Second Bull Run/Manassas

The summer of 1862 witnessed the struggle between Northern Republican and Democratic ideologies embodied in the Army of Virginia and the Army of the Potomac even as Union and Confederate armies faced off in the Second Manassas Campaign. Formed to protect Washington while Maj. Gen. George McClellan advanced on Richmond, the Army of Virginia and its leader, Maj. Gen. John Pope, implemented a Republican or “hard war” policy of military occupation by confiscating civilian property and imposing loyalty oaths. Northern and Southern Democrats (characterized by McClellan and Maj. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, respectively) recognized the threat that Pope’s ideology posed and sought to crush it, either by delaying reinforcement or decisive battlefield defeat. The defeat of Pope and his army by Confederate forces at Second Manassas delayed but did not destroy the twin Republican agendas of emancipation and destruction of the Confederacy. Pope and his political generals prefigured the total-war policies of the war’s last year.

The Quaker “Invasion”

Founded in the late 1640s, Quakerism reached America in the 1650s and quickly took root due to the determined work of itinerant missionaries over the next several decades. Quakers, or members of the Society of Friends, faced different legal and social challenges in each colony. Many English men and women viewed Friends with hostility because they refused to bear arms in a colony’s defense or take loyalty oaths. Others were drawn to Quakers’ egalitarian message of universal access to the light of Christ in each human being. After George Fox’s visit to the West Indies and the mainland colonies in 1671–1672, Quaker missionaries followed his lead in trying to include enslaved Africans and native Americans in their meetings. Itinerant Friends were drawn to colonies with the most severe laws, seeking a public platform from which to display, through suffering, a joyful witness to the truth of the Quaker message. English Quakers then quickly ushered accounts of their sufferings into print. Organized and supported by English Quakers such as Margaret Fell, the Quaker “invasion” of itinerant missionaries put pressure on colonial judicial systems to define the acceptable boundaries for dissent. Nascent communities of Friends from Barbados to New England struggled with the tension between Quaker ideals and the economic and social hierarchies of colonial societies.

Ancient Near Eastern Treaties/Loyalty Oaths and Biblical Law

The chapter surveys evidence from West Asian and Mesopotamian sources, focusing on texts written in Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Hittite. Although modern scholarship distinguishes international treaties from domestic loyalty oaths, the difference is not recognized in ancient Near Eastern documents. Both types of agreements are discussed under five headings: relationships between treaties and other legal documents; the concept of the vassal treaty; forms; ratification; and covenants with gods. Each heading points to areas of ongoing research and discussion. These include the administration of oaths; difficulties in identifying vassal treaties; origin and development of treaty forms; and motivations for producing treaty documents. Among issues relevant to biblical studies are links between treaties and dynastic promises; categorization of biblical treaty texts; the role of sacrifice; and connections between covenants and vows.

“I Do Not Understand What the Term ‘Loyalty’ Means”

Jonathan W. White’s essay studies compensation debates in the Pennsylvania State Legislature to illuminate partisan conceptions of treason and loyalty. Pennsylvanians along the southern border were victimized by multiple Confederate invasions. The widespread damage to property, including thousands made homeless in the 1864 burning of Chambersburg, sparked heated debates in the statehouse over compensation for losses. At issue was the perceived loyalty of the purported victims. In an overwhelmingly Democratic region, many were assumed to give aidand encouragement to the enemy because of their political affiliation. White’s essay examines how Republican legislators attempted to impose loyalty oaths and tests of “proof” to prevent those deemed unworthy and “disloyal” from receiving aid. In the process, White’s narrative sheds light on how Republicans developed and employed a rhetoric of “loyalty” to denigrate their political opponents and foster support for Republican war measures.

Wartime Trials and Tribulations

Chapter 6 reveals that antislavery Unionists embraced the view that disloyalty to the United States and support of slavery were tantamount to sin. Northern evangelicals, Union troops, and Radical Republicans sought to impose these beliefs on southern evangelicals as a new civil religion via wartime ecclesiastical sanctions and loyalty oaths. Such sentiments also prompted Union authorities to muzzle the proslavery evangelical press, while spurring Unionist evangelicals to appropriate the church buildings of their proslavery counterparts. Challenged in the courts by dispossessed southern evangelicals, these were seizures that local tribunals under Radical control ratified. This variegated body of law, however, did not determine such outcomes as much as the religious, social, and political preferences of partisan judges. Their rulings, moreover, obscured the division between church and state, while powerfully generating popular understandings of evangelical faith and the armed struggle.