"The War Between the States"
The War Between the States, I must admit, I have more questions than I do answers. What intrigues me most is, where does God fit in? Where was his purpose and plan? Was this the result of missing that plan, did we just reap the seeds we had sown? Or was it judgment on a nation? If so, who brought that judgment? The North? The South? Could it have been for different reasons or perhaps the same? With revivals taking place during the conflict, we must conclude that prayers were heard from both sides. God loved both, ministered to their hearts needs.
Both sides claimed the Constitution of the United States as justification for their cause. If as some believed, the war was judgment on a nation for the enslavement of 4 million peoples, what impending judgment could await a nation that has killed 42 million of it's own children through abortion, if we continue to refuse the right the wrong? It's interesting that both sides of the abortion issue claims the Constitution of the United States as justification for their cause.
"So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils. The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel." ---- Charles Dickens, "All The Year Round" December 28, 1861
John 13:35 By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.
The North was so persuaded of their cause they invaded their own country, killed their own people, the South was so persuaded in their cause they defended it at the cost of their lives and the lives of their Northern brothers.
Stretch your imagination, what cause could persuade you to take arms up against your own nation and invade your neighboring states? What could be forced upon you by your neighboring states that would cause you to raise up arms and rebel against it?
I suppose the reasons would differ among us, I suppose they did for them as well.
Enough of my thoughts, lets hear some of theirs:
“We must forgive our enemies. I can truly say that not a day has passed since the war began that I have not prayed for them.” ----Quoted in "A Life of General Robert E. Lee", by J. E. Cooke.
"I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation." ---- Col. Robert E. Lee, U.S.A. in a letter to his son Custis, January 23, 1861
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.
The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?
Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." ---- Abraham Lincoln. March 4, 1865, From His Second Inaugural Address.
“As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was."
If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.
If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.”
“I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.”
Yours,
A. Lincoln" ---- Abraham Lincoln. The life of Abraham Lincoln.
“I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God. Yours truly
A. LINCOLN" ---- Abraham Lincoln. 1809-1865. Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln. Volume 7.
"I was in Richmond when my Soldier fought the awful battle of Five Forks, Richmond surrendered, and the surging sea of fire swept the city. News of the fate of Five Forks had reached us, and the city was full of rumors that General Pickett was killed.
I did not believe them. I knew he would come back, he had told me so. But they were very anxious hours. The day after the fire, there was a sharp rap at the door. The servants had all run away. The city was full of northern troops, and my environment had not taught me to love them.
The fate of other cities had awakened my fears for Richmond. With my baby on my arm, I answered the knock, opened the door and looked up at a tall, gaunt, sad-faced man in ill-fitting clothes who, with the accent of the North, asked:
"Is this George Pickett's place?"
"Yes, sir," I answered, "but he is not here."
"I know that, ma'am," he replied, "but I just wanted to see the place. I am Abraham Lincoln."
"The President!" I gasped.
The stranger shook his head and said, "No, ma'am; no, ma'am; just Abraham Lincoln; George's old friend."
"I am George Pickett's wife and this is his baby," was all I could say. I had never seen Mr. Lincoln but remembered the intense love and reverence with which my Soldier always spoke of him.
My baby pushed away from me and reached out his hands to Mr. Lincoln, who took him in his arms. As he did so an expression of rapt, almost divine, tenderness and love lighted up the sad face. It was a look that I have never seen on any other face. My baby opened his mouth wide and insisted upon giving his father's friend a dewy infantile kiss. As Mr. Lincoln gave the little one back to me, shaking his finger at him playfully, he said:
"Tell your father, the rascal, that I forgive him for the sake of that kiss and those bright eyes."
He turned and went down the steps, talking to himself, and passed out of my sight forever, but in my memory those intensely human eyes, that strong, sad face, have a perpetual abiding place—that face which puzzled all artists but revealed itself to the intuitions of a little child, causing it to hold out its hands to be taken and its lips to be kissed." ---- Sally Corbell Pickett, Wife of Major General George E. Pickett, April 1865 "The Heart of a Soldier, As
Revealed in the Intimate Letters of Genl. George E. Pickett C.S.A." Pickett, George Edward, 1825 -1875
"But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men, - men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man, and must we say in the name of God?
And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order - do we call it? - fraught with such ruin.
Was it God's command we heard, or His forgiveness we must forever implore?" ----Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. The Passing of The Armies Bantam Books, 1992
Oswald Chambers: “We have got so commercialized that we only go to God for something from Him, and not for Himself. It is like say, “No, Lord, I don’t want Thee, I want myself; but I want myself clean and filled with the Holy Ghost; I want to be put in Thy showroom and be able to say, ‘This is what God had done for me.’” If we only give up something to God because we want more back, there is nothing of the Holy Spirit in our abandonment; it is miserable commercial self-interest.
That we gain heaven, that we are delivered from sin, that we are made useful to God, these things never enter as considerations into real abandonment, which is a personal sovereign preference for Jesus Christ Himself.” ---- Oswald Chambers. Written during the years 1911-1917, My utmost for His Highest.
May God bless each you,
David & Julie
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