and
finally in the Authorized Version of James I. But it mattered not; the
Bible was inspired by the Heavenly Father, for it was so stated in
Revelation, and a curse was held up for him who denied its truth or so
much as removed one syllable or added a line. It was the authority of
the Bible as preached by Martin Luther and John Calvin, and the
interpreters of the Sacred Book were the clergy, not the Pope or some
distant sacerdotal see.

Just how many people were members of the churches it would be very
difficult accurately to determine. The Methodists of the South numbered
nearly a million in 1860, those of the North were equally strong. The
Baptists, North, South, and West, were nearly as numerous. The
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Christians (Campbellites) had
each some hundreds of thousands of members. All the churches, including
Catholics, offered seating accommodations for about 20,000,000 of the
31,000,000 people of the country; which is a large proportion. And from
the census returns, it seems that church accommodations were always best
and most plentiful in the older communities, the East having almost as
many pews as there were people. The South could seat 6,500,000
worshipers,--that is, a little more than half of the population; the
Northwest was able to accommodate only about 4,000,000.

With Protestant churches so powerful and their ministers so influential,
it is only natural that the religious teachings of the time should have
told in politics and the sectional struggle. The Southerners believed
almost implicitly in the claim of their great Presbyterian preacher, B.
M. Palmer, when he declared in 1860: "In this great struggle, we defend
the cause of God and religion; it is our solemn duty to ourselves, to
our slaves, to the world, and to Almighty God to preserve and transmit
our existing system of domestic servitude, with the right, unchallenged
by man, to go and root itself wherever Providence and Nature may carry
it." Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, and all other important bodies of
Christians in the South held and taught the same doctrine. In the
Northwest there was some hesitation about going so far, but the majority
undoubtedly believed with Dr. Nathan L. Rice, of Chicago, that slavery
was divinely established and not to be disturbed by man. In the East
some of the Unitarians taught abolition and supported Garrison and
Phillips; more of the Congregationalists were of the same mind. But in