Jefferson Davis once speculated that if the South lost the Civil War, its history would be written by Northerners. And Northern historians like George Bancroft did in fact do their best to establish an authoritative version of American history as the triumph of the Puritan ethic. Even more to the point were the sermons and patriotic speeches supplied by abolitionists who found themselves temporarily without a cause. In a centennial address given on July 4, 1876, Henry Ward Beecher declared that the Revolutionary generation had built a great nation but that his generation was building a greater. Beecher was in a position to know: a successful Boston minister, he was a leading supporter of progressive causes, including women’s rights—although the purity of his feminism was somewhat tarnished when he was named a co-respondent in a famous divorce trial.
While a great many Unionists had been tepid abolitionists at best and would have despised all of Beecher’s causes, the North’s victory seemed to set a divine seal of approval upon the whole radical program of reform. Even cautious old soldiers were infected with the glorious vision:
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