Hoyt Cagle
Religion Has No Place
Thu Jul 5 07:56:46 2001


"No Higher Eulogy need be pronounced on our Alabama Christian Patriots than to say they enlisted under the banner of their native State and fought for the cause of Southern Independence in defense of Religious and Political Liberty and all of the Rights and Privileges which Patriotic Freemen hold sacred."

Even the most rabid revisionists don't make these arguements about "religious liberty" and "Christian patriots." What religious liberty are you speaking of, pray tell? The Union army had chaplains, too, you know. I don't much think that God was just on the side of the South, particularly if one ten thousandth of the known slave atrocities is true. (And not all were committed by the wealthy slave owners, either. The poor whites were the ones who formed patrols that stopped Blacks, checked passes, and beat and killed indiscriminately. Surely sounds like a bunch of fine "Southern Christian Patriots" to me!) Religion has no place in a listing of causes for the war. Samuel Johnson may have been right when he noted that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." I sometimes wonder, however, if religion doesn't deserve equal billing with that thought.