Sean Scott on Religious Rhetoric in the US Civil War

As we approach the sesquicentennial mark of the cessation of hostilities in the US Civil War, Prof. Sean Scott – visiting assistant professor of American Studies at Christopher Newport University – joins us to talk about the religious views of the “common folk” in the “Old Northwest” and his book A Visitation of God: Northern Civilians Interpret the Civil War. His research dives into the personal letters, diaries, sermons, and other forms of correspondence of individuals living in the Great Lakes states of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa.

The conversation begins with Prof. Scott describing one of his previous jobs, namely searching for “lost” documents related to President Abraham Lincoln. We find out that he had success in finding a few pieces of correspondence that were not yet documented and he received a special reward for doing so! This then sends us into a discussion about how Scott became interested in the Civil War era and the more specific topic of religious rhetoric in the mid-1800s. While much of his interest in the subject was generated in graduate school, he does note that he wrote a paper on the Civil War in junior high school which may have prompted his current interest.

We then look at his recent research on how Northerners tended to use religious imagery and language to correspond with one another during this tumultuous era in American history. Tony asks a number of methodological questions about who was included in the study, how were documents tracked down, what was the nature of those documents, and whether Sean ever had a “chill up his spine” when reading these sometimes very emotional documents. We talk about Sean’s emphasis on “common folk” who included everyone from individual soldiers, to farmers, housewives, preachers, and even a prominent banker or two. Prof. Scott also notes that few scholars have studied the area of the Old Northwest, favoring instead the South, mid-Atlantic states, or New England. Sean makes the case that his region of focus represented an interesting melting pot of different people as many of these states had just been settled in the few decades before the Civil War and were still attracting a wide range of individuals from across the country. Many of these folks were not necessarily in favor of the abolition of slavery or shared the same views of secession that other Yankees might.

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