Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America by William B. Kurtz

Abstract

Excommunicated from Union: How Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America. By William B. Kurtz. [The North's Civil War.] (New York: Fordham University Press. 2016. Pp. x, 236. $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-82326886-3.)Excommunicated from Union is at once a narrative of American Catholics' experiences in Civil War and a history of those effects war wrought on American Catholicism. William B. Kurtz contends in this volume that the American Civil War played a pivotal role in accelerating antebellum trend in American Catholicism toward isolation and separatism (p. 8). Loyal Catholics in 1861 viewed Civil War as a stage upon which to perform their roles as patriotic citizens and, in so doing, gain respectability in American culture. Ultimately, however, Catholics grew disenchanted with war, and their disenchantment yielded devastating consequences for coreligionists seeking assimilation into American mainstream. In end, for most Catholics who endured it, the war proved an alienating experience (p. 128).The author develops a compelling narrative throughout. Nativism during America's war with Mexico and anti-Catholicism in American culture made Catholics eager to prove their Americanness at outbreak of war. Kurtz details wartime experiences of Catholic Civil War soldiers and immigrant families, blending these narratives with considerations of Irish and German ethnicity. He skillfully demonstrates how war especially displaced German Catholics from American culture. The heroism of priests on battlefront and of nuns in field hospitals helped to temper stereotypes of Catholic religious orders and momentarily improved perception of Catholic patriotism among Protestants. As war protracted, however, it exposed fissures in Catholic opinion concerning slavery, Republican politics, and emancipation. Catholic war enthusiasm divided and waned, and its critics loudened. Although Catholics worked tirelessly in latenineteenth century to perpetuate authentic memorials of their Civil War sacrifice, they were still seen as an anti-modern, anti-democratic, and alien threat to nation's Protestant identity, its democratic government, and its society (p. 144).Significantly, author amplifies a range of Catholic voices. Public intellectuals, clergy, newspaper editors, women, and soldiers join together to deliver a rich sound and range of historical perspectives. These perspectives complement work's lengthened chronology. …