After the American Civil War ended the argument began between historians, Noth and South, over what was the initial cause of the great conflagration. In the South many southerners to the the "lost cause" belief that it was a war of states rights and that the South was fighting an unwinnable battle against northern tyrrany. Many in the North said that the one and only cause was the issue of slavery, and that the war was fought over the issue that a few wealthy plantation owners in the South wanted the right o own human beings as property. In none of these arguments though is religion as a cause ever mentioned.

In the South the Baptists, Methodists, and Episcopalians were strong supporters of slavery, using the idea that the slaves could be led to Christ while being brought out of barbarity and made into normal humans. There were other Southern religous leaders that took the idea the Civil War much more personal, as in the first issue of the Confederate by a South Carolinian that desrcribed his northern breatherin as " the Yankee race, true descendents of their false and fanatical progenitors, the bigoted Pilgrim Fathers, by their unceasing envy, hatred, jealousy, and all uncharitableness towards the South, and their egotism, self-rightousness, dissimulation, cunning, cupidity, and hypocricy, have cause the severance of the union between the States which can never be renewed." A rather harsh outlook of a counhtry that two years prior he was a citizen of.

The North also had their preachers hit the pulpit with war sermons, and although they may have not been as personal as the South Carolinian above, they were no less biting. In a sermon held by William Alger in the Bulfinch-Street Church Boston, was stressed that many northern pastors seemed to bypass the convulsions rocking the country, saying that if a preacher will not speak on the subject,, then he forsakes his duty to the his congregation. Pastor Alger said that the war must be looked at from the pulpit, as "is it not well to go up into the house of God, and survey the ominous subject from the position of Christian principles?" further stating that to go into this conflict , and to cut down the foe without mercy, is a religous duty and civil obligation. It was central to his sermon that the South not be wiped from the face of the earth, as the millions of people living in the South were still members of the family of God. Alger did not blame the average citizen for the war, he blamed those who had led pampered lives due to their inheritaded and fostered institutions, their isolated plantation life, and the virus of negro-slavery that they have infected the nation with. They make the keeping of slaves override everything else. Thus, to remove this virus, he declared the war as an "abolitionist crusade against the Southerm paradise." Alger then makes a statement that say, they were fairly defeated at the polls, they instantly refused to recognise and abide by the result, and they will never submit to the rule of their opponents. These are indeed words for the ages. 

Reverand Alger of the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn stated much of the same, except that he added that the aristocratic faction that controls the South must be destroyed in a nrightous cause  and once that is done Catholics, Gentiles, Jews, natives and emigrants can mingle as Christian men should, in a country blessed by God and his rightousness.

References listed in order of appearence

A South Carolinian, "Respice Finem (Mobile, AL: S.H. Goetzel & Co., 1863). Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0102947525/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid+bookmark-SABN&xid=1e109507&pg=6. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.

\Alger, William Rounseville, and Bullfinch Street Church. Our civil war as seen from the pulpit: a sermon preached in the Bulfinch Street Church, April 28, 1861. Walker, Wise; (J. Wilson), 1861. Sabine Americana:History of the Americas, 1500-1926, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0102793595/SABN?u=vic_liberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=d71248e0&pg=1. Accessed Jan. 2022.

Carpenter, Hugh Smith. The relationsof religion to the war: a sermon delivered on fast-day, Sept. 26, 1861. Townsend, 1861. Sabina Americana: History of the Americas, 1500-1926, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CY0102894766/SABN?u=vicliberty&sid=bookmark-SABN&xid=03347307&pg=1. Accessed 25 Jan. 2022.