CHAPLAIN OF PROGRESS:

THE ROLE OF PROGRESS AND EVOLUTION IN LYMAN ABBOTT’S

JUSTIFICATION FOR AMERICAN EXPANSION IN 1898-1900

CALEB LAGERWEY

HONORS HISTORY THESIS

CALVIN COLLEGE

GRAND RAPIDS, MI

DECEMBER 2012

CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION 1

A. Uncle Sam

B. The Outlook

II. BIOGRAPHY 4

A. Brief Biography

B. Abbott’s Death

III. HISTORIOGRAPHY 10

A. Abbott as Evolution Writer

B. Abbott as Political Clergyman

C. Abbott as Social Gospel Preacher

D. Synthesis

IV. IMPORTANCE OF PROGRESS 17

A. Abbott’s Context

B. Abbott’s Writings

C. Other, Similar Voices

V. PROGRESS AND RELIGION 22

A. Protestant American and Catholic Spain

B. Missions and Missionaries

C. Other, Similar Voices

VI. PROGRESS, GENDER, AND RACE 29

A. Darkness and Manliness

B. Anglo-Saxons and Civilization

C. Self-Government and Barbarism

D. Native Americans and African Americans

E. Other, Similar Voices

VIII. PROGRESS, GOVERNMENT, AND NATIONALISM 40

A. American Democracy

B. American Virtues

C. American Citizenry

D. Other, Similar Voices

IX. CONCLUSION 48

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Introduction

On page seven hundred eleven of the July 23, 1898 issue of the Outlook, there appeared a

curious parable. In it, Uncle Sam was strolling through city streets with a young boy and girl

when he saw a gang of ruffians mistreating and mugging a helpless child. The boy at Uncle

Sam’s side urged Uncle Sam to intervene, assuring him that victory was assured. The girl was

more hesitant, however, and pleaded with Uncle Sam to mind his own business, to avoid injury,

and to walk away from the situation altogether. Uncle Sam vacillated briefly, then ran in to help

the poor child and, though receiving a bloody nose and tattered clothes, scattered the bullies.

Uncle Sam then asked his two companions what he should do with the rescued child. The boy

wanted to take the child as a new servant, but the girl again wanted Uncle Sam to leave the child

alone. Uncle Sam did neither, telling the children that he had rescued the defenseless child in

order to improve his life, not to enslave him or leave him to be attacked again. The girl asked if

the child was to be taken home with Uncle Sam, and he deflected the question; the girl asked

Uncle Sam if he would force the attackers to compensate him for his ruined clothes, but Uncle

Sam refused, insisting that he had money enough to replace his clothing.1

The meaning of this strange story begins to take shape within the larger context of the

article, the encapsulating issue, and the contemporary events. The larger article explains that this

parable illustrates the position of the Outlook concerning “the current crisis” of what the United

States should do with its new territorial possessions, particularly Cuba.2 The subsequent article,

entitled “War for Profit,” criticized policies of indemnities and claimed that the United States

had made war on Spain, not for material gain, but for “justice, liberty, and humanity.”3 Looking

1 “The Issues Restated,” Outlook 59, no. 12 (July 23, 1898): 711.

2 “The Issues Restated,” 711.

3 “War for Profit,” Outlook 59, no. 12 (July 23, 1898): 712.

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at the first pages of the July 23, 1898 issue that reported global news, the geo-political context

for the parable comes into sharper focus: the United States had just captured Santiago, Cuba,

during the latest bout of fighting in the Spanish-American War.4 A fierce debate was raging

within the United States, raising several questions about the war and its aftermath. Among the

foremost of these questions were the following: should the United States have intervened in

Spanish territories in the first place, and given that it already had, what should it do with the

conquered peoples and territory?5

This context helps crystalize the editorial comments contained within the story. Uncle

Sam, in typical fashion, represented the actions of the nation as a whole, particularly in the

synecdoche of President William McKinley. The boy represented the extreme imperialists who

sought American domination over foreign territories for aggrandizement and personal gain. The

girl stood for the isolationists who eschewed any American intervention in foreign affairs and

certainly did not approve of holding or supporting overseas colonies. The poor, helpless child

symbolized Cuba in this article, although a larger view of Outlook articles suggests that the child

could have been the Filipinos as well, especially when given the applicability of the parable to

the situation in the Philippines. The ruffians were Spain, identified by their oppression and

exploitation of the helpless victim, Cuba.

With the actors identified, the history from the viewpoint of the Outlook takes shape: the

United States of America as led by President McKinley and pulled in opposite directions by the

two polarities of foreign policy, waited before finally acting in Cuba for the sake of humanity.

After soundly defeating the Spanish with minimal casualties, the United States needed to decide

what to do with the its newly conquered territories. It chose a moderate position—establishing

4 “The Surrender of Santiago,” Outlook 59, no. 12 (July 23, 1898): 701.

5 “The Issues Restated,” 710-711.

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protectorates—rejecting the two extremes of exploitive colonization and complete withdrawal.

These protectorates served a dual purpose of keeping the countries within the American sphere

of progressive civilizing without giving natives the full responsibilities of self-government that

would have come with becoming official American territories.6 Another interesting feature of

the story is that the rescued child was completely silent throughout the events. Not once was he

consulted or given a chance to voice an opinion: rather, the adult in the story, Uncle Sam,

decided his fate. The implication was that conquered peoples, as represented by the rescued

child, were immature and unready to decide their own fate or to rule themselves. The parable

thus taught a paternalist view toward newly conquered groups that needed the civilization of

Christian America, whether or not they actually wanted it.

This article and the parable it contains is one useful example for examining the thinking

of Lyman Abbott, the esteemed minister and the editor of the Outlook from 1876 to 1922.

During its peak under Abbott’s direction, the Outlook was an exceptionally influential voice of

New England Protestantism that spoke to tens of thousands each week through its news columns

and editorials. The Outlook’s focus on issues of imperialism, nationalism, and race helps to

illuminate Abbott’s views on issues of progress during that era, and the paper’s influence

therefore shines light on that era’s American Protestantism at large. Abbot was the editor-in-

chief for the Outlook and his hand guided the editorial rudder for the periodical; although he was

not the only editor for the Outlook, he was still the controlling member who, after thorough

discussion, made the final decision as to the Outlook’s position. As one member of the editorial

staff was alleged to have remarked, “there were many voices” at the editorial board meetings,

6 Benjamin James Wetzel, “Onward Christian Soldiers: Lyman Abbott’s Justification for the Spanish-American War,” Journal of Church and State 54, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 422.

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“but only one vote” that really mattered.7 Thus, examining Outlook editorials and weekly news

summaries can give excellent insight into opinions of Lyman Abbott as a public intellectual.

More generally, as other historians have noted, Abbott spoke along with a broader range of

liberal and progressive American Protestants, such as Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated

empire as a sign of the progress of the United States as a nation under God’s direction, as a way

of maintaining its vitality, and as a away of fulfilling its Christian obligations to promote

Christian and democratic civilization among less socially and culturally developed peoples.

Although the events of the Spanish-American and Filipino-American Wars stretched over

several years and involved numerous political decisions, Abbott stayed consistent in his views:

Evolution and Progress meant that the United States of America had a benevolent duty and a

Providential destiny as a highly evolved and progressive nation to uplift and civilize the nations

under its care that were inferior in race, gender, religion, and government. In consistently

trumpeting these views, he both reflected and fostered ideas that shaped American policies and

attitudes in the late nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries.

Biography

Lyman Abbott’s life coincided with the period of great transition for the United States

that occurred between the antebellum period and the years after World War I. Born in Roxbury,

Massachusetts on December 18, 1835, Abbott was the third of four sons that Jacob and Harriet

Abbott would raise, although Harriet’s death during the birth of Lyman’s youngest brother

Edward in 1843 meant that Lyman grew into his adolescence without a mother. After the

attending a college preparatory school run by his Uncle Charles, Abbott enrolled, at the age of

7 Ira V. Brown. Lyman Abbott, Christian Evolutionist: A Study in Religious Liberalism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953): 213. See also Benjamin James Wetzel, “‘A Scourge and Minister’: Lyman Abbott, Liberal Protestantism, and American Warfare, 1861-1920.” (Master’s thesis, Baylor University, 2011): 47. Both Brown and Wetzel assume Abbott hand or approval for most Outlook editorials, a logical assumption, especially when the articles followed similar patterns and contained consistent opinions on related issues.

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fourteen, in New York University where his older brothers both attended. After graduating, he

briefly joined his brothers’ law firm and married his second cousin Abby Francis Hamlin.8

Soon after, Abbott met the esteemed preacher Henry Ward Beecher, who was the pastor

of Brooklyn, New York’s famous Plymouth Congregational Church. Beecher would gradually

become a large influence on Abbott’s life and beliefs, and Abbott biographer Ira V. Brown

credits Beecher with a crucial role in persuading Abbott to enter the ministry. Subsequently, in

March of 1860, after selling his stake in the Abbott brothers law firm and engaging in a self-

directed seminary course that involved correspondence with learned preachers, Lyman Abbott

became a licensed minister in the Congregationalist denomination. He spent the years of the

American Civil War as the pastor of a Congregationalist church in Terre Haute, Indiana.9

During Reconstruction, Abbott left his Terre Haute congregation and took on a new role

as executive secretary for the American Union Commission, an association formed to help

refugees of both colors in the post-war South. The organization later changed its name to “The

American Freedman’s Union Commission,” and Abbott continued working with it until 1869,

when it was disbanded in favor of public institutions of charity. After this work ended, Abbott

relied on writing and editing to supply income for his family, publishing several books and

editing Harper’s Magazine. In 1876, however, he attained a lasting job working as associate

editor for the Christian Union with its founder Henry Ward Beecher. Abbott retained that

position for the next forty-six years, and it would give him “his widest influence and his greatest

claim to fame.”10

8 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 1-11, 16-18.

9 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 20-23, 25. For extensive coverage of Abbott’s views of the American Civil War and the parallels between that war, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, see Wetzel, “‘A Scourge.’”

10 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 38, 41-42, 48-49, 53, 65-66.

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When Abbott joined the journal in 1876, its circulation was less than 15,000, partially

because of an adultery scandal that had tarnished Beecher’s reputation. In October of 1881,

Beecher retired from the magazine and named Abbott as his successor.11 Once Beecher passed

away in 1887, Abbott also took up Beecher’s reins by becoming the pastor at the venerable

Plymouth Church. In 1893, the Christian Union changed its name to the Outlook, and during that

decade, Abbott enjoyed a modestly successful career as the author of two books on evolution,

The Evolution of Christianity and The Theology of an Evolutionist, in 1892 and 1898,

respectively. Both examined themes of progress and theology, and they helped to establish

Abbott’s reputation as an intellectual synthesizer. Soon, however, preaching, writing, and

editing a rapidly growing weekly proved too much work for Abbott, so he resigned the Plymouth

Pulpit in 1899 to focus on his writing and editing. His efforts paid off: in the following years,

the Outlook grew in circulation to over 100,000 paid subscribers, and his books sold between

five and ten thousand copies each. The Outlook also added former president Theodore Roosevelt

to its editorial board in 1909, giving the Outlook twelve Roosevelt articles a year plus additional

authority for its masthead.12 Abbott officially parted ways with Roosevelt in 1914 after a

disastrous endorsement of Roosevelt for the 1912 presidency tarnished the Outlook’s ostensibly

non-partisan stance, but the two remained acquaintances and each continued to think highly of

the other.13 Years later, in celebration of Lyman Abbott’s seventieth birthday, Roosevelt wrote

in to the Outlook to express his congratulations and admiration.14

11 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 69, 77,

12 Wetzel, “‘A Scourge,’” 14-15.

13 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 212-213; Wetzel, “‘A Scourge,’” 16.

14 Theodore Roosevelt, “Lyman Abbott – A Tribute by Theodore Roosevelt,” Outlook 132, no. 10 (November 8, 1922): 414-415. The original article from 1905 was initially published privately and later re-published after Abbott’s death along with other tributes.

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The Outlook continued successfully post-Roosevelt, and Abbott’s major contributions in

later years included a serialized version of his memoirs entitled Reminiscences, in 1915, as well

as Silhouettes of My Contemporaries, a 1921 series of mini-biographies of important men that

Abbott had known in some fashion during his lifetime. Abbott had a gift for touching the

common people when he gave lectures or delivered sermons, but he also moved in high

academic, political and intellectual circles as exemplified by his inclusion of figures such as

Roosevelt and Beecher. This duality, especially when combined with Abbott’s nontraditional

theological training, gave him a particular ability to explain and promulgate, rather than

innovate.15 As he got older and weaker, Abbott’s ability to contribute regularly to the magazine

decreased, as did his stamina for public lecturing. He battled respiratory problems for many

years, and by late 1922, it was clear that his end was near.16

The latest issue of the Outlook for November 1, 1922 was already partially on the presses

when the word arrived at the offices at 361 Fourth Avenue in New York City: Lyman Abbott,

who at this point had been editor-in-chief for forty-six years of this widely-read weekly, had

passed away in his New York City home at the age of eighty-seven. The editors, who wanted to

respect the spirit of their beloved colleague, avoided any “departure from the normal course of

publication” and thus asked their readers for understanding as they “wait[ed] until [the] next

week to give to his friends, known and unknown, a record of his life and of the tributes which

marked his passing.”17 The magazine included a brief tribute to Abbot in that issue, but as

promised, a great many more articles and paragraphs of tribute appeared in the next issue in

15 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 235; Wetzel, “‘A Scourge,’” 16.

16 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 229, 232; Wetzel, “‘A Scourge,’” 17

17 Outlook 132, no. 9 (November 1, 1922): 356-359.

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November.18 The Outlook devoted fifteen pages in that issue to articles about Abbott and

published several long essays in Abbott’s honor from close relatives, shorter tributes from

friends and past associates, and blurbs from many American press companies.19

These tributes demonstrated the scope and magnitude of Lyman Abbott’s influence

within American religious and intellectual culture during his long career. Simply glancing at the

sources for the tributes gives a sense of his impact: the Outlook re-published a 1915 tribute from

former United States president Theodore Roosevelt and it included tributes from eminent

newspapers such as the New York Times and the New York Herald. Roosevelt praised Abbott for

being “one of those men whose work and life give strength to all who believe in this country,”

and the New York Herald recalled Abbott’s ability to “convey his valuable opinions to the entire

intellectual public.”20 During a memorial service later that week, Dr. Henry Sloane Coffin

remarked, “Measured by the number of people he reached, Dr. Abbott was unquestionably the

greatest teacher of religion of this generation.”21

Later evaluations of Abbott’s life confirmed his influence and widespread appeal.

Abbott’s one biographer, Ira V. Brown, likewise showcased Abbott’s importance through

“testimonials by the dozen,” and added that Abbott “directly reached several hundred thousands

of people” through his work as a “minister, lecturer, author, and editor.” Abbott was “something

of a national patriarch” by the time of his death, and according to Brown, he was “no less than a

modern oracle” to thousands of follows.22 As preacher at the prestigious Plymouth Avenue

18 The terms “journal” and “magazine” can be used interchangeably for the Outlook since it contained characteristics from both publication formats, as suggested by Wetzel in “‘A Scourge and Minister,’” 45.

19 Outlook 132, no. 10 (November 8, 1922): 404-421.

20 Outlook 132, no. 10 (November 8, 1922): 415.

21 Quoted in “Many Honor Memory of Lyman Abbott,” New York Times (November 1, 1922).

22 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 240, 2.

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Congregationalist Church, Abbott reached hundreds weekly though his sermons. He also spoke

at many colleges around the country, published books that sold between five and ten thousand

copies, and edited the Outlook that, at its peak, sold “about 125,000 copies a week.”23 The paper

was therefore a prominent news source for Protestant ministers and laypeople all over the United

States.

As Brown explained, Abbott was not famous for his innovation or invention in the

intellectual realm—he “possessed an extraordinary ability to see which way the wind was

blowing, and he seldom attempted to beat against it”—but rather for his ability to spread ideas.24

Abbott was a quintessential Gramscian “organic intellectual” who communicated and legitimated

ideas from intellectual and political elites to the literate masses, in this case, middle and upper

class Anglo-Protestants.25 Even before Brown’s biography, William Warren Sweet, in his book

on influential American Christians, echoed this sentiment, writing that “[Abbott] possessed that

ability, amounting almost to genius, of appraising and setting forth the findings of scholars, and

in applying them in a practical way.” Sweet also claimed that “no religious leader in modern

America [had] exercised a more abiding influence than [had] Lyman Abbott” and that under

Abbott’s direction, the Outlook “was soon recognized as one of the most influential journals in

America.”26 Abbott’s moderate distillation of complex ideas to a general public thus provides a

useful method of insight into America’s intellectual and cultural milieu during the Spanish-

American and Philippine-American Wars.

Historiography

23 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 117-119, 140.

24 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 234.

25 Antonio Gramsci, “The Formation of the Intellectual,” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, ed. by Vincent B. Leitch (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001), 1138-1143.

26 William Warren Sweet. Makers of Christianity: From John Cotton to Lyman Abbott. (New York: Henry Holy and Company, 1937): 333, 320, 326.

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The amount of scholarly literature that devotes serious attention to Lyman Abbott is

disproportionately low given the extraordinary influence attributed to him both by both his peers

and from later commentators. In addition, while scholars have recognized Abbott’s importance

in several specific areas, until recently, they have failed to do serious study of his writings and

influence or to begin a synthesis of his writings and theology.

After the period immediately surrounding his death, Abbott was primarily mentioned in

church history literature, occupying a chapter in Sweet’s aforementioned book on important

leaders in American Christianity.27 Once personal memories of Abbott began to fade, historians

began to examine him in three broad categories. The first position explored Lyman Abbott as a

reconciliator par excellence between evolution and liberal Christianity. The second showcased

his political thinking, often focusing on the three major wars that the United States was involved

in during his lifetime, namely the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World

War I. In the early 1990s, in conjunction with the rise of history that dealt with historically

marginalized groups, the third position dealt with Abbott’s role with the Social Gospel and racial

issues, particularly since Abbott was a self-proclaimed defender of rights for peoples under the

care of the United States whom he considered to be underdeveloped.

The evolutionary approach emerged in the post-World War II era: it was in 1953 that

Abbott’s first and only full-length biography appeared, written by Ira V. Brown and entitled

Lyman Abbott: Christian Evolutionist; A Study in Religious Liberalism.28 This biography is

crucial in its synthesis of sources that chronicle Abbott’s life, but as others have noted, it lacks a

clear thesis and only deals with Abbott’s nationalism and political influence in passing. As the

title suggests, Brown was more interested in Abbott as a church figure and thus as an archetype

27 Sweet, Makers, 320-333.

28 Brown, Lyman Abbott.

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for Christian liberalism.29 Brown also wrote two journal articles discussing Abbott, “Lyman

Abbott: Christian Evolutionist” and “Lyman Abbott and Freedmen’s Aid, 1865-1869.” The

former was simply a precursor to the biography and thus addressed the same issues, and the latter

detailed Abbott’s work for education reform in the South during Reconstruction.30 The first is

useful in outlining Abbott’s evolutionary thinking, and the second takes an occasional glance at

Abbott’s racial views, but they both still lacked a larger synthesis about Abbott’s opinions and

did not include his political reasoning. A 2008 article by Mark A. Kalthoff discussed Abbott’s

role in synthesizing Christian faith with evolutionary science along with preacher Henry Ward

Beecher and scientist Joseph LeConte. This article highlighted importance of an evolutionary

worldview for Abbott, though again its focus and length prevented a more thorough synthesis

with politics or foreign affairs.31 This essay seeks to build on the work of Brown, Kalthoff, and

others to sketch out a more complete picture of Lyman Abbott, particularly his evolutionary

thinking, which provides a helpful way to connect the various topics that consistently marked his

writing.

Particularly useful in the study of evolutionary thinking during the fin de siècle is the

1945 book by Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915. In it,

Hofstadter outlined the process by which Darwin’s theories about survival of the fittest were

taken from their ostensibly neutral position in the biological world and applied vigorously to the

social realm: different branches of thought came out of Darwin’s writing, and many of them

included scientifically-informed laymen such as Lyman Abbott, who sought to apply evolution

29 Wetzel, “‘A Scourge,’” 3.

30 Ira V. Brown, “Lyman Abbott: Christian Evolutionist,” New England Quarterly 23, no. 2 (June 1950): 218-231; Ira V. Brown, “Lyman Abbott and Freedmen’s Aid, 1865-1869,” The Journal of Southern History 15, no. 1 (February 1949): 22-38.

31 Mark A. Kalthoff, “Optimistic Evolutionist: The Progressive Science and Religion of Joseph LeConte, Henry War Beecher, and Lyman Abbott,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 60, no. 2 (June 2008): 84-94.

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to America’s dealings with foreign peoples. Despite recognizing that Abbott was “influential,”

Hofstadter included but a few sentences about Abbott, preferring to keep his argument about

original thinkers, not popularizers such as Abbott. This essay will supplement Hofstadter by

focusing on Abbott and then synthesizing Abbott’s views on evolution with political views on

imperialism. 32 It will also show that the evolutionary thought articulated by Abbott and people

who thought like him was less influenced by Darwin than other strains of nineteenth century

evolutionary thought.

The second substantial category of literature about Abbott began to appear around the

same time. A 1940 dissertation at the University of Chicago entitled “The American Churches

and the Spanish-American War” covered some of Abbott’s foreign policy views during that time

period, although Abbott was one clergyman among many treated in the paper.33 Another

dissertation from Messiah College in 1964, “American Christian Thinkers and the Function of

War, 1861-1920,” looked at the three wars of note during Abbott’s lifetime and mentioned

Abbott occasionally, although again he was included as one among contemporary voices.34 A

1973 article by Winthrop S. Hudson on clergy and the nation in Church History is perhaps the

best example of how Abbott could illuminate a popular movement in American society, though

Hudson also limited any detailed analysis of Abbott by placing him alongside other preachers of

the day.35 The 2011 dissertation by Matthew McCullough gave scholars a recent example of

32 Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945). Hofstadter does have a chapter on evolution and imperialism, but while it does provide useful insights into general use, it fails to mention Abbott’s important influence.

33 William Archibald Karraker, “The American Churches and the Spanish-American War” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1940).

34 Darrel E. Bigham, “American Christian Thinkers and the Function of War, 1861-1920” (PhD diss., University of Kansas, 1970).

35 Winthrop S. Hudson, “Protestant Clergy Debate the Nation’s Vocation, 1898-1899,” Church History 42:1 (March 1973): 110-118.

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political writing that included Abbott among fellow clergy, covering some of Abbott’s religious

and political views on the Spanish-American War from the perspective of “Civil Religion [and]

Messianic Interventionism.” But, since its purpose was more political than social, evolution does

not make an appearance in the study.36 All four studies are useful building blocks for the

historians interested in Abbott and his thinking, but their broad foci precluded any in-depth study

of Abbott’s views. What their topics do suggest, however, is the clear influence that Protestant

clergy enjoyed during Abbott’s time: the existence of numerous studies of clerical thought and

of its influence on public policy during that era lends creditability to the influence of a popular

minister such as Lyman Abbott.

In more recent years, other historians have paid attention to the role of clergy in politics

during the era of the Spanish-American War, although some have neglected Abbott, even when

he would have been an ideal example for their approach. For instance, Susan K. Harris’ 2011

study God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902, while very useful in framing

the view of Christians in the United States toward the Philippines, failed to mention Abbott at all

and only quotes the Outlook once despite using other Christian periodicals of the time.37 Andrew

Preston, in his 2012 book on the influence of religion on warfare and diplomacy in the United

States mentions the scope of Abbott’s influence. Preston’s overall thesis is that religion has

played a large role in politics and diplomacy simply “because so many Americans believed in it”

and its applicability to “politics and policy, including international relations and foreign policy”

as to force diplomatic elites “to make allowances for and adjustments to sentiment from below, 36Matthew McCullough, “‘My Brother's Keeper’: Civil Religion, Messianic Interventionism, and the

Spanish-American War of 1898” (PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2011). Other useful studies that examine Abbott’s wartime rhetoric during the later World War I include Richard M. Gamble, The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003) and Ray H. Abrams, Preachers Present Arms: The Role of the American Churches and Clergy in the World War I and II, with some Observations on the War in Vietnam, rev. ed. (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1969).

37 Susan K. Harris, God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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even when they wanted to ignore popular opinion and pursue their own policy.”38 Preston then

devoted several paragraphs to Abbott’s political views, remarking that Abbott’s position on the

Spanish-American was “particularly striking” and worth examination because he was “one of the

most influential journalists of the time,” thus showing the effects on foreign policy Lyman

Abbott had during the time.39 This study will build on the work done by Preston, Hudson, and

McCullough by synthesizing politics with theology and social evolutionary theory.

Equally important to Abbott’s thinking were ideas about gender. In the Summer/Fall

2010 edition of Fides et Historia, Colin B. Chapell provided a thorough synthesis of Abbott’s

views on religion, gender, race, and self-government. His work built some of its commentary on

gender on Kristin L. Hoganson’s book Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics

Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. Hoganson does not mention

Abbott directly, but Chapell convincingly shows the trends she highlights existed in Abbott’s

writings as well.40 The same goes for Gail Bederman’s Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural

History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917: Bederman argues that issues of

masculinity and race were intertwined during the Progressive era, and Chapell again directly

connects her ideas to Abbott. The present essay owes much to Chapell and will incorporate his

excellent work on race and gender into Abbott’s framework of evolutionary change during the

events covered in Hoganson’s book.

The third area of literature about Lyman Abbott is connects him to the Social Gospel

movement. Ralph E. Luker’s The Social Gospel in Black and White as well as Ronald C. White'

38 Preston, Sword, 9.

39 Andrew Preston, Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith: Religion in American War and Diplomacy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012): 214.

40 Colin B Chapell, “The Third Strand: Race, Gender, and Self-Government in the Mind of Lyman Abbott,” Fides et Historia 42, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2010): 27-54; Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).

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Jr.’s Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel, both from the early 1990s,

criticized Abbott and those like him in the Social Gospel movement who, though well-

intentioned at times, helped to perpetuate Black disenfranchisement in the American South

through insisting that Blacks could earn the right to vote as a race only when they had proven

themselves to be intellectually and socially civilized according to Protestant, white standards.

Luker and White helped expand on the ideas of race in Chapell’s article, but since politics was

not particularly pertinent to their topics, they did not discuss Abbott’s wartime writings. They

both briefly mentioned the idea of Social Darwinism, but neither connected Abbott to evolution

or evolution to Cuba or the Philippines, as this essay will do.41

In addition to Chapell’s article, other recent explorations into Abbott’s thinking have

been more successful in both covering his political views and in integrating multiple avenues of

approach.42 Among them is the excellent 2011 master’s thesis by Benjamin Wetzel, entitled, “‘A

Scourge and Minister’: Lyman Abbott, Liberal Protestantism, and American Warfare, 1861-

1920.”43 Wetzel explores Abbott’s thinking in careful detail, arguing that Abbott’s conflation of

the secular and the sacred was a major factor in his views on the three major American wars

during his lifetime. This conflation happened in four areas, all of which Abbott applied to the

Spanish-American War era. The first and second were political matters: Abbott was convinced

that God had called the United States of America to a special role as his chosen people, giving

41 Ralph E. Luker, The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1991); Ronald C. White,, Jr. Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel (1877-1925) (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990); Abbott is also mentioned in Robert R. Roberts, “The Social Gospel and the Trust-busters,” Church History 25, no. 3 (September 1956): 239-257, but his article is not particularly germane to this paper.

42 Chapell, “The Third Strand.”

43 Benjamin James Wetzel, “‘A Scourge and Minister’: Lyman Abbott, Liberal Protestantism, and American Warfare, 1861-1920.” (Master’s thesis, Baylor University, 2011); see also Wetzel’s accompanying article that covers roughly the same material as his thesis’ third chapter: Benjamin James Wetzel, “Onward Christian Soldiers: Lyman Abbott’s Justification for the Spanish-American War,” Journal of Church and State 54, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 406-425.

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them an historical mission to bring American liberty to other peoples who lacked the “political

freedom and true Christianity (Christian republicanism)” of the United States.44 The third and

fourth were more spiritual and cultural: Americans had a calling to bring Christianity and

Christian civilization to formerly Spanish territories in order to move closer to the imminent

Kingdom of God. Wetzel does a thorough job of incorporating Abbott’s theology and politics

with biography, and his final argument about the Kingdom of God suggests a progressive view

of history that this essay will tie in with Abbott’s writings on evolution.

Historians have only recently begun to give Abbott his due attention and importance.

Building on this modest but growing body of scholarship, this paper will explore the

evolutionary mindset further and tease out its implications for the other reasons behind Abbott’s

support for the war.45 It will make notable use of Ira V. Brown’s book, which remains the

greatest source of biographic detail because of Brown’s unique access to what limited written

diaries and letters Abbott left behind. What still remains to historians is Abbott’s extensive

public writings in books, sermons, pamphlets, and the Outlook. The goal of this paper is not to

add grand discoveries to Abbott’s biography or even to any of one of these categories of inquiry;

rather, this paper seeks to further the synthesis of the approaches that started in the late 2000s.

Thus, this paper will not break entirely new ground, but will supplement the existing literature by

synthesizing separate sources and shedding new light on Abbott himself by using his

44 Wetzel, “‘A Scourge and Minister,’” 76.

45 Beyond the major works noted above, other studies briefly mention Abbott or the Outlook. Notable examples of works that briefly reference Abbott directly or indirectly through the Outlook include Oscar M. Alfonso, Theodore Roosevelt and the Philippines, 1897-1909 (New York: Oriole Editions, Inc., 1974); Donald K. Gorrell, The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988); David Healy, US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970); William R. Hutchison, The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Julius W. Pratt, Expansionists of 1898: The Acquisition of Hawaii and the Spanish Islands (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1959); Ronald C. White, Jr., The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976). All of these have their uses in framing the issues surrounding Abbott, but most give him a cursory mention.

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evolutionary thought to show the connection between the diverse component he passionately

defended and promoted in the Outlook, sermons, and books.

Importance of Progress

The evolutionary worldview, particularly as articulated in social terms, pervaded much

intellectual thought during the 1890s, especially among liberal Protestant clergy such as Lyman

Abbott. Historian Richard Hofstadter details the rise of Social Darwinism, the social offshoot of

evolution, as “the liberalization of theology” opened previously unquestionable tenets of belief to

influence from science. Liberal leaders, who as a part of the Social Gospel movement took aim

at the perceived evils of an industrialized nation, also took hope from evolution because its ideas

of progress to higher levels of being confirmed the eventual success of their mission: social

reform was a part of an “inevitable progress toward a better order on earth—the Kingdom of

God.” Highly respected liberal clergymen Walter Rauschenbusch, Washington Gladden, and

Francis Greenwood Peabody as well as Lyman Abbott all wrote about the importance of having

an evolutionary framework when dealing with world issues. They also spoke on the

reconciliation of evolution to Christianity to maintain the cultural authority of American

Protestantism. In an age where science’s reputation grew yearly, Abbott and his fellow liberal

clergy had a personal investment in explaining religion in evolutionary terms, for if they failed,

their voices would cease to carry cultural gravitas.46

An important part of this system of thinking for moderates like Lyman Abbott was

civilization’s gradual progress through struggle. They saw evolution as a way to explain social

progress on a grand scale, but they departed from the teaching of Herbert Spencer since they also

thought change would not happen through laissez-faire survival of the fittest, but rather through

a mediated program of controlled and inclusive progress. Theirs was still a conservative reform

46 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, 11-16.

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movement since it argued that the United States should neither stagnate as suggested by more

conservative clergy nor undergo radical change as advocated by some socialist ministers; rather,

reform, though inevitable and desirable, needed to come slowly and gradually.47

Abbott’s pulpit and literary career were no exceptions to his focus on evolution’s

applicability, and he turned science toward religious, social, and political theory. Like his

Plymouth Church predecessor Henry Ward Beecher, Abbott was preacher, not a scientist, who

nevertheless wrote several widely read books reconciling evolution and Protestant theology. The

Evolution of Christianity appeared in 1892, followed by Christianity and Social Problems and

The Theology of an Evolutionist in 1897.48 The books were intended to bring the words and

thoughts of “Christian scholars [and to] correlate and interpret them” for “the non-scholastic and

non-professional reader.” 49 All three books outlined Abbott’s espousal of evolutionary change

throughout human history and formed the foundation for Abbott’s eventual support for the

Spanish-American War. He was tenacious in his beliefs about evolution, and where others

rejected science to hold on to rigid doctrine, Abbott instead sought to convince Americans that

the new theories about evolution were compatible with the Christian faith.50 Abbott was even

willing to be flexible in his theology and to “restate the principles of the Christian life in terms of

an evolutionary philosophy.”51

47 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, 88, 86-88. It is difficult to place Abbott’s belief system precisely within the complicated scholarship regarding evolution and Social Darwinism. For the purposes of this essay, evolution is primarily the type as defined and articulated by Abbott himself.

48 Lyman Abbott, Christianity and Social Problems (1897, repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1899); The Evolution of Christianity (1892, repr., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1900); The Theology of an Evolutionist (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1897).

49 Abbott, The Theology, vi-vii.

50 Dawn M. Digrius, “The Un-Heretical Christian: Lynn Harold Hough, Darwinism and Christianity in 1920s America,” Methodist History 49, no. 4 (July 2011): 223-224.

51 Abbott, The Evolution, 4-5.

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Abbott’s basic arguments about evolution also objected to the atheism of some

evolutionary theorists, and Abbott was quick to announce that he was not an atheistic materialist.

Rather, he was an evolutionist in the style of Joseph LeConte since he defined evolution as

“continuous progressive change by means of resident forces,” as “the orderly development of life

from lower to higher forms,” and as “the doctrine of growth applied to life.”52 This view of

evolution was “a complicated amalgam of Lamarkian theory, [natural] selection, and vitalism”

meant to be a worldview applied to all areas of life.53 Although as a minister Abbott did not

claim to be an expert in biology, he thought that he as a minister “ought to be a special student of

the moral life” and thus

ought…to be able to pass judgment on the question whether and how far evolution explains ‘the history of progress’ by which the individual man, his literature, his history, his social and political organisms, have come to be what they are…The result of my study has been a conclusion, very gradually formed, that the history of that process is best expressed by the world ‘evolution’…And this opinion has been confirmed by Bible study.54

This substantiated view was extremely important for Abbott, for it gave him the self-assurance to

preach and teach many people about his particular view of evolutionary progress as applied to

many different areas of life.

This continuous, orderly progress was the result of hard-fought battles similar to

Darwin’s ideas of natural selection, but Abbott was convinced of the eventual victory that would

culminate in the Kingdom of God through the work of God. He saw the hand of God at work in

history—history was “the interpreter of God’s redeeming work”—and with LeConte saw the

52 Abbott, The Evolution, 3, 9; Abbott, The Theology, iii, 176.

53 Kalfthoff, “Optimistic,” 89. This Lamarckianism meant that inferior peoples could still adapt and rise to equal level with the more advanced peoples of the earth, although that process would take a long time. For more on Lamarck applied to racial evolution, see Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980): 141.

54 Abbott, The Theology, 8.

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“resident forces” in nature as God.55 Even the horrors of a World War could not dampen his

insistent theme of inevitable progress. In The Twentieth Century Crusade (1918), Abbott

argued:

He who believes that history is anything more than merely a series of accidental happenings, who believes that there is any continuity and coherence in history, who believes in any ordered social evolution, should find it difficult to believe that this march of the century toward liberty will be halted…He who believes that God is in his world, that above all earthly plan and purposes there is One who gives to his children their ideals and inspires them with their courage, and that history is in very truth the working out of his plan for his children, will find despair for the world impossible.56

Abbott later praised the American democracy for its Christian combination of “patient waiting

coupled with high endeavor” that both trusted God’s plan for its national history while realizing

its calling to action to avoid decay. 57 “God is making America,” declared Abbott, “but God

works through men, [so] if America is to be made, it must be made by Americans.”58 Thus,

when Abbott addressed contemporary social problems and called for Christian action, he was

both preaching a jeremiad for action and against decline as well as a hopeful message of assured

victory. In this, Abbott was a quintessential American Protestant for his time, echoing historian

Andrew Preston’s observation that Christians in the United States at that time believed in a

progress that meant “the general improvement of society” as well as “balancing personal

freedom with social obligation” that led to overseas “mission[s] to reform the world—though

55 Lyman Abbott, The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth: A Sermon Preached at the Diamond Jubilee of the Congregational Home Missionary Society, Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., May 14, 1901 (Boston: The Congregational Home Missionary Society, 1901): 8; Abbott, The Evolution, 8; Lyman Abbott, America in the Making (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911): 43.

56 Lyman Abbott, The Twentieth Century Crusade (New York: MacMillan Co., 1918): 99. It is interesting to contrast Theodore Roosevelt’s disillusion after WWI with Abbott’s continued belief in progress, particularly because Roosevelt lost his son Quentin in the war, whereas Abbott’s son Theodore served and survived.

57 Abbott, The Evolution, 8; Lyman Abbott, The Rights of Man: A Study in Twentieth Century Problems (New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1901): 359-360; Abbott, America, 41. Several other authors also commented on Abbott’s optimism: see Hutchison, The Modernist, 186; “From the New York Times,” Outlook 132, no. 10 (November 8, 1922): 417.

58 Abbott, America, 4.

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sometimes…at the barrel of a gun.”59 Abbott’s views on evolution can therefore be seen as a

driving force behind his desire for the progress in religion, humanity, and government that would

help to justify the United States’ actions in the Spanish-American War.

Abbott fostered these ideas in his readers, but his thinking built on and reflected the

theories of other thinkers from that era who also used evolutionary ideas to justify American

expansion. One such writer was John Fiske (1842-1901), a popular writer of history and

philosophy who often synthesized Darwinism and history. Fiske argued in the pages of Harper’s

New Weekly Magazine that history showed how Darwin’s laws of “survival of the fittest” and

“natural adaptation” governed relations between people groups as humanity continuously

civilized and industrialized in ways that “coincide[d] precisely with that of the doctrine of

evolution.”60 Future President Theodore Roosevelt also wrote on similar topics, arguing that the

America needed to expand in order to keep its national vitality, for “a race must be prolific,

[since] there is no curse so great as the curse of barrenness.”61 Nothing less than evolutionary

survival was at the forefront of Roosevelt’s thinking as he delivered numerous speeches, arguing

that the United States “must be strong and vigorous…else its wisdom will come to naught and its

virtue be ineffective.”62 A final example of popular evolutionary thought was the Reverend

Josiah Strong, author of the best-selling book Our Country, who, like Fiske and Roosevelt,

argued for an expanding America: “human progress follows a law of development,” Strong

59 Preston, Sword, 13.

60 John Fiske, “Manifest Destiny,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 70 (March, 1885): 578. For more on Fiske’s evolutionary thinking, see Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, 151-153.

61 Theodore Roosevelt, “‘Social Evolution,’” in vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926): 226.

62 Theodore Roosevelt, “‘The Duties of American Citizenship” in vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926): 281. For more on Roosevelt, see Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, 151-169 and Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race, 141.

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thought, and the United States was clearly “the consummation of human progress.”63 Seen in

this context, Abbott represents one important, thought not unique, voice in articulating the

importance of evolutionary thinking on the issues of his day.

Progress and Religion

Evolution’s idea of change over time applied to Christianity as well, so Abbott was a

constant advocate for the progressive, liberal Christianity called the “New Theology” by its

supporters. Since Christianity needed to be constantly adapting to fit with scientific and social

advances, it could not rest on theological tradition and declare God’s revelation to be complete.64

Abbott placed evolution upon a pedestal above most of the traditional doctrine of his time,

arguing that evolution invalidated the traditional notions about the historical Fall and Biblical

infallibility. To Abbott, being modern and scientific seemed to be a more worthy goal than

preserving orthodoxy for its own sake.65 This first of all allowed his evolutionary framework to

influence all areas of his life without any orthodox religious compunction.

Another significant example of Abbott’s evolutionary thought as applied to Christian

theology was his rejection of original sin. Evolution’s suggestion that humanity grew out of

lesser forms and lesser animals suggested to Abbott that there was no original state of goodness

from which humanity fell in the Garden of Eden. Rather, he regarded “human sin as an atavism,

a reversion to animalism.”66 Abbott thought that all people still had within them a part of their

beastly past, and that life was a struggle against that beast on behalf of the sons of God that

63 Josiah Strong, Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Current Crisis, rev. ed. (New York: Baker & Taylor Co., 1891): 216. For more on Strong, see Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2009): 108-109.

64 Abbott, The Evolution, 4.

65 See, for example, Lyman Abbott, “The Need of a New Theology,” The American Journal of Theology 1, no. 2 (April 1897): 460-464.

66 Hutchison, The Modernist, 186.

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humans were called to be. The same applied to Christianity: the Christian faith still contained

traces of its pagan roots, and true Christians needed to struggle to purify the faith from trace

influences from its pagan past.67 Abbott thus could justify moral crusades against forms of

Christianity he deemed to be archaically pagan.

Roman Catholicism in particular drew Abbott’s ire because of its unwillingness to

modernize according to his standards; the fact that America’s enemy, Spain, was Roman

Catholic thus gave Abbott one type of ammunition for his moral crusade during the war. He

identified Roman Catholicism with the Roman Empire, contrasting Roman government for the

sake of the governors with the Hebraic commonwealth that progressed throughout history to

become the American democracy of his time in which government existed for the good of the

governed.68 Spain also demonstrated its inferior religion through its military failures: after

Spain’s sound defeat at the hands of the United States at the naval battle of Santiago on July 3,

1898, Abbott reasoned the victory came from America’s commitment to education and liberty.

The Spanish, by contrast, lived under ecclesiastical imperialism as embodied by the Inquisition

and the Spanish Armada and thus their failures during the war “proved…how utterly Spain had

failed to keep up with the progress of the age” by keeping its “found[ation] on the Inquisition”

and on “the duty of common men to accept without question the thought of their superiors.”69

Abbott’s coverage of this event clearly demonstrated his religious, evolutionary hierarchy: the

Roman Catholic Church, with its repression of religious and social liberty, was holding the entire

nation of Spain back from progressing as a whole, keeping Spain a second-rate power.

67 Abbott, The Theology, 31-49; Abbott, The Evolution, 7-9.

68 Lyman Abbott, “International Brotherhood Applied to the Conduct of the United States in the Philippines,” Outlook 61, no. 15 (April 15, 1899): 866.

69 Abbott, The Rights, 28; “Santiago,” Outlook 59, no. 10 (July 9, 1898): 610.

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Abbott criticizing Spain for failing to read the Scriptures properly or to civilize their

country with advanced infrastructure, both of which were part and parcel of an advanced,

Christian civilization like the United States, for “where the open Bible has gone, just in that ratio

the civilization has gone [and] where there has been no Bible, there has been no civilization.”70

In Abbott’s judgment, because the Spaniards still left “the Bible half open, and the country half

light and half dark,” they invalidated their rights to govern the colonies of Puerto Rico, Cuba,

and the Philippines.71 During the war, Abbott asked rhetorically, “Shall the Spanish or the

American idea prevail?—the free and progressive civilization of the Anglo-Saxon, or the sterility

and decay of the Spaniard?”72 That quote brings up additional justifications for American

intervention that this paper will discuss later, but it also clearly demonstrated Abbott’s firm

belief in his advancing/decaying dichotomy in comparing the two countries and their respective

religions.73

Abbott’s analysis left little doubt as to which was the most progressed governmental

form, and by linking Spain with Roman Catholicism and the Roman Empire, he was sending a

clear message that Spain was evolutionarily left in the ancient past; America and its Protestant

democracy was advanced and the fittest form of government and religion. Historians Andrew

Preston explains: “American Protestants associated their faith with the hallmarks of material

progress…and with a general improvement of society.”74 Therefore, since the Spanish had been

left behind in the evolutionary progress of Christianity, they forfeited any right they had to help

70 Lyman Abbott, “The Secret and the Revealed Things,” in The Life That Really Is (Brooklyn, NY: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898): 6.

71 Abbott, “The Secret,” 6.

72 “The President’s Speech,” Outlook 58, no. 6 (April 16, 1898): 953.

73 Abbott’s distaste for Catholics led him, like many of his time, to largely discount the Catholics in America and to homogenize America into a Protestant nation. See, for example: Preston, Sword, 12-14.

74 Preston, Sword, 12-13.

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improve less advanced societies. In the April 23, 1898 edition of the Outlook, an editorial

entitled “Why War?” gave a list of grievances against Spain on behalf of Cuba that mirrored the

colonists’ complaints in the Declaration of Independence. For Abbott’s readers, the connection

would have been clear: a nation forfeited the right to govern over other peoples when it abused

its charges and failed to secure their rights and liberties.75 Only a progressive and evolutionarily

advanced nation of civilized Protestants such as the United States could be entrusted with the

noble task of helping to advance others since they had first properly progressed themselves and

could now fully safeguard liberty and rights for others as well.

This dismissal of the legitimacy of Roman Catholic Christians gave Abbott and others

like him another, higher reason to intervene on behalf of Spain’s benighted colonies. United

State control over Cuba and the Philippines would mean an opportunity to Christianize the

Filipinos in the correct, Protestant tradition despite their pre-existing Catholic faith. In a sermon

preached on April 3, 1898, Abbott declared that the war would only be just if the United States

entered it “that [it] may set a people free for their own Christian development.”76 This religious

liberty formed an important part of Abbott’s political reasoning, explored later in this paper, but

the “Christian development” was an important part of evolutionary theological progress: for it

was only if Cubans and Filipinos gradually became Protestants that they could rise out of archaic

Catholicism that had so long held them back under Spanish rule. It was up to American

missionaries to carry out this task: Abbott insisted that Americans were “an elected people of

God” uniquely called to “be a light to the nations of the world and a salvation for all humanity.”77

75 “Why War?” Outlook 58, no. 17 (April 23, 1898): 1004-1005.

76 Lyman Abbott, “The Meaning of the War,” in The Life That Really Is (Brooklyn, NY: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898): 10.

77 Lyman Abbot, Problems of Life (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1900): 91.

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This echoing of John Winthrop was one form of evolutionary justification, but Abbott’s espousal

of Christian missions carried with it a subtler form of progress.

As Andrew Preston explains, American missions were inherently progressive since

“almost by definition, missionaries were expansionists; many were also nationalists.”78

Christianity by its very evangelical nature sought to bring all peoples and nations together under

the banner of the Kingdom of God, and Abbott saw the growth of American Protestantism as a

key instrument of advancement toward that Kingdom’s consummation.79 Preston also mentions

the cosmopolitan vision of Christianity that “for Protestant missionaries [meant] a globalist,

expansionist mindset [that] was deeply ingrained because of the simple fact of their…inherently

expansive faith, territorially, demographically, and ideologically.” Protestant missionaries were

some of the earliest advocates for American interventionism that overturned traditional notions

of isolationism in the name of Christian charity.80 For Abbott, this pattern appeared in 1896 with

calls for involvement in the conflict between Turks and Armenians and later with the initial hints

of the Cuban crisis to come as rebel groups began another uprising against their Spanish

colonizers. Abbott later reflected that “the right, the duty, of a strong nation to interfere for the

protection of the weak, oppressed, and suffering people [first] burned itself into the heart of

America, though the story of Armenian outrages” and subsequently lead to American

intervention after the release of the Proctor report that detailed Spain’s abuse of the Cubans.81 It

was not enough for the advanced Protestant Christians to rest on their laurels; to Abbott, they had

a responsibility to uplift the poor and oppressed wherever they could.

78 Preston, Sword, 132.

79 Abbott, Christianity, 30.

80 Preston, Sword, 181.

81 Lyman Abbott, “The Armenian Question,” Outlook 54, no. 23 (December 5, 1896): 1036-1038; “What To Do About Cuba,” Outlook 53, no. 6 (February 8, 1896): 234; Abbott, The Rights, 258.

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This call to intervention for the sake of humanity helped to coalesce American support

for intervention in Cuba. Preston argues that the “clear humanitarian crisis” and America’s

subsequent impulse to intervene was actually the greatest, “decisive” factor in bringing the

United States into conflict with Spain, and Abbott’s reasons fall into line with this theory.82

When justifying possible invention in Cuba in April of 1898, Abbott wrote “It is…a Christian

duty to accept the sword Excalibur, when divine Providence puts it into our hands,” for “the

whole world belongs to the Christian” who cannot “abandon part of the world,” but rather must

“take the world” and “consecrate [it] to the service of God.”83 Abbott later reflected in his

Reminiscences that “the real occasion of the [Spanish-American] War was the report of Senator

Proctor, of Vermont, on the conditions which he found exiting in the island; it aroused in the

country a storm of humanitarian indignation which proved irresistible.”84 As a member of the

Social Gospel movement at home, Abbott was impatient with those whose faith did not produce

action, as is evident in his book Christianity and Social Problems. Likewise, his ideals of

progress fit right in with support of foreign missions, for “American Protestant missions were…

an international extension of the Social Gospel, itself a faith-based wing of the Progressive.” 85

Although more of Abbott’s humanitarianism came from civic principles of government

than explicitly religious language, the two were often the same, and both came from his

evolutionary worldview. “Progressivism, missions, and imperialism all originated from a similar

source in the American imagination: a belief in progress,” he argued. Consequently, only

Protestants from the United States could properly direct since their ideas alone were “both

82 Preston, Sword, 211.

83 “The President’s Message,” Outlook 58, no. 16 (April 16, 1898): 953; “Conquering the World,” Outlook 59, no. 7 (June 18, 1898): 417-418.

84 Abbott, Reminiscences, 437.

85 Preston, Sword, 211; 177.

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American and Christian.”86 His justification for intervention did not end with religious rhetoric,

however, since Abbott was a firm believer in extending lessons on progress from domestic issues

to those in foreign lands.

Abbott was not alone in his use of evolution in religion and religiously inspired politics,

for many other popular writers melded together ideas of Protestant supremacy with American

expansionism. John Fiske was an important voice in this area. He gave a speech “Manifest

Destiny,” originally published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1885, over twenty times

across the United States. In it, Fiske argued that conflicts between England, France, and Spain

pitted Protestantism against Catholicism and England’s eventual triumph proved Protestantism’s

“higher and sturdier political life” that was “clearly destined…to take the lead in the world.”87

Reverend Josiah Strong also added his voice, remarking that Protestantism was “a pure spiritual

Christianity” coming from “the highest Christian civilization” that “divinely commissioned [an

adherent] to be, in a particular sense, his brother’s keeper.”88 Strong later wrote: “Surely, to be a

Christian…and an American in this generation is to stand on the very mountain-top of

privilege.”89 Beyond Fiske and Strong, many Americans during Abbott’s era agreed that

“Science and religion seemed to point in the same direction: Progress and Providence were

one.”90 Therefore, Abbott’s concern for evolution and religion, though especially pronounced

and articulated, also reflected a larger trend in society that regarded Protestant Christianity as the

apex of spiritual evolution.

Progress, Gender, and Race

86 Preston, Sword, 180; Brown, Lyman Abbott, 203.

87 Fiske, “Manifest,” 584. See also, Lears, Rebirth, 107.

88 Strong, Our Country, 208-210. See also, Lears, Rebirth, 107.

89 Josiah Strong, The New Era; or, The Coming Kingdom (New York: Taylor & Francis Co., 1893): 354.

90 Lears, Rebirth, 108.

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When Abbott called for action by the United States for the cause of evolutionary social

and religious progress, he often spoke using racial and gendered language, contrasting white

American “manhood” with the “feminine” and “childlike” qualities of less advanced peoples

such as African Americans and Filipinos. As articulated by historian Colin B. Chapell, Abbott’s

“conceptions of government and their racialized, gendered prerequisites” were additional areas in

which “Abbott applied broad ideas of evolution.”91 As shown in Gail Bederman’s book

Manliness and Civilization, thinkers in Abbott’s day were often concerned with racial fecundity

and masculinity, for imperial expansion was an arduous task designed not only to assist those

who were less masculine or racially inferior, but also to ensure the continued growth of

masculine races such as the Anglo-Saxons who would carry out this mission, allowing the race to

exercise its manly traits against lesser, and presumably more savage, races.92 Since these biases

were common during that era, much of Abbott’s writing on the subject is assumed and subtle:

sometimes prejudice showed in his espousal of Anglo-Saxon superiority or in descriptions of

other races, but often it was more explicit as Abbott declared other races to be less advanced and

less manly.

Abbott defined evolutionary progress for each race based on its color, and to him all

Europeans were close to equal at the top of the evolutionary pyramid. “Whiteness signified [to

Abbott] the pinnacle of human development,” Chapell explains, whereas “dark-skinned

peoples…were less evolved humans and as immature gendered being” inferior to whites and thus

“incapable of self-government.”93 An example that displays Abbott’s racial categories in both

subtle and overt comes from his January 2, 1898 sermon entitled “The Secret and the Revealed

91 Chapell, “The Third,” 29. Chapell’s article in Fides et historia was a large influence on this section, and I owe much to him.

92 Bederman, Manliness, 184-206.

93 Chapell, “The Third,” 30.

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Things.” To demonstrate the effectiveness of the Bible, Abbott encouraged his listeners to

envision the world in four categories that corresponded in equal measure to both the advance of

the Bible and to the advance of civilization. These areas were shaded one of four ways: “black…

brown…lighter brown…[or] pure white.” The racial pattern suggested by this color scheme

becomes even more explicit when Abbott identifies countries on the mental map: India, China,

and Africa are the dark places without the Bible or civilization; Spain and Russia have clouded

colors, half-opened Bibles, and second-rate civilizations; Protestant England and America are the

pure white areas with open Bibles, free governments, and highly advanced civilizations. 94

Abbott’s racial hierarchy was clearly outlined in this sermon, and he followed this paradigm to

justify the involvement of the United States in the Spanish colonies since God called the highly

evolved United States to replace a half-civilized Spanish rule with their advanced civilization

that would best lift the poor, uncivilized Cubans and Filipinos up out of barbarism.95

The Jekyll-like opposite of this barbarism was the evolved, advanced civilization of the

Anglo-Saxons that, for Abbott, comprised the core of America’s national identity and gave the

nation its mandate to care for lesser peoples. For Abbott, the United States was a clear Anglo-

Saxon country possessing a longer history of civilization evolution and progressing far beyond

other nations that had only recent begun their slow climb out of cultural darkness; notable

American leaders who “guide [America’s] destiny…have been, with very few exception, Anglo-

Saxon men.”96 While occasionally obscuring direct claims on biological superiority, Abbott

made it plain in his writings that since racial ascendancy could be measured by proximity to God

94 Abbott, “The Secret and the Revealed Things,” in The Life That Really Is (Brooklyn, New York: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898): 6.

95 Lyman Abbott, “The President’s Speech,” 953; Lyman Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” in Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, edited by Isabel C. Barrows (New York: Lake Mohonk Conference, 1902): 37-42.

96 Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” 37.

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and degree of civilization, the Anglo-Saxon race was the highest race on earth because of its

Protestant faith and civilized society.97 Abbott measured races according to civilization, and

civilization in turn “proceed[ed] [from] political liberty, Christian ethics, [and] Anglo-Saxon

energy.”98 Again, the evolutionarily advanced government model of the “Hebraic

Commonwealth” found its modern day form in “Anglo-Saxon America,” as the United States as

a part of this Anglo-Saxon race was “to confer [its] gifts of civilization…on the uncivilized

peoples of the world.99 Since evolution took place over many years, Abbott credited Anglo-

Saxon advancement to many years of “English growth,” “long centuries of education,” and “long

ancestries [of] a Christian faith and a Christian blood.” Long paths of growth like this made it

unrealistic to “expect a Cuban or Filipino Government to embrace the principles of liberty at

once.”100 Clearly, inferior races in the newly conquered territories could not be trusted on their

own and required American guidance. Abbott’s racial thinking thus placed Anglo-Saxons at the

zenith of racial evolution and relegated the Cubans and Filipinos to low places from which they

could climb only with American help.

Evidence of this paternalistic view toward conquered peoples appears throughout

Abbott’s writings. Abbott outlined his national development model in an Outlook editorial “The

New Duties of the New Hour” when he described the history of the United States in four eras.

As a child, the United States was a colony; as an adolescent, it won its independence as a self-

governing constitutional republic; as a young adult, maturing, it freed its slaves; and as a fully

97 Lyman Abbott, “The Secret of Character,” in The Life That Really Is (Brooklyn, New York: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898): 11; Lyman Abbott, “The Duty and Destiny of America,” in The Life That Really Is (Brooklyn, New York: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898): 19; Abbott, The Rights, 263.

98 Lyman Abbot, “The Basis of an Anglo-American Understanding,” North American Review 166, no. 498 (May 1898): 520.

99 Abbott, The Rights, 263, 272-273.

100 Abbott, “The Duty and Destiny of the United States,” quoted in “Dr. Abbott on Expansion.” New York Times. January 27, 1899); Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” 37, 38.

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grown, adult nation, the United States had earned the God-given duty to free other oppressed

people outside its own borders.101 While contradicted a strict, Spencerian laissez-faire “survival

of the fittest,” this paradigm fit well with Abbott’s Lamarckian understanding of evolution and

progress since the more advanced had a duty to assist and protect those who had yet to evolve.

This charge fell to America in its dealings with inferior races after the Spanish-America War.

Abbott’s gendered pre-judgment manifested itself in the parable mentioned at the

beginning of this essay where the Cubans and Filipinos are illustrated as a poor, defenseless child

who needs the protection of the United States, portrayed as the vigorously masculine Uncle

Sam.102 In his book The Rights of Man, Abbott wrote that surely America could not simply

abandon “races just emerging from childhood,” for the United States had a calling to be “their

guardians and tutors.”103 The book often depicted inferior peoples as children, in illustrations

and words, because both women and children were inherently not as manly and therefore

deserved the protection of the stronger man.104 Because of this, the United States needed to

interfere in places like Cuba and the Philippines.

In justifying expansion and hegemony, Abbott often tied capacity for self-government to

masculinity, requiring American intervention where peoples lacked manliness.105 Abbott was

adamant that the most important gift to impart to recently conquered territories was “not wealth,

but manhood”: the United States had “pledged [its] word to give them self-government as fast as

they are prepared for it,” and “manhood suffrage [meant] manhood first and suffrage

101 “The New Duties of the New Hours,” Outlook 59, no. 4 (May 28, 1898): 335.

102 “The Issues Restated,” Outlook 59, no. 12 (July 23, 1898): 710-711.

103 Abbott, The Rights, 102.

104 Chapell, “The Third,” 45-46; Hoganson, Fighting, 10-11, 6-69, 202.

105 Chapell, “The Third,” 46.

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afterward.”106 This manliness did not appear overnight, however, since it was the product of

evolutionary processes that took time when moving races from near-animal states to masculine,

advanced stages. “Democracy,” according to Abbott, “is the emergence of man from a state of

pupilage toward the state of manhood” that requires “a long apprenticeship of obedience.”107 In a

December 3, 1898 Outlook editorial, Abbott urged the United States to seek

the enfranchisement of a before subjugate people and their preparation for self-government [although] such a transformation must necessarily be gradual [for] Cubans and Filipinos cannot be carried from a condition of absolute despotism to a condition of absolute liberty without being carried through all the intermediate stages. The process by which the Anglo-Saxon people have become a free people can be greatly accelerated, but the process cannot be dispensed with altogether…The child may grow to manhood rapidly, but manhood comes only through growth.108

This again was reflective of Abbott’s view that evolution, not revolution, was the correct road to

civilizational progress.109

The United States would thus need to stay in Cuba and the Philippines for extended

periods of time, because the people there lacked the proper masculine traits to qualify for

“manhood suffrage,” the type of self-government that Abbott only conferred upon those he

deemed evolved enough to warrant the title of “man.” In The Theology of an Evolutionist, he

stated the evolutionary principles behind his racialized and genderized thinking:

Man is an animal [and] he has ascended from a lower animal. Whether the whole human race has so ascended is not absolutely certain…but wherever the race came from as a race, there is absolutely no question that every individual of the race has passed through animal stages in reaching manhood.110

106 “Peace—And After,” Outlook 59, no. 11 (July 16, 1898): 664; Abbott, Reminiscences, 424, 438.

107 Abbott, The Spirit of Democracy, 24, 183.

108 “The Open Door,” Outlook 59, no. 14 (December 3, 1898): 806-807. See Hoganson, Fighting, 50-53, 135-138 for additional arguments on why gendered arguments often equated femininity and childishness, especially since they were both considered polar opposites of the manliness necessary for evolved peoples to govern themselves.

109Abbott, The Rights of Man, 127-129.

110 Abbott, The Theology of an Evolutionist, 32-33.

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Since Filipinos and Cubans had not reached the state of “manhood” necessary for self-

government, Abbott clearly saw the conquered races as inferior beings that were less masculine

and more animal, in desperate need of assisted evolution from the advanced civilization of the

United States.

Abbott’s mixture of racial typology, gendered language, and civilizational evolution

came out of a longer pattern of social assumptions solidified through his work for humanitarian

organizations. Abbott’s early, first-hand experience with people he considered to be less evolved

occurred in the years after the Civil War when he worked for The American Freedmen’s and

Union Commission in helping blacks in the Reconstruction South.111 His second experience was

with Native Americans through his participation in the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of

the Indian, an “annual meeting of missionaries, educators, and philanthropists” who “tried to

protect Indians from exploitation” and who later expanded after the Spanish-American War to

“include other dependent races.”112 Indeed, Abbott often mentioned “the Indian, the Negro, the

foreign immigrant, the Porto Rican [sic], the Hawaiian and the Filipino” in the same passages as

he discussed America’s “distinct duty toward these so-called dependent or subject peoples.”113

To Abbot, American racial expansion, always for the purported good of the inferior races, started

in the North American continent and continued west and south over the Pacific and Caribbean.

Abbott’s work with formerly enslaved African Americans led him to characterize the race

as the “great childlike race in this country,” one that was “hardly [into its] period of infancy”

111 Brown, Lyman Abbott, 37-50; see also Brown, “Lyman Abbott and the Freedmen’s.”

112 Walter L. Williams, “United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation:: Implication for the Origins of American Imperialism,” The Journal of American History 66, no. 4 (March 1980): 814; Philip Garrett, “Opening Address,” in Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, 1898, ed. by Isabel C. Barrows (Boston: Lake Mohonk Conference, 1898): 11.

113 Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” 41; Abbott, America, 187.

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only fifty years after slavery.114 For example, Abbott supported the ideas of Booker T.

Washington’s The Future of the American Negro (1899) over W.E.B. Du Bois’ book The Souls

of Black Folk (1903). When reflecting on those books, Abbott explained that African Americans

should “not be ambitious for social equality, or industrial equality, or political equality, or any

kind of equality,” but rather they should “be ambitious to be men, and trust that in time the

manhood will make for itself a place.”115 Here, as in other writings, Abbott stressed racially

determined manhood suffrage that could only evolve gradually.

Abbott later directly compared African Americans to the Cubans and Filipinos in the

December 24, 1898 issue of the Outlook in a passage that deserves quotation at length:

The argument… borrowed from the experience of the past, that tropical peoples are incompetent to administer self-government, cannot be contemptuously disregarded…what we have experienced in the attempts at self-government of the negro race in this country, lends some confirmation to [this] contention…[For] to throw into the current of human life a people without either religious or civil education, who have lived for centuries under despotism, in the expectations that they will straightway govern themselves justly and wisely, is like intrusting [sic] a community of children to self-government without guidance or guardianship.116

In this passage, Abbott again used an analogy about race and gender by comparing dependent

peoples to children, and he then used the precedent of limiting African American suffrage based

on inferior evolution in the areas of religion and government to argue for governmental control

over the “tropical peoples” of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Cuba.

Likewise, the post-1898 Abbott often had America’s newfound possessions at the

forefront of his mind during the Lake Mohonk Conferences that met primarily to discuss Native

Americans. In a 1902 speech on “The Duty of the United States,” Abbott explicitly compared

the two groups. First, when Anglo-Saxon pioneers first arrived in America and encountered

114 Abbott, American in the Making, 170.

115 “Two Typical Leaders,” Outlook 74, no. 4 (May 23, 1903): 214-216.

116 “Expansion: One Step at a Time,” Outlook 59, no. 17 (December 24, 1898): 997.

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aboriginal peoples, “they found here a people who in all the elements of civilization, in all

elements of Christian culture and character, were their inferiors.” Abbott next added Africans

and the newly conquered Spanish and Malay peoples to the list of inferior peoples and then

asked: “What is the duty of a Christian, educated people, inheriting from a long ancestry a

Christian faith and a Christian blood, what is their duty when they are set down under the same

flag, within the same territory, side by side with the Indian, the Africa…the Spanish-American,

and the Malay?”117 He later answered his own question by saying the United States “must

govern them in their [own] interest” “for the purpose of making [them] at the earliest possible

moment self-governing,” just like “the wise father governs his child so that as far as possible the

child can learn to govern himself.”118 This single example is but a sample of passages where

Abbott mentions both Native Americans and the newly conquered peoples from the Spanish-

American War as being deficient in race and gender and thus needing remedial governing from

the fully-evolved, masculine United States.

This mixture of gender, race, religion, and progress was not unique to Abbott, as shown

in both the writing of historians of the era and of prominent intellectual contemporaries of

Abbott. Historians agree that during Abbott’s time, questions of race and gender prominently

impacted American national thought. Susan Harris asserts that Americans from Abbott’s time

worried about “having their national destiny diverted” by any “influx of racially different races”

as shown in “the frequent overlap of Congressional discussion about Native-American and

Philippine affairs [that were] further signs of Americans’ uneasiness about racial purity.”119

Richard Hofstadter points out that many thinkers from that era “used natural selection as a

117 Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” 38.

118 Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” 39.

119 Harris, God’s, 18.

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vindication of militarism or imperialism,” often citing Darwin’s writings about “the likelihood

that backward races would disappear before the advance of higher civilization.”120 Jackson Lears

agrees, for during this time of American expansion, “Missionaries and race theorists came

together more easily in the rhetoric of empire [as] Protestantism and Progress marched forward

together, fulfilling the imperial destiny of Anglo-Saxon civilization.”121

In addition, several prominent contemporaries of Lyman Abbott illustrate just how

pervasive this racial, engendered thinking was during the debates over the wars. Albert

Beveridge, a Senator from Indiana, argued passionately on the Senate floor for the racial duty of

the Anglo-Saxon United States to stay in the Philippines. In the Outlook’s parable, one could

make the assumption that the boy stood for Beveridge, as he mentioned the material advantages

of American expansion far more than Abbott did. Expansion offered increased “new sources of

supply,” and a chance to “conduct the mightiest commerce of history.”122 Still, the deepest

question at stake during the debates over Philippines annexation, Beveridge concluded, was

“elemental” and “racial”:

God has not been preparing the English-speaking and Teutonic peoples for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and self-admiration. [Rather], He has made us the master organizers of the word…[and] given us the spirit of progress to overwhelm the forces of reaction throughout the earth…[we Americans must] not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee of God, of the civilization of the word.123

To Beveridge, like Abbott, America’s “divine mandate was also a racial mandate” to progress

and evolve not only themselves, but also others under the jurisdiction of the United States.124

120 Hofstadter, Social Darwinism, 146-147.

121 Lears, The Rebirth, 107.

122 Albert Beveridge, “The March of the Flag,” in Modern Eloquence, Vol. 11: Political Oratory, A-Bur, ed. by Thomas B. Reed (Philadelphia: John D. Morris and Company, 1903): 15.

123 Cong. Rec., 56th Congress, Session 1, 1900, 33, pt. 1: 704-711.

124 Harris, God’s, 25.

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John Fiske and Theodore Roosevelt provide other excellent examples of Abbott’s

contemporaries voicing similar sentiments about evolution, race, and gender. Fiske, in his

“Manifest Destiny” speech, argued for the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race because of its

high birthrate and advanced, industrialized civilization.125 Theodore Roosevelt, in many

speeches, added a muscular version of racial nationalism that warned against “los[ing] the virile,

manly qualities, and sink[ing] into a nation of mere hucksters.”126 For Roosevelt, evolutionarily

advanced nations were the one possessing the most manly traits, but, as historian Gail Bederman

put it, Roosevelt feared that “if American men ever lost their virile zest for Darwinistic racial

contests, their civilization, would soon decay. If they ignored the ongoing racial imperative of

constant expansion…a manlier race would inherit their mantle of the highest civilization.”127 In

his comparison of nations, Roosevelt claimed an “essential manliness of the American character”

that enabled their national success to contrast with the character of Cubans and Filipinos who

needed American help to be “freed from their chains” of “savagery and barbarism.”128 In helping

childlike races to racial manhood, particularly in war, Americans would also strengthen and

maintain their own racial virility. Abbott agreed: “The shock of war awakens the Nation from

its lethargy [and] summons it to heroic self-sacrifice [while] set[ting] its pulses beating with a

new if not certainly higher life.”129 Surrounded as he was by these currents of race, gender, and

evolution, Abbott presented a typical view for an American concerned with progress related to

the foreign nations associated with the Spanish-American War.

125 Fiske, “Manifest Destiny,” 578-90.

126 Theodore Roosevelt, “The Law of Civilization and Decay,” in vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926): 259-260.

127 Bederman, Manliness, 186. See also pages 184-190; Hoganson, Fighting, 143-145.

128 Theodore Roosevelt, “National Duties,” in vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926): 469-470, 478. See also Bederman, Manliness, 188.

129 Lyman Abbott, “Some Advantages of the War,” Outlook 59, no. 8 (June 25, 1898): 461.

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Progress, Government, and Nationalism

The final piece of Abbott’s evolutionary thinking about the Spanish-American War was

intricately connected to his thoughts on race, gender, and religion. Abbott was like many of his

fellow Americans when he claimed, “There is no other country that compares to America in its

application of this principle of self-government,” and this statement, when viewed in the light of

Abbott’s extensive writings, takes on additional meaning in the implied assumptions entailed in

it about why the United States was so skilled at its self-government.130 Abbott, like many of his

contemporaries, believed that God, through evolution, had blessed the United States with many

gifts. Since the United States was at the pinnacle of national and governmental evolution, it

possessed a certain “duty and destiny” toward the rest of the world, especially its newly

conquered territories after 1898.131 The mixture of advanced characteristics including

democracy, civic institutions, and advanced citizenry formed the basis for the evolutionary

ascendance of the United States. These traits led Abbott to support the United States’ policy of

expansion and conquest during and after the Spanish-American War.

Although Abbott left the connection between nationalism and evolution veiled, his

prodigious writing on evolution gives the words of his more political work additional meaning

that clearly suggests his evolutionary worldview. As mentioned earlier, Abbott’s notions of

progress led him to describe an “historic process by which the pagan world was gradually

transformed into Christendom, the forces of imperial Rome into the imperfectly Christianized

130 Lyman Abbott, “The Duty and Destiny of America,” 5.

131 Many of Abbott’s speeches and sermons from the era use the phrase “duty and destiny” when referring to the calling of the United States. See, for example, Abbott, “The Duty and Destiny of the United States,” quoted in “Dr. Abbott on Expansion,” New York Times. January 27, 1899; Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” in Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, ed. by Isabel C. Barrows (New York: Lake Mohonk Conference, 1902): 37-41; Abbott, “The Duty and Destiny of America,” in The Life That Really Is (Brooklyn, New York: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898): 1-20.

Lagerwey 40

forces of the Republic of the United States.”132 Although Abbott never claimed completely

moral character for the United States, he used the phrase “gradually transform” to suggest the

evolutionary quality of the governmental change. Even later revelations of civilian massacre on

the Philippine island of Samar and the use of the “water cure”—a torture technique in which “a

victim was held down, his mouth pried open with a piece of bamboo or a rifle barrel, and dirty or

salty water poured down his throat until the stomach swelled to the bursting point”—by

American soldiers could not dampen Abbott’s assurance that the United States was doing God’s

work.133 It was “unjust and irrational to condemn the American army and the American leaders

in the Philippines” for the “sporadic cases of cruelty” that did not detract from America’s

“responsibility of authority in the Philippines.”134 Even highly evolved creatures occasionally

experienced atavism, Abbott explained, so the proper reaction to sin was not wholesale

condemnation, but rather renewed vigor toward the noble task of advancing Christianity in its

highest forms.

In his earlier work on evolution itself, Abbott gave a clearer example of his evolutionary

approach to the political arena when he proclaimed:

the evolutionist insists that the processes of life are always from the simple to the complex…from the family, through the tribe, to the nation; from the paternal form of government, through the oligarchic and the aristocratic, to the democratic…the evolutionist sees a steady progress from lower to higher forms of life.135

Democracy was “the outcome of a long historical process [and] the result of the political

evolution of eighteen centuries,” and accordingly, this form of government reached its “most

132 Abbott, Christianity, 30.

133 Gregg Jones, Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream (New York: New American Library, 2012): 241-247, 209-210.

134 “Politics or Public Business,” Outlook 71, no. 2 (May 10, 1902): 105-107.

135 Abbott, The Evolution, 6-7.

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perfect form in the United States of America.”136 Abbott thus had a clear evolutionary hierarchy

for government, with democracies reigning supreme.

In his book Christianity and Social Problems, Abbott made a related argument for

evolutionarily supremacy of the American political and social system by stating that “the

consummation of Christian progress will not be attained until,” among other things, “Christianity

[is substituted] for barbarism.”137 As shown earlier in this essay, Abbott equated the Protestant

Christianity found in American with advanced civilization. Thus, in a speech to the Lake

Mohonk Conference in 1901, Abbott explained the Christianity/barbarism dichotomy by

applying evolution and by using the terms “civilization,” “barbarism,” and “higher civilization”

to justify the many areas of recent American expansion, claiming,

Barbarism has no rights which civilization is bound to respect…The function of the higher civilization is not to extirpate the old, not to subjugate the old, and it certainly is not to leave the old to take care of itself. The higher civilization is to convert the old…There is to be intellectual and moral civilization, whether men like it or whether they do not…It is the duty of the Government of the United States to assume all the responsibilities which its authority imposes upon it…in Cuba, in Porto Rico, and in the Philippines [where] we are fighting for the liberty of the people protected by justice and defined by law.138

This quote summarized Abbott’s stance on the entire mission of the United States in the former

Spanish colonies in evolutionary terms. Abbott saw their civilizations as “old” and lower as

compared to the newer and “higher” civilization of Anglo-Saxon America. When combined with

other Abbott quotes—about “evolution mean[ing] ordered progress; development from poorer to

richer, from lower to higher, from less to greater”—this quotes takes on the additional

significance of evolutionary theory that Abbott and his readers would have attached to his

136 Abbott, The Rights of Man, 315.

137 Abbott, Christianity, 267.

138 Abbott, “Fundamental,” 112-113.

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political and social argument.139 Abbott thus supported the American intervention in former

Spanish colonies because the American civilization was on a quasi-religious crusade to convert

the barbaric aboriginals and uplift them to the highly evolved standards of American, Christian

civilization.

Abbott’s elevation of democracy would cause him to disregard the legitimacy of the

Spanish government since it was an autocratic monarchy inferior to the higher American system

of republican democracy and to disregard the Filipino government because they as a people were

not advanced enough to rule themselves. When added to the racial and gendered stereotypes

explored earlier in this essay, Abbott had a clear evolutionary system for justifying American

hegemony over Cuba and the Philippines. Especially in the Philippines, Abbott was adamant

that the locals were unready for self-government or even franchisement within the American

democratic system, for “certainly…the function of the higher civilization…[was] not to leave the

old to take care of itself.”140 Writing after the war, when claiming that “democracy [was] for a

people in its manhood,” Abbott stressed the correlation between evolutionary advancement and

self-government. The implication was obvious: the United States was the most advanced nation

because “there [was] no other country that compare[d] to America in its application of this

principle of self-government.”141 In contrast, the newly conquered peoples were “races just

emerging from childhood” who still needed “intervening education” in order to properly progress

from “a primitive or tribal condition of government to a self-governing democracy.”142 Here,

139 Abbot, “The Hope That Is In Me,” in The Life That Really Is (Brooklyn, New York: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898): 5.

140 Abbott, “Fundamental,” 112.

141 Abbott, “The Duty and Destiny of America,” 5.

142 Abbott, Rights, 101-102..

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American intervention was necessary because of the national duty to guide and instruct the

lesser-evolved races on proper governing techniques and their accompanying civil institutions.

These civil institutions found their quintessence in the United States of America. Abbott

articulated the civic superiority of America often during his writings, and after the Spanish-

American War, he appealed to them as reasons why the United States needed to stay in the

Philippines and in Cuba. The United States should confer “just government” in its newly

conquered territories, and to Abbott just government meant “an adequate return for the taxes

levied, civil and religious liberty, and some system of universal education free from

ecclesiastical control.”143 Elsewhere, Abbott described the government America was to impart as

protecting “justice, equal rights, free education, and civil and religious liberty.”144 The Outlook

repeated these themes of justice, liberty, and education during the time of the Spanish-American

War and later over questions of American duty in the conquered territories.145 The mere fact that

the United States was to impart its civic institutions suggested the evolutionary paradigm of

progress and advancing civilization.

Abbott later in 1901 wrote a book entitled The Rights of Man: A Study in Twentieth

Century Problems in which he solidified the connection between evolution and republican virtue.

Democratization connected modern theology, democratic government, industrial capitalism, and

public education: the broader support and benefit a movement provided, the more advanced and

laudable it was in Abbott’s mind. America’s departure from Roman Catholicism, European

monarchy, medieval feudalism, and elitist schools all signified the progress embodied in the

Protestant, democratic, capitalist United States of America that educated all its citizens fairly.

143 Lyman Abbott, “Terms of Peace,” Outlook 59, no. 14 (August 6 1898): 813.

144 Lyman Abbott, “The New National Policy,” Outlook 59. no. 7 (June 18. 1898): 415.

145 See, for example, Lyman Abbott, “Peace—And After,” Outlook 59, no. 11 (July 16, 1898): 663-664.

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To Abbott, “America represent[ed]…fundamental principles [of civil society] better than any

nation now represents them, and better than they ever have been represented by any nation in the

past.”146 In the same book, Abbott listed the United States at the end of a list of countries that

“mark[ed] successive steps in the progress toward that unity of the human race which has been

the ideal of poets and the vision of dreamers since the world began to think,” clearly indicating

place the America at the evolutionary pinnacle of nations.147 This advanced state gradually

brought the United States into a larger, interconnected role in world affairs as “the right, the duty

of a strong nation to interfere for the protection of a weak, oppressed, and suffering people

burned itself into the heart of America” until “suddenly [Americans] were awakened to the fact

that outrages…were being perpetrated at our very door [in Cuba].”148 Clearly, for Abbott, the

evolutionarily progressed state of the United States could not leave it complacent, but rather

compelled it to action on behalf of less developed nations.

This perspective was far from unique, for Abbott followed such notable Americans as

Abraham Lincoln when he characterized the United States as a Christian nation with an

extraordinary history of progress that predicated an extraordinary future in exceptional service to

God.149 Abbott proffered this national evolutionary schema when justifying American

expansionism, for “a great trust did God lay upon the American people…of helping to work

out…the [American] principles of justice, equal rights, free education, and civil and religious

liberty, throughout the world.”150 This was the appropriate response to being evolutionarily

146 Abbott, Christianity, 32-61, 196.

147 Abbott, Christianity, 254.

148 Abbott, Christianity, 258.

149 Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” 37; for more on America’s chosen status, see McCullough, “‘My Brother’s Keeper,’” ix-xi; Pratt, Julius W. “The ‘Large Policy’ of 1898.” The Mississippi Historical Review 19, no. 2 (Sept. 1932): 219-42; Preston, Sword, 135-136.

150 Lyman Abbott, “The New National Policy,” 415.

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gifted; therefore Americans must “guide these [Filipino] people to their establishment of

institutions like our own—not necessarily in detail, but in fundamental principles,” Abbott

argued.151 These passages show that, for him, America’s unique government and liberties meant

that it had a duty to expand and to propagate its form throughout the world.

This evolutionary ascendancy was also partly due to America’s citizenry. According to

Abbott and his contemporaries, only certain groups could be trusted with the power of

democracy. Susan Harris, in highlighting a general trend of the era, explains:

The pattern of association in [speeches of the era] link racial hierarchies to religious affiliations, which in turn are linked to patterns of values and behaviors that give evidence of those values. The result is an ongoing loop: race, religion, and appropriate practices all point to each other in a continuous round of association, creating the foundation for the national narrative that linked Christianity, whiteness, liberties, and capitalism, and bundled the whole under the rubric ‘civilization.’152

Harris highlights a rule for government that Abbott followed closely: only after proving itself to

be an evolved, progressive “civilization” could a people-group such as the Filipinos claim the

ability and therefore the right to self-government. Groups that had yet to move forward

evolutionarily, lacking civilization and still embodying too much “barbarism,” could not be

trusted to rule themselves, especially if they came from “races just emerging from childhood” or

from societies that, “in all elements of Christian culture and civilization, were inferior” to those

of the self-governing nations of the West.153 As Harris shows, however, this proof of

“civilization” was complicated:

In the late nineteenth century, ‘capacity for citizenship’ was predicated on both biology and behavioral practices. The biology was whiteness, specifically racial descent from what was commonly known as Anglo-Saxon…To this was grafted Protestantism, a

151 Lyman Abbott, “The Duty and Destiny of the United States.”

152 Harris, God’s, 77.

153 See, Abbott, “The Duty of the United States,” 37-38; Abbott, “Fundamental Principles,” 111-114; Abbott, The Rights of Man, 101-102.

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category…enhancing race with a set of values that came to be seen as…the right bio-cultural mix…to produce particular kinds of citizen-subjects.154

Thus, as shown by Harris, the issue of self-government is a crucial issue for the study of

evolutionary social theory. Abbott agreed, formulating a mixture of racial and civil

characteristics that established capacity for and possession of the evolutionarily advanced

civilization necessary for self-government and autonomy. Failing to possess these characteristics

left nations vulnerable to injustices that forced the hand of the humanitarian United States to

intervene. Abbott applied these criteria to the rule of the United States over conquered peoples

in formerly Spanish territories, providing further proof of the pervasiveness of evolutionary

thought in his support for the war and its aftermath.

Abbott was not alone in his espousal of a special, high status for the United States, one

that gave it unique privileges and responsibilities in the realm of world affairs. A supreme

example is Josiah Strong, whose best-selling book, Our Country, gave statistical rationales for

American superiority, claiming that the United States was “the consummation of human

progress” and a place that “may reasonably expect to develop the highest type of Anglo-Saxon

civilization.”155 Senator Albert Beveridge likewise insisted that since “the Almighty Father

endowed [the United States] with gifts…and marked [Americans] as the people of His particular

favor,” the United States had a “mission to perform [and a] duty to discharge” to the other

nations of the earth.156 Historian H.W. Brands has demonstrated the breadth of similar

sentiments, claiming that Americans of Abbott’s era “refused to accept the evidence of decline”

from the “closing of the frontier [that] heralded the end of the age of American uniqueness” and

instead “placed the United States at the apex of historical development and predicted the

154 Harris, God’s, 77-78.

155 Strong, Our Country, 216.

156 Albert Beveridge, “The March,” 225.

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imminent Americanization of the earth.”157 Matthew McCullough, in his discussion of the

United States as a messianic figure during the era of the Spanish-America War, cites many

different Christian figures of many different denominations to reach his conclusion that “a

remarkable number of Christian leaders” agreed that the United States “must play the role of

Christ in the world.”158 To them, expansion into new territories was inevitable yet still an act of

charity for the good of local people. Abbott thus was not alone in his views, and as an influential

pastor and editor, he commanded attention from the nation’s Protestant establishment when he

spoke of the evolutionary ascendancy of the United States and its subsequent duty toward Cuba

and the Philippines.

Conclusion

Abbott’s rhetoric of evolutionary change was by its very nature optimistic, but that did

not preclude human agency. Abbott declared “the movement of human progress which goes on

from generation to generation [to be] a divinely inspired and ordered movement,” and he coupled

this sentiment with his equally firm belief that “God is making the American, but God works

through men. If the American is to be made, he must be made by Americans.”159

God was still in overall control of the battles of social evolution, however, for despite

Abbott’s rejection of the Calvinist idea of predestination in individual salvation, he occasionally

employed the idea of election to describe the United States.160 In his sermon, “The Meaning of

the War,” given on May 15th in the midst of the Spanish-American War, Abbott proclaimed that

“ the American people,” throughout their unique history, had been “an elect people” “favored by

157 H.W. Brands, Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992): 10.

158 McCullough, “‘My Brother’s Keeper,’” 40.

159 Abbott, America in the Making, 43, 4.

160 Wetzel, “A ‘Scourge and Minister,’” 49.

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God.”161 In the Outlook’s coverage of American naval victories over the Spanish, Abbott

insisted that “the guns of [the Battle of] Santiago began when Anglo-Saxon and Spanish

civilizations parted company in the sixteenth century, one working forward toward the Kingdom

of God, the other blocking its progress” and victory was assured since the beginning of time

since “the eternal law of God [is] that…they who fight on God’s side fight a winning campaign.”

Americans should thank God on Thanksgiving in 1898, insisted Abbott, “not because he is on

our side, but because he has inspired America to be on his side.”162 God assured victory and

sided with the United States as it fought for his Kingdom and for his purposes. God’s

preparation for American victory had used the gradual processes of evolution to ensure that

progress and growth happened at the correct rates and in the correct areas such that, when the

Cubans and Filipinos cried out for humanitarian relief, the strong arm of the United States would

be ready to be “sent on God’s errands of liberty and justice.”163

It was this humanitarian errand that Abbott summarized in next issue of the Outlook,

wherein lay the parable mentioned at the beginning of this essay. Given the context of Abbott’s

evolutionary and political thought, the story clearly takes on additional meaning. It was the

grown-up, Protestant, Anglo-Saxon, male Uncle Sam who had a duty to intervene and save the

poor, helpless Cuban or Filipino child who was racially inferior, less educated, only nominally

Christian, and otherwise incapable of self-government or democracy. The Spanish abusers were

hardly any better, being less advanced themselves and thus untrustworthy caretakers of inferior

peoples. The Spanish-American War therefore provides an excellent case study with which to

161 Abbott, “The Meaning of the War,” 1-2.

162 “Thanksgiving for Victories,” Outlook 59, no. 11 (July 9, 1898): 667.

163 “Thanksgiving for Victories,” 667.

Lagerwey 49

examine Abbott’s evolutionary thinking writ large just as Abbott provides a biographical case

study for American intellectuals during that the same time period.

Recent historical scholarship has shown a resurgent trend toward studies of American

empire, particularly its international beginnings in 1898, often spurred by the recent, equally

contentious humanitarian crusades in the Balkans and Iraq.164 Given the pertinent lessons the

story of 1898 has to tell, some recent historians have wisely focused on Abbott and on the useful

example he can be toward furthering understanding of the time. What this study has shown in

particular areas, Abbott biographer Brown has stated more generally: Abbott was a “prosaic”

“interpreter” who dealt with the large changes of imperialism and evolution “which demanded a

recasting of public opinion” and therefore who deserves the attention of historians because he

“represented the main currents of American religious thought” and “had a remarkable talent for

bridging the gap between the aristocracy of the mind and the thought of the masses.” 165 In short,

Abbott was thus a quintessential Gramscian organic intellectual. Given the recent parallel

examples of high-minded American imperialism in Iraq and Afghanistan, the need for historical

inquiry into 1898 has only increased in recent years.166 Historians wishing to understand the

roots of American Exceptionalism would do well to pay closer attention to Abbott and writings

during his era.

164 In addition to the recent monographs, theses, and books cited previously in this essay, recent examples of renewed scholarly and popular interest in topics related to the beginnings of American empire during the Spanish-American War include the following: Evan Thomas, The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898 (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2010); James Bradley, The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2009); Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006); Fabian Hilfrich, Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of the Spanish-American War (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

165 Brown, Lyman, viii; 1; 238.

166 Wetzel, “A ‘Scourge and Minister,’” 119-120.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources – Lyman Abbott

Abbott, Lyman. America in the Making. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1911.

——. “The Basis of an Anglo-American Understanding.” North American Review 166, no. 498 (May 1898): 513-521.

——. Christianity and Social Problems. 1897. Reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1899.

——. “The Duty and Destiny of the United States.” Quoted in “Dr. Abbott on Expansion.” New York Times. January 27, 1899.

——. “The Duty of the United States.” In Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of the Friends of the Indian, edited by Isabel C. Barrows, 37-41. New York: Lake Mohonk Conference, 1902.

——. The Evolution of Christianity. 1892. Reprint, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1900.

——.The Kingdom of Heaven on Earth: A Sermon Preached at the Diamond Jubilee of the Congregational Home Missionary Society, Tremont Temple, Boston, Mass., May 14, 1901. Boston: The Congregational Home Missionary Society, 1901.

——. The Life That Really Is. Brooklyn, New York: R.G. Brown Publishers, 1898.

——. Problems of Life. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1900.

——. The Rights of Man: A Study in Twentieth Century Problems. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1901.

——. The Theology of an Evolutionist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1897.

——. The Twentieth Century Crusade. New York: MacMillan Co., 1918.

Outlook. New York: Outlook Publishing Company.

Primary Sources – Others

Beveridge, Albert J. “The March of the Flag.” In Modern Eloquence, Vol. 11: Political Oratory, A-Bur, edited by Thomas B. Reed, 224-243. Philadelphia: John D. Morris and Company, 1903.

Fisk, John. “Manifest Destiny,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 70 (March, 1885): 578-90.

Lagerwey 51

Garrett, Philip. “Opening Address.” In Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian, 1898. Edited by Isabel C. Barrows, 10-11. Boston: Lake Mohonk Conference, 1898.

Roosevelt, Theodore. The Works of Theodore Roosevelt. National ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926.

Strong, Josiah. Our Country: Its Possible Future and Its Current Crisis. Rev. ed. New York: Baker & Taylor Co., 1891.

U.S. Congress. Congressional Record. 56th Cong., 1st sess., 1900. Vol. 33, pt. 1.

Secondary Sources

Abrams, Ray H., Preachers Present Arms: The Role of the American Churches and Clergy in the World War I and II, with some Observations on the War in Vietnam. Rev. ed. Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1969.

Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

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Bradley, James. The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2009.

Brands, H. W. Bound to Empire: The United States and the Philippines. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Brown, Ira V. “Lyman Abbott and Freedmen’s Aid, 1865-1869.” The Journal of Southern History 15, no. 1 (February 1949): 22-38.

——. “Lyman Abbott: Christian Evolutionist.” New England Quarterly 23, no. 2 (June 1950): 218-231.

——. Lyman Abbott, Christian Evolutionist: A Study in Religious Liberalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1953.

Chapell, Colin B. “The Third Strand: Race, Gender, and Self-Government in the Mind of Lyman Abbott.” Fides et Historia 42, no. 2 (Summer/Fall 2010): 27-54.

Digrius, Dawn M. “The Un-Heretical Christian: Lynn Harold Hough, Darwinism and Christianity in 1920s America.” Methodist History 49, no. 4 (July 2011): 223-240.

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Dyer, Thomas G. Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race. Baton rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

Gamble Richard M., The War for Righteousness: Progressive Christianity, the Great War, and the Rise of the Messianic Nation. Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003.

Gorrell, Donald K. The Age of Social Responsibility: The Social Gospel in the Progressive Era, 1900-1920. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1988.

Gramsci, Antonio. “The Formation of the Intellectual.” In The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, edited by Vincent B. Leitch, 1138-1143. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2001.

Harris, Susan K. God’s Arbiters: Americans and the Philippines, 1898-1902. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

Healy, David. US Expansionism: The Imperialist Urge in the 1890s. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.

Hilfrich, Fabian. Debating American Exceptionalism: Empire and Democracy in the Wake of the Spanish-American War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Hofstadter, Richard. Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1945.

Hoganson, Kristin L. Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998.

Hudson, Winthrop S. “Protestant Clergy Debate the Nation’s Vocation, 1898-1899.” Church History 42:1 (March 1973): 110-118.

Hutchison, William R. The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Jones, Gregg. Honor in the Dust: Theodore Roosevelt, War in the Philippines, and the Rise and Fall of America’s Imperial Dream. New York: New American Library, 2012.

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Karraker, William Archibald. “The American Churches and the Spanish-American War.” PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1940.

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Kinzer, Stephen. Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006.

Lears, Jackson. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2009.

Luker, Ralph E. The Social Gospel in Black and White: American Racial Reform, 1885-1912. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1991.

McCullough, Matthew. “‘My Brother's Keeper’: Civil Religion, Messianic Interventionism, and the Spanish-American War of 1898.” PhD diss., Vanderbilt University, 2011.

Sweet, William Warren. Makers of Christianity: From John Cotton to Lyman Abbott. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1937.

Thomas, Evan. The War Lovers: Roosevelt, Lodge, Hearst, and the Rush to Empire, 1898. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2010.

Wetzel, Benjamin James. “Onward Christian Soldiers: Lyman Abbott’s Justification for the Spanish-American War.” Journal of Church and State 54, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 406-425.

——. “‘A Scourge and Minister’: Lyman Abbott, Liberal Protestantism, and American Warfare, 1861-1920.” Master’s thesis, Baylor University, 2011.

White, Ronald C., Jr. Liberty and Justice for All: Racial Reform and the Social Gospel (1877-1925). San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990.

Williams, Walter L. “United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation: Implication for the Origins of American Imperialism.” The Journal of American History 66, no. 4 (March 1980): 810-831.