Contested Loyalty by Robert M. Sandow

Author:Robert M. Sandow [Sandow, Robert M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, International, International Relations, Politics
ISBN: 9781000012101
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2019-06-13T04:00:00+00:00

“Patriotism Will Save Neither You Nor Me”

William S. Plumer’s Defense of an Apolitical Pulpit

Sean A. Scott

On Sunday, November 17, 1861, the congregation of Central Presbyterian Church dedicated its new building, an unpretentious yet impressive structure furnished with stained glass windows, carpeted floors, and padded pews that could seat five hundred people in the main sanctuary. Only seven years earlier, William S. Plumer had moved from Baltimore to Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, and organized a church with forty-four charter members. Since this modest beginning, nearly 450 people had received membership, one-third of them new converts who had come to faith under Plumer’s ministry. From all appearances, the fifty-nine-year-old pastor and his congregation displayed a spirit of unity and brotherly affection as they consecrated their newly completed house of worship.1

On this momentous day, Plumer could not have imagined that ten months later he would resign his pastorate and professorship at Western Theological Seminary. A few scholars have briefly outlined his troubles during the Civil War, but none has analyzed his story in the context of perceptions of loyalty in the North. His only crimes, according to patriotic contemporaries, were his failure to pray for Union victories during Sunday worship or forcefully denounce the Southern rebellion. Accused of disloyalty and condemned in the press, he maintained that political matters such as war had no place in the church. He prayed for elected officials, for soldiers’ protection in battle, and for national peace, but he refused to supplicate God for specific outcomes of battles. Born in Pennsylvania but primarily educated and employed in the South, he deprecated a war that claimed the lives of loved ones from both sections. He was not a pacifist for its own sake but took an apolitical stand because he believed that it best served the interests and promotion of the gospel.2

Plumer’s case highlights how some Northern civilians employed the rhetoric of loyalty to compel conduct that a majority required to meet their subjective standards of good citizenship. William Blair has demonstrated that broad, popular notions of disloyalty, rather than a strict, legal definition of treason, functioned as the primary measure of an individual’s personal allegiance. To accomplish this, “the northern public and authorities often resorted to excessive means, especially when it came to examining the behavior of neighbors.” This certainly was true with Plumer, who constitutionally could never have been found guilty of treason. An Old School Presbyterian, he held conservative principles theologically, politically, and socially, and these views conspicuously set him apart from many Northern clergy who were openly patriotic, Republican, and increasingly antislavery in their public pronouncements.3 Unfortunately for him, during the Civil War many Northerners demanded more overt displays of patriotism than his conscience would allow him to make. Based on these higher standards, his position of public neutrality seemed to be nothing less than outright disloyalty.

The study of religion during the war has come into its own over the last twenty years. Timothy L. Wesley recently has examined how ministers’ opinions on politics and the

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.