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On March 4, 1865, the day Abraham Lincoln delivered his second inaugural address, Reverend Doctor George Peck put the finishing touches on a collection of his sermons that he intended to send to the president. Although the politically moderate Peck had long opposed slavery, he, along with many other northern evangelicals, was not an abolitionist. During the Civil War he had come to support emancipation, but, like Lincoln, the conflict remained first and foremost about preserving the Union. Believing their devotion to the Union was an act of faithfulness to God first and the Founding Fathers second, Our Country explores how many northern white evangelical Protestants sacrificed racial justice on behalf of four million African-American slaves (and then ex-slaves) for the Union’s persistence and continued flourishing as a Christian nation. By examining Civil War-era Protestantism in terms of the Union, author Grant Brodrecht adds to the understanding of northern motivation and the eventual "failure" of Reconstruction to provide a secure basis for African American's equal place in society. Complementing recent scholarship that gives primacy to the Union, Our Country contends that non-r

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