In November 1860 Robert Lewis Dabney addressed the young men of Hampden-Sydney College. The Governor of Virginia called a fast day for 1 November, a not infrequent occurrence in the Nineteenth Century. Governors appointed a day for the state to fast; this did not always mean literal fasting. More often than not fast days took the form of communal gatherings, typically in local churches, where townspeople gathered and a local minister admonished the congregation to turn their hearts to God.

Dabney’s exhortation on 1 November of 1860 dwelled on the consequences of political convulsions for Christians and for society more broadly. “Customary party excitements” taught Christians throughout history “that a season of political agitation is most unfavorable to spiritual prosperity. Few experienced pastors expect revivals during excited presidential canvasses.” The mind was unhelpfully “absorbed by agitating secular topics, angry and unchristian emotions are. provoked, and the tender dew of heavenly-mindedness is speedily evaporated by the hot and dusty turmoil of the popular meeting and the hustings.” Men who stirred the political pot, even if they Christians, exhibited Christian behavior. Few men, warned Dabney, “who traffic habitually in such scenes exhibit much grace. We suspect that the Christian, returning from a day of such excitement, is little inclined to the place of secret prayer.”

But how much must all these evil influences be exasperated when the subjects of political strife assume a violent and convulsive aspect? When every mind is filled by eager, secular concerns — when angry passions rage in every heart, dividing brother against brother in Zion – when unscrupulous haste precipitates multitudes into words and acts of injustice and wrong, agitating and defiling their own consciences, and provoking the hot tumults of resentment on either side what room is there for the quiet and sacred voice of the Holy Spirit?

Wise historians, said Dabney, remarked “that a time of political convulsions is a time of giant growth for all forms of vice. And just to that degree it is a time of barrenness for the Christian graces.”

Political convulsions, according to Dabney, brought out the worst in everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike. Political convulsions that turned to violence were even worse than partisan discord. “When political strife proceeds to actual war, then indeed do ‘the ways of Zion mourn.’” War, warned Dabney, was “the grand and favorite device of him who was a liar and murderer from the beginning, to obstruct all spiritual good, and to barbarize mankind.” Ever a good Presbyterian, Dabney was particularly revolted at how war interrupted “Sabbath rest and of public worship, while the sacred hours are profaned with the tumult of preparations, marchings, or actual combats.” Domestic life of families, “that most fruitful source of all wholesome restraints, is broken up by danger, fear, waste of property and separations.” Overly-passionate youths “hurry from that peaceful domain of humanizing and pious influences into the rude noise and gross corruptions of camps, whence they return, if they return at all, depraved by military license, unused to peaceful industry, and hardened to all evil, to poison society at home.” War scattered the educational pursuits at colleges and schools. Are “The voice of science is silenced, the hopes of peaceful industry are violently destroyed, till recklessness and resentment turn the very husbandman into a bandit.” Above all, Dabney lamented, “death holds his cruel carnival, and not only by the sword, but yet more by destitution, by vice, by pestilence, hurries his myriads unprepared, from scenes of guilty woe on earth, into everlasting despair below. Need we wonder that the Heavenly Dove should spread its gentle wings, and fly far from such abhorrent scenes?”

Dabney followed his own advice in the days surrounding the election of Abraham Lincoln in the late Fall of 1860. He warned against secessionists and what he called abolitionist fanaticism. And he primarily urged Christians to prayer. His call was to prayer, and to cooling off political passions of the day, and for Christians to have a moderating influence. “For God’s sake, then for your own sakes, for your children’s sake, arise declare that from this day, no money, no vote, no influence of yours, shall go to the maintenance of any other counsels than those of moderation, righteousness, and manly forbearance.”