Secession was openly framed and prayed for as a pure religious mission.

Evidence

The following year, Manly was elected to serve as chaplain to the Alabama Secession Convention when it met in the state capitol on January 7, 1861. His opening prayer, which was published the following day on the front page of the Montgomery Advertiser, captured the lofty mood of the convention and the conviction that the actions being considered were of momentous civic and religious importance. He began by praising God for reserving “this fair portion of the earth so long undiscovered, unpolluted with the wars and the crimes of the old world that Thou mightest here establish a free government and a pure religion.” And he concluded the prayer with an appeal for divine guidance for the representatives, that they might “promote the maintenance of equal rights, of civil freedom and good government, may promote the welfare of man, and the glory of Thy name!” Four days later, the Alabama convention voted to secede from the United States. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 108

Categorization

• XREF: The prayer’s tone, purifying a virgin land for equal rights, parallels Manly’s belief that slavery was biblically sanctioned and that he was acting piously, tying to Jones’s broader thesis about white Christian nationalism as deep religio-racial fusion.