A profound and timely examination of the moral underpinnings of the War Between the States The Civil War was not only a war of armies but also a war of ideas, in which Union and Confederacy alike identified itself as a moral nation with God on its side. In this watershed book, Harry S. Stout measures the gap between those claims and the war’s actual conduct. Ranging from the home front to the trenches and drawing on a wealth of contemporary documents, Stout explores the lethal mix of propaganda and ideology that came to justify slaughter on and off the battlefield. At a time when our country is once again at war, Upon the Altar of the Nation is a deeply necessary book.

Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War

History

Stout, Harry S.

Americas

Penguin Publishing Group

Throughout the colonial era, New England's only real public spokesmen were the Congregational ministers. One result is that the ideological origins of the American Revolution are nowhere more clearly seen than in the sermons they preached. The New England Soul is the first comprehensive analysis of preaching in New England from the founding of the Puritan colonies to the outbreak of the Revolution. Using a multi-disciplinary approach--including analysis of rhetorical style and concept of identity and community--Stout examines more than two thousand sermons spanning five generations of ministers, including such giants of the pulpit as John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, Increase and Cotton Mather, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Mayhew, and Charles Chauncy. Equally important, however, are the manuscript sermons of many lesser known ministers, which never appeared in print. By integrating the sermons of ordinary ministers with the printed sermons of their more illustrious contemporaries, Stout reconstructs the full import of the colonial sermon as a multi-faceted institution that served both religious and political purposes, and explicated history and society to the New England Puritans for one and a half centuries.

The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England

Religion & Spirituality

Other Eastern Religions & Sacred Texts

Oxford University Press

The New England Soul is the first comprehensive analysis of preaching in New England from the founding of the Puritan colonies to the outbreak of the Revolution. Using a multi-disciplinary approach--including analysis of rhetorical style and concept of identity and community--Stout examines more than two thousand sermons spanning five generations of ministers, including such giants of the pulpit as John Cotton, Thomas Shepard, Increase and Cotton Mather, George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Jonathan Mayhew, and Charles Chauncy, as well a numerous lesser-known preachers. Stout reconstructs the full import of the colonial sermon as a multi-faceted institution that served both religious and political purposes, and explained history and society to the New England Puritans for one and a half centuries.

The eighteen essays collected in this book had their origin in a conference of the same title, held at the Wingspread Conference Center in October of 1993. Some of the most distinguished scholars in the field were invited to reflect on their specialities in American religious history in ways that summarized where the field is and where it ought to move in the decades to come. Organized according to four general ways of looking at religious history--places and regions, universal themes, transformative events, and marginal groups and ethno-cultural "outsiders"--the essays address a wide range of topics, including Puritanism, religion and the Civil War, Protestantism and economic behavior, gender and sexuality in American Protestantism, and the contemporary de-Christianization of American culture. Featuring contributions from David D. Hall, Donald G. Matthews, Allen C. Guelzo, Gordon S. Wood, Daniel Walker Howe, Robert Wuthnow, Jon Butler, David A. Hollinger, and others, this thought-provoking and up-to-date collection will interest anyone involved in the study of American religion and history.

New Directions in American Religious History

Hart, D.G.

World

The eighteen essays collected in this book originate from a conference of the same title, held at the Wingspread Conference Center in October of 1993. Leading scholars were invited to reflect on their specialties in American religious history in ways that summarized both where the field is and where it ought to move in the decades to come. The essays are organized according to four general themes: places and regions, universal themes, transformative events, and marginal groups and ethnocultural "outsiders." They address a wide range of specific topics including Puritanism, Protestantism and economic behavior, gender and sexuality in American Protestantism, and the twentieth-century de-Christianization of American public culture. Among the contributors are such distinguished scholars as David D. Hall, Donald G. Matthews, Allen C. Guelzo, Gordon S. Wood, Daniel Walker Howe, Robert Wuthnow, Jon Butler, David A. Hollinger, Harry S. Stout, and John Higham. Taken together, these essays reveal a rapidly expanding field of study that is breaking out of its traditional confines and spilling into all of American history. The book takes the measure of the changes of the last quarter-century and charts numerous challenges to future work.

The common view of the nineteenth-century pastoral relationship--found in both contemporary popular accounts and 20th-century scholarship--was that women and clergymen formed a natural alliance and enjoyed a particular influence over each other. In Without Benefit of Clergy, Karin Gedge tests this thesis by examining the pastoral relationship from the perspective of the minister, the female parishioner, and the larger culture. The question that troubled religious women seeking counsel, says Gedge, was: would their minister respect them, help them, honor them? Surprisingly, she finds, the answer was frequently negative. Gedge supports her conclusion with evidence from a wide range of previously untapped primary sources including pastoral manuals, seminary students' and pastors' journals, women's diaries and letters, pamphlets, sentimental and sensational novels, and The Scarlet Letter.

Without Benefit of Clergy: Women and the Pastoral Relationship in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Religion in America)

Gedge, Karin E.

"Both the sources he employs and the scope of his study set his work apart from all that have precede it. . .The first study of New England preaching to span the entire colonial period. . .very important book." - Journal of American History "Simply breathtaking in scope. No one else has dared to grapple with the full sweep of Puritan preaching form the founding of New England through the American Revolution." - Nathan O. Hatch, University of Notre Dame "A massive achievement will stand as the definitive work on this important subject." - Reviews in American History "Impressive, imaginative, sensible, and lucid." - Donald G. Matthews, University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill "[Stout] has created a field of scholarship hitherto neglected - the manuscript sermon as a source of religious culture in colonial times. More than that, he has shown the extent to which sermon notes add to our knowledge of the times, notably for the period of the Great Awakening. And he has done so with great insight." - New England Quarterly "So soundly based on exhaustive research and so lucid in presentation, that even its most surprising conclusions carry conviction. An impressive achievement." - Daniel Walker Howe, author of What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 "One of the most impressive studies of Puritan New England society to appear in this century. . .Throughout the work, Stout enriches, supplements and revises much of the current knowledge about colonial New England. His language, which is both precise and playful, makes the volume a delight to read." -The Historian "Will surely become a benchmark in the study of early American history and culture." -Journal of the American Academy of Religion

A young Hessian soldier questions his loyalty to his king after fighting with the British in America during the Revolutionary War and spending time as a prisoner in the home of a German American family from Pennsylvania.

An Enemy Among Them

Teen & Young Adult

DeFord, Deborah H.

Historical Fiction

Houghton, mifflin, harcourt

The story of an ambitious family at the forefront of the great middle-class land grab that shaped early American capitalism American Aristocrats is a multigenerational biography of the Andersons of Kentucky, a family of strivers who passionately believed in the promise of America. Beginning in 1773 with the family patriarch, a twice-wounded Revolutionary War hero, the Andersons amassed land throughout what was then the American west. As the eminent religious historian Harry S. Stout argues, the story of the Andersons is the story of America's experiment in republican capitalism. Congressmen, diplomats, and military generals, the Andersons enthusiastically embraced the emerging American gospel of land speculation. In the process, they became apologists for slavery and Indian removal, and worried anxiously that the volatility of the market might lead them to ruin. Drawing on a vast store of Anderson family records, Stout reconstructs their journey to great wealth as they rode out the cataclysms of their time, from financial panics to the Civil War and beyond. Through the Andersons we see how the lure of wealth shaped American capitalism and the nation's continental aspirations.

American Aristocrats: A Family, a Fortune, and the Making of American Capitalism

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Basic Books

The religious historian author of Religion and American Life analyzes how both northern and southern forces claimed to have God's support during the American Civil War, in a chronological account that explores how the war's moral conduct shifted from constitutional conflicts to a violent and unconditional quest for victory. 40,000 first printing.

Leaders & Notable People

Viking Adult

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stout, Harry S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Stout, Harry S.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Stout, Harry S.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War

The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England

The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England

New Directions in American Religious History

New Directions in American Religious History

Without Benefit of Clergy: Women and the Pastoral Relationship in Nineteenth-Century American Culture (Religion in America)

The New England Soul: Preaching and Religious Culture in Colonial New England

An Enemy Among Them

American Aristocrats: A Family, a Fortune, and the Making of American Capitalism

Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War