Roman Catholics lived in the antebellum South, fought for the Confederate States of America, and participated in the postwar Lost Cause tradition. They encountered a Protestant-dominated South, but retained their minority religious identity. The creation of a southern brand of Catholicism, therefore, required that both Catholics and Protestants identified with some nondenominational attributes of southern culture. An examination of a white Creole regiment, the Orleans Guard, and their Catholic chaplain, Father Isidore Francois Turgis, challenges the historiographical omission of southern Catholicism from American religious history. As southerners, the Creoles of New Orleans reinforced the white supremacist, honor-driven cause of the Confederacy. They joined the predominantly Protestant Confederate Army, in which Catholics and Protestants fought and died for the same causes. As Catholics, the Confederate soldiers valued the accompaniment of a priest for sacramental and spiritual guidance. The experience of combat energized their religious sensibilities, but they did not express their religion in the same ways as Confederate evangelicals. After the war, Catholic southerners participated in the remembrance of the Lost Cause. Yet in addition to focusing on the standard Confederate icons of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, they emphasized the memory of ordinary soldiers, their brothers-in-arms. Moreover, they transformed the figure of Turgis into a hero of the South, acceptable even to non-Catholics, despite his position as a recent French immigrant and an anti-slavery advocate. / A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Religion in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts. / Fall Semester, 2003. / September 10, 2003. / Catholicism, Civil War, Lost Cause, Louisiana, New Orleans, American Religious History / Includes bibliographical references. / John Corrigan, Professor Directing Thesis; Amanda Porterfield, Committee Member; Amy Koehlinger, Committee Member.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_180391 |
| Contributors | Pasquier, Michael (authoraut), Corrigan, John (professor directing thesis), Porterfield, Amanda (committee member), Koehlinger, Amy (committee member), Department of Religion (degree granting department), Florida State University (degree granting institution) |
| Publisher | Florida State University, Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English, English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text, text |
| Format | 1 online resource, computer, application/pdf |
| Rights | This Item is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use this Item in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s). The copyright in theses and dissertations completed at Florida State University is held by the students who author them. |
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