Historians have long asked why the Northern states, after having fought a war that eventually became a crusade for black liberty, so quickly dropped their efforts to ensure African American freedoms after the Civil War had concluded. In this elegantly written monograph, Grant Brodrecht focuses our attention to Northerners’ view of the Union. More specifically, Brodrecht examines influential white northern evangelicals and their conviction that “the Union as Christian America was a sacred trust that must be preserved” (7). Unfortunately, this preoccupation with national unity eventually overshadowed the need to protect African American liberties in the late 1860s and early 1870s.

Readers cannot help but be impressed with Brodrecht's thorough approach to this topic. Unlike some historians, he gives a clear definition of evangelicalism, stating that evangelicals were Protestants, who saw the Bible as authoritative, believed in the necessity of a conversion experience, and saw the need to live an upright life, a concern that sometimes included political and social reform. In making his case, Brodrecht utilizes an impressive array of primary and secondary sources, including sermons, newspapers, personal correspondence, and the papers of Presidents Lincoln, Johnson, and Grant. Furthermore, he is a master of Civil War era historiography. The size and scope of Brodrecht's research is extensive. as the endnotes number eighty-four pages, and the bibliography (available on-line) is fifty-nine pages long.

Brodrecht places two ideologies at the center of his analysis. “Ethnocultural nationalism” promoted unity under the umbrella of ethnic and religious homogeneity whereas “civic nationalism” was inclusive and sought social and political justice for all Americans. As it turned out, most white northern evangelicals chose the first construct. Accordingly, the monograph is well-named – in the views of most northern white evangelicals, the United States was “Our Country,” a godly nation whose culture was to be determined by white Protestants.

The book is organized chronologically with the first three chapters examining views of the Union from the beginning of the war to the its conclusion. The last three chapters explain why white northern evangelicals failed to support a genuine reconstruction of the South. Although he references dozens of relevant opinion leaders throughout the book, Brodrecht chose to highlight three representative figures, the first two illustrating the ethnocultural position. Methodist George Peck believed that the preservation of the Union was not only a duty to the Founding Fathers, but a responsibility toward God. Presbyterian Henry Boardman once wrote “This Union is not the work of man. It is THE WORK OF GOD.” (36) Not surprisingly, Boardman shared Peck's view that promoting racial equality should not take precedence over maintaining the divinely-inspired union. By contrast, Congregationalist George Cheever was an evangelical abolitionist and a civic nationalist. He appears as an almost tragic figure throughout the narrative. In Brodrecht's words, Cheever “maintained a sense of his own peculiar, prophetic responsibility to help bring about the Union's proper form of Christianization, he also viewed himself as part of a faithful, though beleaguered, minority to whom few listened” (39).

The reasons for Cheever's frustration become abundantly clear in the book's closing chapters. Ethnocultural nationalists like Peck believed that once the Thirteenth Amendment had been enacted, the national government had fulfilled its duty towards African Americans and no further action was necessary. Boardman believed that ex-slaves were responsible for the South's postbellum problems and that money should be sent to Southern churches to “educate” the freedmen. For Peck and Boardman, and for ethnocultural nationalists in general, maintaining peaceful relations with southern white evangelicals in the name of national unity was far more important than other considerations. Accordingly, Northern white evangelicals supported presidents who promoted their national vision. While evangelicals only briefly approved of Andrew Johnson, they heralded Ulysses S. Grant, a nominal Methodist, as a “Christian statesman.” The former general had evangelical support not because of his personal piety, but because he eventually helped reunify northern and southern evangelicals and removed African Americans, Native Americans, Catholics, Mormons, and other marginalized groups from the national majority's definition of what it meant to be an American. In this environment, Cheever's dreams of a broadly inclusive civic nationalism faded into the past.

As impressive as this monograph is, I wish the author had discussed the relationship between white civic nationalists and the black community in greater depth. Black Protestants almost uniformly met the defining characteristics of evangelicalism. Virtually all black abolitionists were members of evangelical churches. White civic nationalists and African American activists could have been natural allies who shared a common vision of racial justice. Yet there is little discussion of the relationship between the two groups. Although Frederick Douglass is quoted numerous times, and there are five references to the African Methodist Episcopal Church's Christian Recorder, the book does not examine interracial cooperation in detail. If there was no relationship, it would be nice to know why. Perhaps class and racial barriers between the two groups were too great to overcome. Because integrated churches were rare, the two groups never encountered each other in a religious setting. Perhaps the ideological differences were too great. Blacks saw the United States not as a new Israel designed by God but a modern Egypt, a nation that sought to enrich itself by enslaving others. Or perhaps there was significant cooperation between the two races, but the topic is so vast it would require another book. At some point, I wish this volume had addressed this question, even if in an abbreviated form.

Nevertheless, Our Country is an excellent book. Not only does it describe a central issue in Civil War-era politics, the last chapter summarizes the progression of evangelical nationalist thinking from the late-nineteenth century to the present. As it turns out, the struggle between ethnocultural nationalism and civic nationalism is still very much with us.