America’s “Peculiar Children”: Authority and Christian Nationalism at Antebellum West Point

Abstract

This essay examines how the United States Military Academy at West Point developed an explicitly “federal” Christianity to help train the antebellum officers of the United States Army. It begins by examining how the Episcopal Church was quietly “established” at West Point, and how the church allied with the federal government and US Army to encourage a potent Christian nationalism that collapsed the sovereignty of the United States into the sovereignty of God. The case of West Point illustrates how federal officials, Army leaders, and Academy administrators understood religion as a central component of national security.

Keywords

• nationalism
• military
• Christianity
• authority
• education
• antebellum
• civil war