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Christian Heroes And Blood-Stained Villains: The Civil War In Historic Peace Church Memory, 1865-1915, Aaron Duane Jerviss

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the Civil War memory of the three historic peace churches (the Society of Friends, the Mennonites, and the German Baptist Brethren) in the years between 1865 and 1915. It argues that these three groups, in their Civil War remembrance, challenged the culturally prevalent definition of heroism as militaristic in nature, an expression found in military monuments, Decoration Day observances, and Blue-Gray veterans’ reunion. The study looks at periodicals, books, and biographies produced by these three religious bodies (and letters and diaries written by individual members) in the fifty years after the war to uncover both their narratives …