ABSTRACT
The year 1873 not only saw the advent of the federal Comstock law, an evangelical Protestant-inspired measure that effectively banned the advertising and distribution of contraceptives nationwide. It also marked the year of the first great international meeting of evangelical Protestants on American soil. The Evangelical Alliance convened in New York City that October; fifteen thousand enthusiastic delegates and attendees raised up the United States as God’s vehicle to convert the world to the true Christian faith. Cleansed of the stain of slavery by Union victory in the Civil War, the United States seemed to Northern Protestant minds to be The Righteous Republic, chosen by God as the means for building His Kingdom on Earth.
