They denounced the North’s toleration of slavery as a collective sin, but they also pointed to the absence of any mention of God in the Constitution. Because the Constitution failed to acknowledge that all political authority derived from God, said the theologian Horace Bushnell, it created “no feeling of authority, or even respect among the people.” The leading Protestant journal, the Independent, accused Americans of worshipping the work of their own hands. The source of authority was not “We the People,” but God, and the Constitution should acknowledge this.
