ABSTRACT
Jonathan Daniel Wells recently chronicled the emergence of this Southern Middle', placing its origins decades before the Civil War, and argued that as a class they favoured progress', economic diversification and self-improvement. In his 2001 publication, Unitarianism in the Antebellum South: The Other Invisible Institution, he chronicled this faith and its adherents below the Mason-Dixon line and demonstrated how the movement stood out against the norms of that time and place. In 1821, Dr. Samuel Miller, professor of ecclesiastical history and church government at Princeton University, drew the line for orthodoxy and summarily declared war on Unitarians. Historians have seen these attacks as the end of Unitarianism in the South. The few discourses that deal with the topic usually pause here and emphasise the decline of the faith in the would-be Confederate States. Slave ownership, land, power, and prestige also strengthened the distinctions of class and fuelled the established intricacies of a hierarchical society.
