The Impact of the Civil War on the Brotherhood, the Churches of Christ

Certainly, all of us are familiar with the history of the Civil War, and know what a terrible toll this war took upon our nation, not only in the number of soldiers and civilians, both North and South, who were killed, the destruction of property, etc., but it really tore at the very center, the very soul, of the nation to go to war against one’s neighbor. There are, really, wounds that have hardly been healed, even to this day. Well more than a hundred forty-some years from the time of the Civil War, there are still, in some people’s minds, the North and the South—you know, “The South will rise again,” and all that sort of thing. And, if you have spent any time in some of the southern states, like Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee, and others, you’ll know that there is among some of the population there this very proud feeling of being Southerners, and so on.

Well, I said all that to say this, that this sectional struggle, this War Between the States, placed an unusually heavy strain on Christians, on the unity of Christians. Again, the estimate is about 2,000 churches in the year 1860 that these 200,000 folks were spread between. There were about 1,200 churches in the North and about 800 churches in the South. Furthermore, many of these churches were clustered in the Ohio Valley, in that critical area bordering both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line; states such as Kentucky, Missouri, and others, were right there. And the loyalties, of course, were very, very divided; divided not only neighbor against neighbor, but also Christian against Christian. AND, we know, as well, from history that oftentimes even within families, they were pitted one against the other, brother against brother, father against son, and so on.

Well, this tension, this strain, was felt in congregations all across the country, and it can be, I think, illustrated. This is an excerpt from a letter that was written by a brother in Christ names Thomas Munnell of Mount Sterling, Kentucky. This is a personal letter that he wrote to a David Oliphant in 1862. The information that I have does not specifically say where David Oliphant was, whether he was somewhere else there in Kentucky. But, nevertheless, this illustrates the point here. According to Thomas Munnell, he will say in his letter that “many in Kentucky churches, Union and Confederate, were sympathizers, and they were attempting to worship together, to sing the same songs, to eat and drink the same bread and wine, and say ‘Amen’ to the same prayers.” The atmosphere was such in these congregations that had a preacher, or had an eldership, taken one side or the other a congregation would surely have been immediately torn asunder. But, what is being described here by Mr. Munnell is that this was a situation where there was a lot of tension, where brethren were meeting, like we’re meeting tonight, in a place of assembly, and they knew where the other stood, and it was a very difficult time.

Munnell would write, and this is a quote, “We hope not to divide into North and South churches as other large religious bodies have.” And then, he makes this plea: “Brother should not go to war with brother.” Well, this exact plea, “Brother should not go to war with brother,” was often heard among Christians. It was one that would be heard and followed by many, but one which many would not hear, and not follow.

Most of the religious leaders of this day were all categorized as “pacifists,” with the exception of Walter Scott. When the Civil War began, a majority of preachers and editors of the well-known publications and papers of the day, men like Alexander Campbell, Benjamin Franklin, J. W. McGarvey, Moses Easterly Lard, Robert Milligan, Tolbert Fanning, David Lipscomb and a host of others, all counseled non-participation. J. W. McGarvey declared that he would do everything that he could possibly do, everything within his power, to keep his brethren from enlisting in military service. He wrote this, and again, this is a quote from Brother McGarvey. He said, “I would rather ten thousand times to be killed for refusing to fight than to fall in battle or come home victorious with the blood of my brethren on my hands.”

McGarvey would pose this question to many Christians, as well as to many of the leaders; and the question was this: “If, hypothetically, the twelve apostles were here, and they were in this situation, and there were six apostles living in the South and six apostles living in the North, what would they have urged? What would their counsel have been? Would they have urged Christians to enlist?” And then, McGarvey described himself in this way; he said that he was “standing in between my brethren and the battlefield, with the New Testament in hand, warning them, as they hope for heaven, to keep the peace.”

Robert Milligan was another pacifist. He had become the President of Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1859, and he would manage to keep the school open throughout the entire war. That was a feat that no other public university, or private university, was able to do in the state of Kentucky.

Well, shortly after the war began, J. W. McGarvey and 13 other prominent Missouri preachers signed a plea calling upon Christians not to participate in the fighting. And, this plea was published in many brotherhood journals. The preachers warned that any who would engage would be engaging in a war that they described as being “a fratricidal strife.” Fratricide is a term that we hear sometimes today. It’s a term which is used when friendly forces attack their own forces—bombs are dropped in the wrong place, or “friendly fire” is called in on a friendly unit. That is referred to as “fratricide” [dictionary definition: the killing of one’s own brother or sister—in this case, brothers or sisters in Christ killing or being killed by brothers or sisters in Christ]. Well, that was how Brother McGarvey would describe this. And, he said that anyone who would engage in this would incur God’s displeasure, and these men would plead that the church remain a united body.