In nothing was this more evident than in Southern religious life. The South which followed Jefferson was largely indifferent to religious dogmas of all kinds. Most of the greater leaders had been deists rather than Christians; nor had they suffered for these opinions at the hands of the people. Calhoun's Unitarianism had in no way retarded his political career. But before 1830 a change was taking place. The stout Presbyterianism of the up-country forced the retirement of one of the professors of the University of Virginia, in its earlier years, and it compelled the resignation of President Cooper of the University of South Carolina, in 1836, because of his denial of the inspiration of the Pentateuch. The Presbyterians had grown powerful and wealthy; they asserted their influence in Virginia and South Carolina, and they were already recognized as leaders in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Kentucky. What this denomination did was applauded by the more numerous Baptists and Methodists, whose membership was as yet too poor to command the influence of their rivals.
Before 1844, however, these great religious organizations in the South, with a combined membership of nearly a million, received full recognition. With a small-farmer and landless membership they had opposed slavery and the whole aristocratic system before 1820, but as the years passed, tobacco and cotton culture made many of them wealthy and opened the way to all who were ambitious to rise. At once the official attitude began to change. The preachers ceased first to denounce “the institution,” and finally without offense became slave-owners themselves. The clergy's stern rebukes of fashion, of dancing, and of “the wearing of fine raiment” ceased or lost its effect. Presbyterians had long believed in an educated ministry, and when they forced their influence into political life, they were already friendly to the dominant ideas of the South. Now the Baptists and Methodists built colleges for the training of young ministers, and preaching in their simple churches was made to conform to the canons of good taste. Throughout the South the churches became the allies of the existing economic and social order, and they presented a solid front to those who proposed to discipline men for holding other men in bondage. Their clergy formulated a strong Biblical and patriarchal defense of the South. Slavery, from being an institution to be lamented as an evil, became a blessing sustained by the Holy Scriptures, according to the ablest ministers of God.
When the Northern branches of these churches found how completely their Southern brethren had yielded to the powerful social pressure of their local life, a vigorous attempt was made to correct the tendency. It failed, and in 1844-45 the Baptists of the East and those of the upper Northwest refused to coöperate with Southern churches which insisted on the right to send out missionaries who owned slaves. A Southern Baptist Church was the immediate result. In the same year, 1844, the Methodists of the East and upper West refused to recognize the ministrations of a bishop who owned slaves, and a break-up of the church followed. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, was organized at Louisville the following year. The Presbyterians and Episcopalians had become so completely reconciled to the aristocratic life which slavery connoted that they sustained no serious breach in their ranks. In the North as well as in the South they accepted slavery. A notable result of these breaks in the Baptist and Methodist churches was the rapid increase of membership of both in the South. Within a period of ten years the Southern Baptists were as powerful as the American Baptists had been in 1844. The same is true of the Methodists, and what happened in the South was paralleled in the North. Pro-slavery churches in the South and anti-slavery churches in the North seemed to be required by the people. Revivals, educational improvements, and missionary zeal were the fruits of the “reformation.” Politicians like Calhoun, who watched and counseled these peaceful schisms, urged that the Union must in due time likewise break into pieces; but the great economic forces of the country were as yet too strong; common markets, interlocking transportation systems, and the extraordinary prosperity which followed the Polk régime defeated the wishes of those who thought that two confederations within the area of the United States would be better than one.
Thus, when Polk took up the forward program which had been outlined at Baltimore, and which was to antiquate the “American System” over which Clay and Jackson and their respective groups had fought so bitterly since 1824, the South was rapidly crystallizing into a solid section with definite ideas and purposes. The plantation owners were in full command; the older and small-farmer element was falling into line behind their pro-slavery leaders; the social and religious life had become orthodox and stratified; and the clergy, who now preached acceptably to great masses of people, were, like those of New England, in full sympathy with the dominant economic interests of their time. The immediate future of the South was fairly certain, and Southern leaders assumed a militant tone indicative of the wishes of their people.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Justin H. Smith's Annexation of Texas (1911) and G. P. Garrison's Westward Extension (1906), in American Nation series, give full and trustworthy accounts of the Texas movement; while Lyon G. Tyler's Times of the Tylers (1884); C. H. Ambler's Life of Thomas Ritchie (1913); J. W. DuBose's Life of William L. Yancey (1892); and J. F. H. Claiborne's Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman (1860), supply abundant material showing the temper and purposes of the different parts of the South in 1840. U. B. Phillips's The Plantation and Frontier (1909) is an excellent source-book for the period, and the Adams Memoir, Clay Correspondence (Colton), Calhoun Correspondence (Jameson), and Mrs. A. M. Coleman's The Life of John J. Crittenden (1871) are most useful for these years. The debates of Congress for the period of 1833 to 1873 are found in the Congressional Globe and Appendices. For the philosophy of slavery and the Southern social system of which slavery was the basis read The Pro-Slavery Argument (1852), containing Thomas R. Dew's and James H. Hammond's writings on the subject.