How did Southern Catholics, under international religious authority and grounding unlike Southern Protestants, act with regard to political commitments in the recently formed Confederacy? How did they balance being both Catholic and Confederate? How is the Southern Catholic Civil War experience similar or dissimilar to the Southern Protestant Civil War experience? What new insights might this experience provide regarding Civil War religious history, the history of Catholicism in America, 19th-century America, and Southern history in general? For the majority of Southern Catholics, religion and politics were not a point of tension. Devout Catholics were also devoted Confederates, including nuns who served as nurses; their deep involvement in the Confederate cause as medics confirms the all-encompassing nature of Catholic involvement in the Confederacy, a fact greatly underplayed by scholars of Civil war religion and American Catholicism. Kraszewski argues against an "Americanization" of Catholics in the South and instead coins the term "Confederatization" to describe the process by which Catholics made themselves virtually indistinguishable from their Protestant neighbors. The religious history of the South has been primarily Protestant. Catholic Confederates simultaneously fills a gap in Civil War religious scholarship and in American Catholic literature by bringing to light the deep impact Catholicism has had on Southern society even in the very heart of the Bible Belt.

This book evaluates the Confederate Catholic war effort from the preceeding phase of localized insurgency, through the formation of a national self-government in 1642, until the Confederate Catholic regime was finally subsumed in a broad pan-Royalist alliance in 1649. While this alliance held out the prospect of significant religious and constitutional concessons this achievement was nullified by the subsequent Cromwellian catastrophe: the Confederate regime failed. In attributing this failure to political factionalism, historians have neglected the potential and limitations of the Confederate war effort. This study does not substitute crude military determinism but acknowledges that political indecision and strategic incoherence inhibited the war effort at critical junctures. From the conflicting political priorities of Confederates two partially exclusive military strategies, insular, and expeditionary, can be identified. Both strategies were proactive and so demanded standing armies rather than local militia units. This book emphasizes the crucial importance of the tax gathering apparatus in fueling the incremental growth of standing armies. In the absence of large scale foreign patronage, exacting money from an agrarian economy, rather than the shortages of material, or still less, manpower representing the crucial extrinsic limit to Confederate military potential. Given these limits, it was a considerable achievement to contain two British interventions (in 1642 and 1646/7 respectively). The influence of the contemporaneous "military revolution" on the European mainland was mediated by the cadre of returned mercenary officers. Consequently, the Confederates developed a qualitative edge in fortification and siegecraft. The application of the continental model and the shift from putatively "celtic" or irregular tactics of raiding and running battles would be more problematic. This and other explanations for the poor battlefield performance of the Confederate armies are discussed.

“Concise, engaging . . . [A] superb study of the US Catholic community in the Civil War era.” —Civil War Book Review Anti-Catholicism has had a long presence in American history. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, many Catholic Americans considered it a chance to prove their patriotism once and for all. Exploring how Catholics sought to use their participation in the war to counteract religious and political nativism in the United States, Excommunicated from the Union reveals that while the war was an alienating experience for many of the 200,000 Catholics who served, they still strove to construct a positive memory of their experiences—in order to show that their religion was no barrier to their being loyal American citizens. “[A] masterful interrogation of the fusion of faith, national crisis, and ethnic identity at a critical moment in American history. This is a notable and welcome contribution to Catholic, Civil War, and immigrant history.”? Journal of Southern History

“Students of the Civil War, Catholic history, and women’s history, among others, will welcome [Soldiers of the Cross] . . . Brilliantly edited.” —Randall M. Miller, co-editor of Religion and the American Civil War Shortly after the Civil War, an Irish Catholic journalist and war veteran named David Power Conyngham began compiling the stories of Catholic chaplains and nuns who served during the conflict. His manuscript, Soldiers of the Cross, is the fullest record written during the nineteenth century of the Catholic Church’s involvement in the Civil War, as it documents the service of fourteen chaplains and six female religious communities, representing both North and South. Many of Conyngham’s chapters contain new insights into the clergy during the war that are unavailable elsewhere, either during his time or ours, making the work invaluable to Catholic and Civil War historians. The introduction contains over a dozen letters written between 1868 and 1870 from high-ranking Confederate and Union officials, such as Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Union Surgeon General William Hammond, and Union General George B. McClellan, who praise the church’s services during the war. Chapters on Fathers William Corby and Peter P. Cooney, as well as the Sisters of the Holy Cross, cover subjects relatively well known to Catholic scholars, yet other chapters are based on personal letters and other important primary sources that have not been published prior to this book. Due to Conyngham’s untimely death, Soldiers of the Cross remained unpublished, hidden away in an archive for more than a century. Now annotated and edited so as to be readable and useful to scholars and modern readers, this long-awaited publication of Soldiers of the Cross is a fitting presentation of Conyngham’s last great work

Presents a history of a period productive of grave national results for Ireland, and destined to influence the course of the British Empire. Specific attention is paid to Irish patriotism, the Tudor system and the peace negotiations.

The Catholic "thing" - the concrete historical reality of Catholicism as a presence in human history - is the richest cultural tradition in the world. It values both faith and reason, and therefore has a great deal to say about politics and economics, war and peace, manners and morals, children and families, careers and vocations, and many other perennial and contemporary questions. In addition, it has inspired some of the greatest art, music, and architecture, while offering unparalleled human solidarity to tens of millions through hospitals, soup kitchens, schools, universities, and relief services. This volume brings together some of the very best commentary on a wide range of recent events and controversies by some of the very best Catholic writers in the English language: Ralph McInerny, Michael Novak, Fr. James V. Schall, Hadley Arkes, Robert Royal, Anthony Esolen, Brad Miner, George Marlin, David Warren, Austin Ruse, Francis Beckwith, and many others. Their contributions cover large Catholic subjects such as philosophy and theology, liturgy and Church dogma, postmodern culture, the Church and modern politics, literature, and music. But they also look into specific contemporary problems such as religious liberty, the role of Catholic officials in public life, growing moral hazards in bio-medical advances, and such like. The Catholic Thing is a virtual encyclopedia of Catholic thought about modern life.

Darius Hubert (1823‒1893), a French-born Jesuit, made his home in Louisiana in the 1840s and served churches and schools in Grand Coteau, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans. In 1861, he pronounced a blessing at the Louisiana Secession Convention and became the first chaplain of any denomination appointed to Confederate service. Hubert served with the First Louisiana Infantry in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia for the entirety of the war, afterward returning to New Orleans, where he continued his ministry among veterans as a trusted pastor and comrade. One of just three full-time Catholic chaplains in Lee’s army, only Hubert returned permanently to the South after surrender. In postwar New Orleans, he was unanimously elected chaplain of the veterans of the eastern campaign and became well-known for his eloquent public prayers at memorial events, funerals of prominent figures such as Jefferson Davis, and dedications of Confederate monuments. In this first-ever biography of Hubert, Katherine Bentley Jeffrey offers a far-reaching account of his extraordinary life. Born in revolutionary France, Hubert entered the Society of Jesus as a young man and left his homeland with fellow Jesuits to join the New Orleans mission. In antebellum Louisiana, he interacted with slaves and free people of color, felt the effects of anti-Catholic and anti-Jesuit propaganda, experienced disputes and dysfunction with the trustees of his Baton Rouge church, and survived a near-fatal encounter with Know-Nothing vigilantism. As a chaplain with the Army of Northern Virginia, Hubert witnessed harrowing battles and their equally traumatic aftermath in surgeons’ tents and hospitals. After the war, he was a spiritual director, friend, mentor, and intermediary in the fractious and politically divided Crescent City, where he both honored Confederate memory and promoted reconciliation and social harmony. Hubert’s complicated and tumultuous life is notable both for its connection to the most compelling events of the era and its illumination of the complex and unexpected ways religion intersected with politics, war, and war’s repercussions.