by praising “The manly and patriotic position
of Dr. Palmer,” and stating that, “The character of these discourses is too important to be
disregarded.”62 They were so important, it turned out, that the sermon was again
published in the same newspaper on Sunday, December 2, and then again on December 4.
Numerous other papers throughout Louisiana and the surrounding states likewise
published the sermon in parts or in its entirety. Meanwhile, a number of concerned
citizens speaking for “the nation’s sake” petitioned Palmer to give them a copy of his
33
! 59 William O. Rogers, quoted in Johnson, Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer,
219.
! 60 Rogers, in Johnson, Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 219.
! 61 Rogers, in Johnson, Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 220.
! 62 Quoted in Johnson, Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 220.

sermon, “that the opinions of a representative man may be read and pondered.”63 Palmer
was happy to oblige, and gave them a copy as “sufficient proof that I have spoken to the
heart of this community.”64 The final result was the publication of the sermon as a
pamphlet and distributed throughout the Union, eventually finding its way into the pages
of FDS.
With the Southern churches throwing their support to their region, the political
division was speeding toward completion. Less than a month after Palmer’s sermon, on
December 17, 1860, the Secession Convention was convened in Columbia, South
Carolina. The opening sessions were held at the First Baptist Church across the street
from Thornwell’s church, and then rumors of smallpox forced the convention to relocate
to Charleston. On December 20, 1860, at Charleston’s Institute Hall, all 169 delegates
voted in favor of seceding from the Federal Union.65 Eleven days later, Thornwell wrote
in a letter that, although “Our affairs of state look threatening … I believe that we have
done right. I do not see any other course that was left to us. I am heart and hand with the
State in her move.”66 Thus, South Carolina set into motion the great movement that
would soon be joined by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas.67
34
! 63 William A. Elmore, W.R. Miles, et al to Rev. B.M. Palmer, November 29, 1860, quoted
in Johnson, Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 222.
! 64 Rev. B.M. Palmer to H.T. Lonsdale, R.B. Sumner, et al, November 29, 1860, quoted in
Johnson. Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 223.
! 65 Given how contentious the debate over secession was and that Columbia’s leading
citizen, Wade Hampton, was critical of secession, the move to Charleston was fortuitous for those
who favored secession where they “would be in a locale more hospitable to their ideas.” See
Edgar, 351.
! 66 Quoted in Palmer, Life and Letters of James Henley Thornwell, 486.
! 67 The remaining states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas would not
join the Confederate States until two months later.

The importance of South Carolina in the context of the FDS is difficult to
understate. In contemporary parlance and conceptions of state sovereignty, such an
affiliation means very little, but in 1860, it embodied an ideology. Even as late as the
beginning of the twentieth century, William Schaper observed that, “[South Carolina is]
one of the most fertile sources from which have spread many of the characteristics of the
[South]. Much that is typical of the South is here found in its purest and most
accentuated form; whence it comes to her local history often suggests the clew [sic] of
the proper understanding of the South as a section.”68 This was no less true in the winter
of 1860-61, and references to the state appear frequently throughout FDS. Thus, when
Thornwell began his fast day sermon by declaring that, for twenty-five years he had
fulfilled his course as a preacher, “all of which have been spent in my native State … ,”
he was identifying his loyalty to a way of life and thinking.69 Likewise, even though
Palmer was serving at the First Presbyterian Church of New Orleans, he remained
something of an expatriate. During his tenure in Louisiana he would often remind
people, “I’m a South Carolinian, you know.”70 Thus, for many, “South Carolina” was a
metonym for a particular way of political and social thought.
As much as the South Carolina affiliation would have been a source of pride for
men like Thornwell and Palmer, it also elicited a strong reaction from its critics within
FDS. Conjuring one of the most vivid examples of democracy gone horribly wrong, it
35
! 68 William Schaper, “Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina,” Annual Report
of the American Historical Association, 1 (1900): 257, quoted in James Farmer, The Metaphysical
Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values (Macon GA:
Mercer University Press, 1986), 6 n.11.
! 69 James Henley Thornwell, “Our National Sins“ in FDS, 10.
! 70 Johnson, The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer, 18.

was not uncommon to associate South Carolina with the French Revolution. Alluding to
Robespierre and his “godless and bloody band[‘s]” innovation of a ten-day workweek,
the New York Episcopalian Francis Vinton questioned South Carolina’s morality, warning
that the state had likewise fallen into ill favor with God because the state convention had
not observed the Sabbath during its secession proceedings.71 Likewise, Henry W.
Bellows concluded that, “A reign of terror evidently prevails in South Carolina, where the
earlier scenes of the French Revolution are already repeated in forced loans, in the
proscription of suspected citizens, and in the threatened confiscation of property, to say
nothing of treasonable seizure of the Federal structures and functions.”72 Depending on
where one stood, South Carolina was either the bastion of true freedom, as it was for
Thornwell and Palmer, or a symbol of revolutionary perversion in the order of godless
France.
Henry J. Van Dyke (Sr.), “The Character and Influence of Abolitionism,” First
Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn, New York, December 9, 1860.
Shortly before South Carolina voted to secede, Henry J. Van Dyke (1822-1891)
delivered his sermon, “The Character and influence of Abolitionism.”73 Its content
rocketed him to popularity and notoriety almost overnight. After it was preached on
December 9, 1860, at the First Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn, it was published
independently as a pamphlet and was said to have sold more than 50,000 copies in the
36
! 71 Francis Vinton, “Fanaticism Rebuked,” in FDS, 251.
! 72 Henry Ward Bellows, “The Crisis of Our National Disease,” in FDS, 395.
! 73 Henry J. Van Dyke, “The Character and Inﬂuence of Abolitionism,” in FDS, 127-76.

Baltimore region alone.74 His biblical defense of slavery and explicit support for the
cause of “Dr. Thornwell, of South Carolina, and Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans” resulted in
a flood of fan mail from the South, while Northern critics assailed him with hate mail.75
Most of the censure was in the spirit of one anonymous letter that read, “hereafter your
name will be a synonym for traitor.”76 A fellow minister lambasted Van Dyke’s sermon
as, “the lowest point the northern pulpit has ever reached.” while at another time a mob
surrounded his home and threatened to kill him.77 Given the fame (and infamy) of the
sermon, along with its pro-Union and pro-slavery argument, it was a logical inclusion for
the editors of the FDS to make.
Van Dyke’s own interpretation of the “spirituality of the church” needs to be
understood in light of his passionate patriotism and sometimes misleading stance on
slavery. Throughout the 1850s Van Dyke had been strengthening his ties with Southern
Old Schoolers in the hope of solidifying the relations between the two sections and
thereby avoiding national and ecclesial schism. During this time he developed intimate
correspondences with such prominent Old School leaders as Joseph R. Wilson of
Augusta, Georgia and Moses Hoge of Richmond.78 It was also in this period that he
developed an admiration for Thornwell and Palmer, “whose genius and learning and piety
37
! 74 James H. Moorhead, “Henry J. Van Dyke, Sr: A Conservative Apostle of a Broad
Church,” Journal of Presbyterian History 50, no. 1 (January 1972): 25.
! 75 Van Dyke in FDS, 153; See Moorhead, 25.
! 76 Quoted in Moorhead, 25.
! 77 J.R.W. Sloane, Review of Rev. Henry J. Van Dyke’s discourse on “The Character and
Inﬂuence of Abolitionism,” (New York: William Erving, 1861), 40; Quoted in Moorhead, 25.
! 78 Moorhead, 24.

would adorn any state or station … .”79 His affection for the South continued to warm
even after his December 9 FDS, prompting him evoke the words of Ruth from the Old
Testament in relation to his Southern brethren: “Your people shall be my people and your
God my God. There’s a union [of] believers [that] is formed by a higher law than any
earthly constitution, that earth and hell cannot dissolve.”80 It would not take a year for
these bonds to break.
In spite of his warm affection for Southern brethren and his sympathy for their
stance on slavery, he was compelled to lend his support for the Union. In the spring
following his December 9 sermon, he fulfilled a commitment to speak to the Bible
Society of Charleston, South Carolina. Upon arriving, he found the room was so full that
he was forced to enter through a window. Once inside, he began to address his audience:
When I accepted this invitation some months ago, I thought I was coming to speak in
my native country; but as I sailed up your bay, I saw floating a new flag … . Before I
address you further, I want you to understand distinctly that I, for one, am standing
under my own flag, the good old Stars and Stripes.81
In the end, his concern that both the Union and the church be preserved left him in a
paradox. He loved his country, that was clear enough, but he also felt the strain of a
church divided. For him, the “spirituality of the church” meant that, beginning with
South Carolina’s secession, the body of the state might be divided, but the church still
hovered ethereally over both sections. Thus his December 9 FDS was a patriotic effort to
use the pulpit to stave off disunion by advocating the acceptance of slavery.
38
! 79 Van Dyke, in FDS, 153.
! 80 Quoted in Moorhead, 24.
! 81 Henry Van Dyke (Jr.) and Paul Van Dyke, Henry Jackson Van Dyke (New York: Anson
D. F. Randolph & Company, 1898), 11.

Robert J. Breckinridge, “The Union to be Preserved,” Lexington, Kentucky, January 4,
1861.
The last of the Old School FDS to be given in the winter of 1860-61 was that of
Robert Jefferson Breckinridge (1800-1871). His “discourse,” “The Union to be
Preserved” was given on January 4, 1861, in Lexington, Kentucky.82
The “spirituality of the church” resided uneasily in Breckinridge. Of the Old
School contributors he possessed the most conspicuous crossover between politics and
religion. Unlike Thornwell and Palmer, his involvement in politics was unambiguous and
unapologetic. Even though the idea of the “spirituality of the church” might be perceived
as more desirable in a state split between Union sympathies and a slave based economy
(as evinced by Breckinridge’s bitter rival Stuart Robinson who radically opposed the
church’s involvement in any secular matter), Breckinridge himself was a paragon of the
clerical politician.83 Although he was an ordained Presbyterian minister and professor at
Danville Theological Seminary, Breckinridge had politics in his blood. His father was
the author of the Kentucky Resolutions of 1708 and his nephew, John C. Breckinridge
was vice-president under James Buchanan and had run for president in 1860. Robert
himself had been involved in politics and law as a member of the Kentucky bar, a state
39
! 82 The reasoning behind the editors’ choice to call this a “discourse” and not a sermon is
perhaps due to its form. Where all other sermons begin with a passage from Scripture, his
makes no pretense of biblical exposition. Robert J. Breckinridge, “The Union to be Preserved,” in
FDS, 98-126, esp. 98. See also 102-7 of this thesis.
! 83 See Maddex, 446; Vander Velde, 168-69.

legislator, and state superintendent of public instruction.84 In his case, the church may be
spiritual, but it was well represented in politics.
To add to his complex character, Breckinridge was a staunch Unionist, and was
deeply critical of South Carolina’s secession.85 Even though he was himself a slave
owner at the time of his FDS, he favored emancipation and therefore was critical of the
movement to secession over slavery. “We have already seen constitutional government,”
he proclaimed in his January 4 discourse, “both in its essence and in its form, trampled
under foot by the convention of [South Carolina]; and all the powers of sovereignty itself,
both ordinary and extraordinary, assumed by it in such a manner of life, liberty and
property have no more security in South Carolina than anywhere under heaven where
absolute despotism or absolute anarchy prevails.”86 For this reason, South Carolina was
the locus of impending “universal bankruptcy” and “one of the least important of the
thirty-three States.”87 Given the “despotism” and “absolute anarchy” of that state, his
support would be for the North and the preservation of the Union.
In sum, the FDS presents a composite picture of the Old School at a time of
national crisis, experiencing its own crisis over what the role of the church should be. If
the official Old School stance of “the spirituality of the church” is to be taken seriously,
40
! 84 Vander Velde, 36.
! 85 Vander Velde, 36-7. In spite of the binary nature of the war itself, the border states
represented something of a middle ground in terms of politics and slavery. As April Holm has
demonstrated, “residents of the Western Ohio River Valley shared much in common despite their
different labor systems.” It was not unusual that Breckinridge favored the Union, but it was ironic
that he owned slaves despite his campaigns against the institution. See April Holm, “A Kingdom
Divided: Border Evangelicals in the Civil War Era, 1837-1894” (Ph.D diss., New York: Columbia
University, 2010), 38.
! 86 Robert J. Breckinridge, “The Union to be Preserved,” in FDS, 102.
! 87 Breckinridge, FDS, 102.

then there were a myriad of contradictory interpretations of it. There was Dabney, who,
while holding strong political opinions himself, felt such opinions ought to be kept out of
the pulpit. Then there were those, such as Thornwell and Palmer, who found it
impossible to put off speaking on the “secular” topic of secession any longer, and became
quite influential spokesmen for Southern interests. Van Dyke’s sermon was an
unambiguous interaction between the Bible and the social matter of slavery.
Breckinridge was perhaps the most nominal of the adherents to the “spirituality” doctrine
and reflected this in his person and in his FDS “discourse.” Taken together, one is left to
wonder what exactly the “spirituality of the church” meant, if anything, in the context of
FDS. As the Old School contributors show, it was an ambiguous doctrine open to myriad
interpretations which left them––as evinced by the inspiriting effect of Palmer’s
sermon––very politically influential. However, despite the confusion over the
relationship between church and state, the Old School sermons of FDS do suggest a great
deal of continuity in their thought, offering an explanation for how such diverse opinions
were possible, and ultimately why they were unable to stem the tide of war. It is to these
themes that we turn in the following chapters.
41

CHAPTER TWO:
CIVIL MILLENNIALISM, THE CHURCH, AND THE INDIVIDUAL
While the people attend eagerly to the appeals of their leaders, thoughtful men will
listen silently for the calm voices of the Pulpit, from which they will expect a clearer
statement of the principles which underlie all this popular turbulence.1
–Preface, Fast Day Sermons, 1861.
The previous chapter looked at how the Old Schoolers of FDS theoretically
subscribed to a doctrine commonly known as “the spirituality of the church.” The 1845
Old School General Assembly’s statement that, “The church of Christ is a Spiritual
body,” had been a pragmatic answer to the growing concern over sectional rivalries, but
as the Old School FDS show, by 1860-61 the doctrine was variously interpreted and
subscribed to, suggesting its untenability.2 The situation that now confronted the
American people was too urgent to be kept out of the pulpit. As the preface to FDS put
it, it was the “Pulpit … from which [the people] will expect a clearer statement of the
principles which underlie all this popular turbulence.”3 In the long winter of 1860-61,
42
! 1 FDS, vii.
! 2 Minutes (1845), 16.
! 3 FDS, vii.

sacred and secular could not be kept apart any longer. Thus, while many Old Schoolers
did preach that the church had no business in secular affairs, as for the FDS of Thornwell,
Palmer, Dabney, Breckinridge, and Van Dyke, the separation was impracticable.4
The contributors to FDS may have represented differing views on how the church
was to relate to the world, but none could help bringing the ecclesial voice into the
political sphere during the long winter of 1860-61. Consequently, and in spite of their
differences, the Old School Presbyterians in FDS all shared a view of the church that was
not clearly distinguished from their view of the state. By looking closely at each of the
Old School FDS––in the order in which the editors arranged them5––this chapter will
43
! 4 Perhaps the most visible and vocal advocate of strict spirituality was Breckinridge’s rival
Stuart Robinson. For a detailed study on Robinson’s view of the relationship between the church
and society, see Preston Graham, A Kingdom Not of This World: Stuart Robinson’s Struggle to
Distinguish the Sacred from the Secular During the Civil War, 1st ed. (Macon Ga.: Mercer
! 5 There appears to be a logical flow to the sermons. Thornwell’s and Palmer’s were the
first sermons presented in FDS. The editors have selected them as a kind of opening argument
that frames most of the discussion that follows. As we have seen, “[Thornwell’s] discourse
contains the whole argument of Disunion,” and “[his] abstract reasoning is carried out in the
sermon which follows, by Dr. Palmer, of New Orleans, a native of South Carolina.” Thus, while
one must guard against overstating their similarities, they can be treated with a large degree of
continuity. Within the FDS (and to the mind of the editors) the only major difference between the
two men comes in each sermon’s emphasis: Thornwell’s addresses slavery by first addressing
secession, and Palmer addresses secession by first addressing slavery. Dabney and
Breckinridge follow as arguments against disunion, although with starkly contrasting differences.
The Old School sermons in FDS are concluded by Van Dyke, the only Northern Old School figure
to be included. FDS, vii.

argue that this was due to a widely held civil millennialism,6 undergirded by ambiguous
understandings of the role of the church within the state, which fed a latent, but powerful
individualism. When this view of the church, which was in effect intimately linked to the
state, experienced the breakdown of the “state” into regional identities, it was inevitable
that the church would split as well. This paved the way for the Old School split into
Northern and Southern factions in May 1861.
American Protestantism and Scottish Commonsense Realism
Whereas the previous chapter was concerned primarily with the events
surrounding FDS, this chapter and the next examine the thinking behind the Old School’s
actions in 1860-61. To understand the positions taken by the Old School FDS, it is
44
! 6 Civil millennialism can be defined as the combination of the ideals of a particular
political and social philosophy––in this case American Republicanism––with the language of a
particular theology, especially as it pertains to eschatology. Civil refers to the accoutrements of
public life, encompassing both social and political spheres. Millennialism, derived from the Latin
“Mille” for thousand, was originally based upon an interpretation of Revelation 20 that believed
that at the end of a period of thousand years––be it literal or figurative––Christ would return for
his church and inaugurate his kingdom, ushering in a period of peace.
! Nathan Hatch uses the term to describe a trend in eighteenth century America in which
there was a “subtle but profound shift in emphasis [for] religious values that traditionally defined
the ultimate goal of apocalyptic hope––the conversion of all nations to Christianity––[that]
became diluted with, and often subordinated to, the commitment to America as a new seat of
liberty.” While Hatch’s analysis is restricted to the late eighteenth century, the same theme was at
work among the Old Schoolers of FDS. See Richard Landes, “Millennialism,” in The Oxford
Handbook of New Religious Movements, Oxford Handbooks Online (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2008), <http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195369649.001.0001> [accessed July 12,
2012], 333; Nathan O. Hatch, The Sacred Cause of Liberty: Republican Thought and the
Millennium in Revolutionary New England (New Haven, 1977), 22-4; For a definition of the closely
related concept of Civil Religion, see George C. Rable, God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A
Religious History of the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2010), 3. Another historian refers to this movement as the “Evangelical enlightenment” which he
defines as, “a quasi-messianic vision of social and material progress, of global renovation and
reform, anticipating the advent of an age of universal liberty, equality, and prosperity within an
explicitly Christian, Providential framework.” Robert P. Forbes, “Slavery and the Evangelical
Enlightenment,” in Religion and the Antebellum Debate Over Slavery, ed. John R McKivigan and
Mitchell Snay (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 68.

important to understand the broader American epistemological framework of that period,
and the way in which this shaped their arguments. The interpretive grid that
predominated in the middle nineteenth century has been called Scottish commonsense
realism.7 Originally articulated by Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid (1710-96), it was a
system that quickly took root in America and had significant implications for democratic
society. For the purposes of this chapter, it is helpful to understand Scottish
commonsense in terms of accessibility and antiauthoritarianism.
First, as a system marked by accessibility, it found wide acceptance in a nation
founded on egalitarian principles. Reid, along with his colleagues, had argued that the
skepticism of modernity was due largely to the speculative philosophy then reigning in
Germany. Such German philosophy was marked by a kind of esoteric elitism that lived
outside of the boundaries of normal, plebeian life. Speculative philosophy had, they
believed, overreached itself. Scottish commonsense was especially appealing because it
was an “anti-philosophy” that made its starting point the common experiences of
common people.8 Truth, it said, was essentially perspicuous and relied on commonly
discernible, self-evident, objective “facts.” If all facts were commonly discernible, then
finding truth was simply a matter of studying something long and carefully enough,
45
! 7 See Noll, America’s God, 83-113; George Marsden, “Everyone One’s Own Interpreter?
The Bible, Science, and Authority in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America,” in The Bible in America:
Essays in Cultural History, ed. Nathan O. Hatch and Mark A. Noll (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1982), 79–100; For a history of the development of Scottish commonsense in America,
and the paradoxical way in which it became “the handmaiden of both Unitarianism and
Orthodoxy,” see Sydney E. Ahlstrom, “The Scottish Philosophy and American Theology,” Church
History 24, no. 3 (September 1955): 257–72, esp. 257.
! 8 Marsden, 82.

utilizing something resembling the Baconian method.9 Not only did this apply to nature,
but it was turned on the Bible and theology as well. Thus, commonsense realism was an
accessible system codified in the methodology of Bacon. If “all men were created
equal,” then so was their ability to discern what was essentially true.
Second, and flowing from its accessibility, it also tended to possess an
antiauthoritarian impulse. Commonsense realism exalted the individual’s ability to
discern matters of right belief, but did so while diminishing the voice of traditional
authorities. The popular appeal to “self-evident” or “intuitive truths” meant that the final
authority lay less in what received authorities communicated to individual people, and
more in what individual people did with the data they were given. For example, when
Dabney exhorted his congregation to “[L]et each individual Christian in our land …
consider his own personal concern in this matter,” he was making an appeal to the highest
level of cultural appeal at that time.10 The “individual Christian” was the one who must
decide what was right, not some ecclesial authority. In mid-nineteenth century America,
arbitration occurred most significantly in this sphere of the individual, and worked itself
out in the political and social spheres.11 As one historian put it, “Self-consciousness
46
! 9 See Marsden, 82.
! 11 For a survey of the impact of Scottish commonsense realism on popular thought, see
Noll, America’s God, 93-113, esp. 95. For a case-study in how commonsense realism functioned
in the debate over slavery, see Laura Rominger, “The Bible, Commonsense, and Interpretive
Context: A Case Study in the Antebellum Debate Over Slavery,” Fides et Historia 38, no. 2
(Summer/Fall 2006): 35–54.

became the oracle of religious truth.”12 The anthropology produced by Scottish
commonsense realism was bent toward individualism and away from traditonal authority.
Both of these components––accessibility and antiauthoritarianism––translated
easily into the American church. There was broad acceptance among American
Protestants of what one historian has called “the didactic” enlightenment.13 Thus, while
Christians tended to be leery of the skepticism of David Hume and Voltaire, as well as the
revolutionary nature of men like Rousseau, they found resonance in the ideals of men like
Reid and Adam Smith (1723-90), and other thinkers ideologically descended from
Francis Bacon. To many Christians these men were their own, bubbling up from the
same Reformation wellspring as themselves. As Palmer put it, “There never could have
been a Bacon without the Bible. … Francis Bacon was the offspring of the
Reformation.”14 The result was that Protestants turned the confidence in the accessible
perspicuity of truth onto the two books of revelation: the Bible and the world around
them.
This also meant a displacement of traditional religious authority. In his study of
the rise of a distinctly American Protestantism, Nathan Hatch observes that, in acquiring
a democratic spirit, American Protestantism came to deny, “the age-old distinction that
set the clergy apart as a separate order of men, and they refused to defer to learned
theologians and traditional orthodoxies,” while at the same time empowering “ordinary
47
! 12 Ahlstrom, 269.
! 13 Henry F. May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press,
1976), esp. 358-62. May suggests that it is more appropriate to talk about “enlightenments”
consisting of several parallel strands, rather than a single, monolithic movement.
! 14 Palmer, quoted in Marsden, 82.

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