When we talk about the Civil War; we often describe it in terms of battles that took place in small towns or in the countryside: Antietam; Gettysburg; Bull Run; and; most tellingly; the Battle of the Wilderness. One reason this picture has persisted is that few urban historians have studied the war; even though cities hosted; enabled; and shaped Southern society as much as they did in the North.Confederate Cities; edited by Andrew L. Slap and Frank Towers; shifts the focus from the agrarian economy that undergirded the South to the cities that served as its political and administrative hubs. The contributors use the lens of the city to examine now-familiar Civil War–era themes; including the scope of the war; secession; gender; emancipation; and war’s destruction. This more integrative approach dramatically revises our understanding of slavery’s relationship to capitalist economics and cultural modernity. By enabling a more holistic reading of the South; the book speaks to contemporary Civil War scholars and students alike—not least in providing fresh perspectives on a well-studied war.
#835564 in Books Porterfield Amanda 2015-05-06 2012-04-23Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .90 x 6.00l; .0 #File Name: 022627196X264 pagesConceived in Doubt Religion and Politics in the New American Nation
Review
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful. The Codependence of Religion and Politics in the Early U.S.By Frank BellizziAccording to the author; historian Amanda Porterfield; this book is about "religion's powerful relation to American politics." More specifically; it's about "the codependence of libertarian politics and evangelical religion in the formative era of American politics and religion" which; she says; "has not received the attention it deserves." Okay; even more specifically; this book is a take down of Nathan O. Hatch's much-loved modern classic; The Democratization of American Christianity. As Porterfield sees things; "misrepresenting evangelicalism as antiauthoritarian and disregarding the connection between the evangelicalism and the growth of slavery and invasion of Indian lands; Hatch did as much to mask the developing relationship between religion and politics as to reveal it" (p. 11).Porterfield seems to be saying that the growth of religion in the early republic was not so much the result of the democratization of truth; but rather the resolution; and sometimes the management; of doubt. The last sentence of her Introduction reads: "With doubt the cultural sickness that religion nursed; religion thrived as a way to interpret; relieve; and feed it" (13).Contrary to Hatch--a graduate of a Christian college (Wheaton); who wrote his book during the Reagan Administration--the growth and strength of conservative protestantism in the U.S. was not simply the result of American political freedom. Instead; as rationalists and skeptics like Jefferson and his ilk warmed up to conservative protestants; a sort of quid pro quo emerged. Jeffersonians backed off of their public suspicions of supernaturally-revealed religion; while the religionists; Baptists and especially Methodists in this case; were expected to back off of their opposition to citizens' control of property (i.e.; slaves). That's just one of Porterfield's lines of argument; one of the better ones in my opinion.So why did I give this book four stars? It's an impressive achievement; and I learned a lot from reading it. But there are times when Porterfield distorts things in order to make them fit her thesis. The best (or worst) examples of this show up in Chapter Three; which includes a skewed reading of the 1801 Cane Ridge Revival.Overall; this is an interesting; significant contribution to the study of religion and politics in the early republic.
