The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism Durwood Dunn. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.

The Civil War in Southern Appalachian Methodism Durwood Dunn. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2013.As highlighted by key words in the title, Durwood Dunn, professor and chair of the Department of history at Wesleyan College in Athens, interprets the divisions within the Methodist Church in America during the Civil War. Primary sources in the bibliography include manuscripts, books, Methodist minutes, journals, periodicals, sermons, tracts, and other publications, Methodist newspapers, and secular newspapers and periodicals. A list of secondary sources is also equally indicative of deep research in church history and the Civil War itself. Dunn supplements the main text with appendices outlining the number of traveling and local preachers; the Holston Conference, 1839- 1860; and a listing of the local preachers elected to Deacons or Elders Orders in the Holston Conference, 1824-1860. He also provides an extensive set of informative notes. The text and notes alike delight readers interested in the Appalachian region, Methodism, the Civil War, and Union and antislavery issues. As a former Tennessean, having grown up in Van Buren County, this reviewer was hooked with the opening illustration of the Holston Conference, Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1860, by counties, including Van Buren, Grundy, Cumberland, and Bledsoe. She graduated from Bledsoe County High School in 1965.Dunn states in his Preface that "the actual Civil War that began in 1861 unveiled an internal civil war within Holston Methodism that had been waged surreptitiously for the previous five decades" (xi). Dunn's research demonstrates his understanding of Methodism's structure, polity, and its broader role in the early republic and takes a long view that helps readers understand "the critical role later of the early anti-slavery movement within the denomination" (xi, xii). He offers East Tennessee's exceptionalism as cause and effect of its alienation and discrimination by the state of Tennessee as well as by the larger South after the 1830s. Dunn says this exceptionalism "functions as a remarkable index into the internal civil war within the section..." and the lingering "bitterness and distrust long after the Civil War" (xii).East Tennessee, for the most part, rejected Confederate nationalism and continued its loyalty to the Union; Dunn explains that indigenous antislavery during the first three decades of the nineteenth century and an antislavery stance assumed by early Methodists in America account for an active participation by African Americans in the polity and economics of Methodism up to the Civil War (xiii). His research further provides evidence that another group, local preachers, influenced East Tennessee's opinions against slavery, its favor of the Union, and its rejection of Confederate nationalism (xiii). Dunn leaves for someone else any needed further research on what happened to local preachers after the Civil War but does conclude "that the rise of lay representation at annual and general conferences of both the Methodist Episcopal Church, South and the Methodist Episcopal Church occurred at the expense of local brethren" (xiv).Founded by John Wesley in England in the 1730s, Methodism came to East Tennessee and Holston country as a relatively new religious movement in the 1770s and 1780s, coming first to the American colonies in the 1760s. Methodism emphasized religious feeling or experience, primacy of Scripture, reason, tradition, and rejected predestination and limited atonement. Methodism practiced a belief in individual agency or "the power of humans to determine their own spiritual fate" (3). Methodism's stress on religious self-determination, individual responsibility, and opportunity may explain its appeal in America and its growth from 1,000 members in 1770 to more than 250, 000 by 1820 (4). Methodism ideally suited "the democratic and leveling tastes of the new democracy" (4), and "Methodists were ubiquitous in any frontier movement" (6). …