Excommunicated from the Union: How the Civil War Created a Separate Catholic America (The North's Civil War) 1st Edition

Good resource Catholics and pre Civil War slavery issues. Used to study this particular denomination and inclusion of matter in other denominations on topic for history academic papers.

A concise, comprehensive, challenging history of the American Catholic experience in the Union states during the Civil War era. Magnificently researched, smartly focused, and effectively argued. A very significant contribution to the field, one that will both reward readers and force them to rethink the conventional understanding of this story.

recommend it to all students of religion and war.

This is a signal contribution to the field of nineteenth century U.S. and religious history. Will Kurtz provides a fantastic tour-de-force in giving us a sense of what Roman Catholics from Irish, Germany, and American backgrounds thought and felt during the Civil War era. In so doing, he reveals the nature and tangled themes of loyalty, patriotism, and anti-religious bigotry. He also reveals how Roman Catholic identity shaped and was shaped by the mid-nineteenth century American context which confronted it with the outbreak of Civil War. This is a necessary read for anyone who wants to have a better understanding of Catholics, U.S. Religious History, and the American Civil War period.

This is an excellent read -- perhaps the best book on this topic written to date. Dr. Kurtz explores the role of Catholics in the war, including laity (200,000+ served in the war), priest chaplains, and 600+ religious sisters who served a nurses. He seeks to answer whether Catholic participation in the war helped Catholics to be better accepted into American society at large. He finds that for the most part the war was an alienating experience for Catholics which helped reinforce divisions between the Catholic subculture and the then-regnant Anglo-Saxon, Protestant majority. Dr. Kurtz's work is highly recommended!

For students of Catholics in America and of immigration, this is an essential study of identity and historical memory in the context of nativism and anti-catholicism. For readers interested in the Civil War, this very valuable history sheds light on a much-overlooked group of citizen soldiers.