The Confederate States Army revival was a series of Christian revivals which took place among the

Confederate States Army The Confederate States Army, also called the Confederate Army or the Southern Army, was the military land force of the Confederate States of America (commonly referred to as the Confederacy) during the American Civil War (1861–1865), fighting ...

in 1863. It is generally regarded as part of the

Third Great Awakening The Third Great Awakening refers to a historical period proposed by William G. McLoughlin that was marked by religious activism in American history and spans the late 1850s to the early 20th century. It influenced pietistic Protestant denominat ...

. Benjamin R. Lacy suggests that the revival began in the camps and hospitals around Richmond, Virginia. The revival began in the

Army of Northern Virginia The Army of Northern Virginia was the primary military force of the Confederate States of America in the Eastern Theater of the American Civil War. It was also the primary command structure of the Department of Northern Virginia. It was most oft ...

in early 1863. In March 1863, for example, a new chaplain arrived at the 41st Virginia Infantry regiment and found the beginnings of a revival. The revival was encouraged by Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee and by the middle of the 1863 it had spread to all the Confederate armies. Mark Summers argues, however, that Jackson and Lee were exceptional as far as enthusiasm among the officers went, and rather than a "top down" revival (the traditional

Lost Cause of the Confederacy The Lost Cause of the Confederacy (or simply Lost Cause) is an American pseudohistorical negationist mythology that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery. Fir ...

view), it was much more "bottom up", as thousands of

religious tracts A tract is a literary work and, in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the 21st century, a tract referred to a brief pamphlet used for religious and polit ...

were distributed among the soldiers. Summers suggests that due to the

Union blockade The Union blockade in the American Civil War was a naval strategy by the United States to prevent the Confederacy from trading. The blockade was proclaimed by President Abraham Lincoln in April 1861, and required the monitoring of of Atlanti ...

, the soldiers had little else to read. According to the Confederate chaplain J. William Jones, by the end of the war, 150,000 soldiers had been converted. Kurt O. Berends argues that the revivals were a major cultural event. Ben House suggests that the revivals provided "the spiritual resources that would be necessary to enable the South to survive defeat and

Reconstruction Reconstruction may refer to: Politics, history, and sociology *Reconstruction (law), the transfer of a company's (or several companies') business to a new company *'' Perestroika'' (Russian for "reconstruction"), a late 20th century Soviet Unio ...

with a strong Bible base still intact."

References

Further reading