[346:1] Thompson, "The Presbyterians," p. 135.
[346:2] "Narrative of the State of Religion" of the Southern General Assembly of 1864.
[348:1] For interesting illustrations of this, see Alexander, "The Methodists, South," pp. 71-75. The history of the religious life of the northern army is superabundant and everywhere accessible.
CHAPTER XX.
AFTER THE WAR.
When the five years of rending and tearing had passed, in which slavery was dispossessed of its hold upon the nation, there was much to be done in reconstructing and readjusting the religious institutions of the country.
Throughout the seceding States buildings and endowments for religious uses had suffered in the general waste and destruction of property. Colleges and seminaries, in many instances, had seen their entire resources swept away through investment in the hopeless promises of the defeated government. Churches, boards, and like associations were widely disorganized through the vicissitudes of military occupation and the protracted absence or the death of men of experience and capacity.
The effect of the war upon denominational organizations had been various. There was no sect of all the church the members and ministers of which had not felt the sweep of the currents of popular opinion all about them. But the course of events in each denomination was in some measure illustrative of the character of its polity.