Rebuilding Zion: The Religious Reconstruction of the South, 1863-1877

During the American Civil War and its aftermath, Southern evangelicals remained convinced that their cause was both Christian and just. This position became more entrenched as Northern evangelicals entered the South after the war, aiming to save freedmen. Author Daniel Stowell plots the conflict that resulted from these competing visions of the religious reconstruction of the South. By demonstrating how the Southern vision eventually came to predominate, he shows how the Southern Churches became one of the principal bulwarks in the creation of the myth of the "Lost Cause," Southern honour, and curious moral righteousness of the South's treatment of both slave and freedman.