| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 95.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War. By James O. Lehman and Steven M. Nolt. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xiv, 353 pp. $39.95, ISBN 978-0-8018-8672-0.)

James O. Lehman and Steven M. Nolt provide a nuanced study of the Civil War experience of American Mennonites and Amish. Using extensive archival material, the authors place these Anabaptist sects in the broader context of American religious and cultural life while making their account relevant to the wider Civil War story. Lehman and Nolt approach their well-documented study of these groups regionally, looking at the heavy concentrations of Mennonite and Amish communities in Pennsylvania, especially the southeastern corner; the scattered settlements of the Midwest; and those that emerged in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley in the eighteenth century. The authors reveal that the experiences of and responses to the war evinced by the Mennonites and Amish varied from state to state and region to region, and were affected by the concentration of coreligionists and the economic status of the particular group. Nevertheless, the authors demonstrate convincingly that throughout the war Mennonites both north and south struggled to find a balance between living by the dictates of conscience and obeying the demands of civil government. When the balance between the requirements of these "two kingdoms" could not be reached, conscience usually prevailed.

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