I should perhaps post this in the main topic but anyway the effect on some denominations is profound. With the Episcopalians its Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana, one of the senior Southern bishops, who 'secedes' from the national organisation forming The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America (1861-1865). With the Methodists its much earlier and more profound. The Methodist Episcopal Church, South breaks of in 1844 over the national church's prohibition against slave owning (a Southern bishop bought one and then inherited another). The Methodist Episcopal Church lost the Free Methodist Church, which wanted to be more radical, and the Christian Union, which seems to me to have been the Methodist Church of Copperheads. However the Methodist Episcopal Church remained robust enough, not withstanding these splits, to get the War Dept. to order the army to support the 'MEC' to seize MEC South churches in the rebelling states. However the MEC South survives until 1939 before reuniting. Even then there is another schism as hardliners left to form (in 1940) the Southern Methodist Church. Ironically their are a lot of African Americans in the MEC South up to the Civil War, but naturally there is an exodus to northern and/or African American focused Methodist churches. I am going to look back at the Baptists, Presbyterians and the Catholic Churches over lunch to remind myself about those, but it really is a fascinating subject...

The Baptist situation is quite grim. There were African American preachers in Virginia churches until the 1840s when the Southern States began outlawing them. There were also long standing tensions between northern and southern baptist churches: there was a prohibition on slave holding by preachers or missionaries; and ironically the southern churches were much more centralised organisations of congregations and thus seemed to have larger 'clout'. But by 1845 there was a split over slavery with the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention. By the end of the war many Southern African Americans had converted to other denominations or joined the Consolidated American Baptist Convention. The Southern Baptist Convention acknowledged and renounced its racist foundation in 1995.Presbyterians are falling out with one another even earlier with a split between the 'New School' and 'Old School' around 1838. Most southern Presbyterians went with the Old School. The New School Presbyterians split into Northern and Southern arms in 1858 with the formation of the pro-slavery United Synod of the South. The Old School split in August 1861 with the formation of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America. Catholics looked to different local authorities with the north looking to Archbishop John Hughes of New York and the south to Arch Bishop Jean-Marie Odin of New Orleans. Lincoln tried to 'fix' this by asking Pope Pius IX to get Hughes elevated to cardinal. The Pope said no. I remember one quote about the Catholic Church during the Civil War as "maddeningly united and suspiciously neutral". I won't get into the Pope's letter to the "President of the Confederate State of America" now.... All in all a fascinating subject.