Religious Aspects of the Post-Civil War Peace Policy

After the war, the powerful reform impulses stemming from the Second Great Awakening were no longer directed against slavery. At least some of the old interest in reshaping American society for the betterment of humanity and the glory of God was now focused on the Indian "problem."[1] In that era, the Protestant establishment and the party of Lincoln saw a good deal of cooperation, and this can be heard in the summary of the Peace Policy by Columbus Delano, Grant's Secretary of the Interior. The policy, said Delano, set out to place Indians on reservations where they could be taught "such pursuits as are incident to civilization, through the aid of the Christian organizations of the country now engaged in this work, cooperating with the Federal Government." A central part of the policy was to 

establish schools, and through the instrumentality of the Christian organizations, acting in harmony with the Government, . . . to build churches and organize Sabbath schools, whereby these savages may be taught a better way of life than they have heretofore pursued, and be made to understand and appreciate the comforts and benefits of Christian civilization, and thus be prepared ultimately to assume the duties and privileges of citizenship.[2]  

Notes

[1] Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 166. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row. 1957) makes the case that antebellum evangelicals did not disdain reform movements. On the contrary, mid-nineteenth century evangelists were in the vanguard of reformers who railed against slavery and other aspects of American society they deemed ungodly. In fact, they laid the foundation upon which the post-war Social Gospel was built.

[2] Columbus Delano, Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, in Executive Documents, 1873-74, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), iii-iv, as quoted in Berkhofer, White Man's Indian, 169.