A Consuming Fire

The fall of the Confederacy proved traumatic for a people who fought with the belief that God was on their side. Yet, as Eugene D. Genovese demonstrates in A Consuming Fire, Southern Christians continued to trust in the Lord's will. The churches had long defended "Southern rights" and insisted that slavery had divine sanction, but they also warned that God was testing His people, who must bring slavery up to biblical standards or face His wrath. For proslavery spokesmen, "Christian slavery" offered the South, indeed the world, the best hope for the vital work of preparation for the Kingdom, but they acknowledged that the slavery practiced in the South left much to be desired. The reform campaign of prominent ministers and church laymen featured demands to secure slave marriages and family life, to repeal the laws against slave literacy, and to punish cruel masters. A Consuming Fire analyzes the strengths, weaknesses, and ultimate failure of the struggle for reform and the nature and significance of Southern Christian orthodoxy and its vision of a proper social order, class structure, and race relations.

EUGENE D. GENOVESE (1930-2012) was one of the most influential, and controversial, historians of his time. He was the author of several books, including Roll, Jordan, Roll, for which he won the Bancroft Prize; The Southern Tradition; and The Southern Front.