The Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925

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Go directly to the collection, The Church in the Southern Black Community, 1780-1925, in American Memory, or view a Summary of Resources related to the collection.

• Black Americans and the Church in Colonial America |
• Early Anti-Slavery Efforts by Religious Communities |
• The American Revolution |
• The Growth of African Methodist Episcopal and Baptist Churches in the New Nation |
• Responses to Slavery in the New Nation |
• The Civil War |
• Churches in the Black Community Following the Civil War |
• The Federal Government's Role |
• African Americans at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

The Civil War

A number of the autobiographies in the collection include references to the Civil War. One example is the History of the Life of Rev. Wm. Mack Lee:  Body Servant of General Robert E. Lee through the Civil War. William Mack Lee, a cook in the service of Robert E. Lee, had nothing but praise for the general.

Traveler, from History of the Life
of Rev. Wm. Mack Lee, frontispiece

Fort Wagner, from A School
History of the Negro Race in
America, 1619-1890, page 114.
Read the account of the Civil War
in this book. How does it differ
from other accounts of the Civil War
that you have read in textbooks?

Contrast Lee’s account with that of the Rev. William Robinson.  In his life story, From Log Cabin to the Pulpit, or, fifteen years in Slavery, Robinson recounted being taken off to war as a servant to a Confederate officer.

• How do these accounts by two African American ministers differ?
• To what extent does the Rev. Lee’s autobiography romanticize the institution of slavery?
• Both books were written long after the Civil War. What might account for the different stories told by the two authors?

In his history of the black church, Carter G. Woodson wrote that “The outbreak of the Civil War was also an outbreak in the church.” Many ministers went off to war, and less attention may have been paid to spiritual matters than to gaining freedom. Furthermore, the war split northerners and southerners of the same denomination, both of whom used scripture to argue their cause.