Alan J. Pitts
Re: Agreed, but not just Christians.
Wed Jul 4 11:35:37 2001


From all accounts, most Southern volunteers entered the war with predominantly pagan beliefs. We're all familiar with accounts of camp life and how uncomfortable Christian parents were about sending their sons into these dens of iniquity. Judging from the varieties of disease contracted by many soldiers, it seems to have been worse when troops camped near a town of any size, such as Mobile, Atlanta or Richmond. It's fair to say that Christian teachings were generally respected but not generally observed.

I believed quite the opposite until a few years ago. In pursuit of documents relating to the antebellum history of my native county (Jefferson), I came across an excellent narrative history by a member of the Grace family who later helped establish Birmingham-Southern College. Without going into the details, his history is replete with incidents of alcohol-induced violence and other examples of dissipation. I tended to discount much of what he wrote until I began to reflect on the general absence of churches existing in that time in Jefferson County. As he said, at that time there were very few; none, for instance, in the county seat of Elyton. A few Christian families would try to form a congregation there every few years, but it always failed due to lack of interest.

This generally agnostic and sometimes anti-Christian attitude was reflected in my study of the southern half of Shelby County. Old court records include charges of disruption of church services and a variety of others that would lead me to believe that the area was less than pious during antebellum years. I don't recall a congregation between Lime Kiln and what later became Clanton, and there appears to have been a great deal of animosity towards James Cobb and his family, devout Presbyterian slaveholders who lived near present-day Jemison. Community hostility towards Cobb had to do with the social differences between that family and most of their neighbors; the tendency of the Cobb family to behave as obseravnt Christians was just one.

To conclude, I believe the mass revivals in the Confederate armies in Virgina and Georgia had much to do with the later perception of the South as the "Bible Belt" of this country. It probably also helped that some of the more notable Confederate leaders, such as Polk, Jackson, Lee and D. H. Hill, were humble, practicing Christians. I tend to believe the greatly reduced circumstances of many Southerners after the war turned others to faith, such as Nathan Bedford Forrest. I'm advised that consistent prayers offered by a devout Christian wife had much to do with his conversion.