This is the first interpretation of the reaction of the Southern Churches to the Civil War and Reconstruction. During the Civil War and afterwards, Southern evangelicals remained convinced that their cause was both Christian and just. This position became more entrenched as northern evangelicals entered the South after the war, aiming to save freedmen. Stowell shows the religious reconstruction that followed deeply effected the logic of the Lost Cause and the subsequent history of Reconstruction.

Rebuilding Zion offers a pivotal new perspective on Reconstruction. Stowell carefully considers the religious interpretations of the Civil War by the main groups that defined Reconstruction-southern whites, northern whites, and freedmen - and shows how the southern churches became one of the principal bulwarks of the New South.

Nearly one-fifth of Abraham Lincoln's cases involved women, and during the twenty-five years of his legal career thousands of women appeared in Illinois courts as litigants, criminal defendants, witnesses, and spectators. Drawing on the rich resources of a DVD version of Lincoln's complete legal papers, Daniel Stowell's In Tender Consideration scans the full range of family woes that antebellum Americans took to the law. Through the stories of dozens of individuals who took legal action to obtain a divorce, contest a will, prosecute a rapist, or assert rights to family property, this volume illuminates the legal status of women and children in Illinois and their experiences with the law in action. These cases also highlight Lincoln's life in law and raise intriguing questions about the influence of his legal profession on his subsequent political one.