Evangelical Religion and Evangelical Democracy: Lincoln’s Legacy

Evangelical religion and evangelical democracy reinforced each other in nineteenth-century America. The spread of evangelical Christianity and democracy across a continent justified the wars against Native Americans and Mexico, and provided the moral framework for the fight against slavery which many Americans came to see as incompatible with Protestant Christianity and democratic government. The problem with mixing religion and politics in this manner was that political issues became moral issues and, therefore, more difficult to deal with in the political process.