Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the American Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006).
Christian gentlemen founded South Carolina, informants assured the London Times correspondent, William Howard Russell, upon his arrival in Charleston in April, 1861. “It was established not by witch-burning Puritans, by cruel persecuting fanatics, who . . . breathed in the nostrils of their newly-born colonies all the ferocity, bloodthirstiness, and rapid intolerance of the Inquisition,” they claimed, shortly after their bombardment of Fort Sumter. Confusing its own bigotry with Christianity, Puritanism birthed impurity and “inchastity.” Further, Yankee Puritans “know how to read and write, but they don’t know how to think, and they are the easy victims of the wretched imposters on all the ‘ologies and ‘isms.” To make matters unbearable, such hateful and ignorant persons had recently elected Abraham Lincoln as President.
