On October 13,
we will be discussing the role of Christianity in the civil war. In addition to
Allitt chapter seven, I offer two critical documents we will be discussing:
1. MINE EYES
HAVE SEEN THE GLORY (BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLIC)
To illustrate
the frame of mind of this time, I quote some of the best known lines in
American literature, the Hymn "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory", the
unofficial anthem of the North during the civil war. Read the words and tell
me: what are the religious ideas underlying this? How would you describe them?
What parts of the Bible are they drawn from? What is the song about? Why did it
have such an amazing effect in galvanizing Americans to go off to fight the
South?
Mine eyes have
seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling
out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed
the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is
marching on.
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! His truth is marching on.
I have seen Him
in the watch fires of a hundred circling camps
They have
builded Him an altar in the evening dews and damps;
I can read His
righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps;
His day is
marching on.
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! His day is marching on.
I have read a
fiery Gospel writ in burnished rows of steel;
As ye deal with
My condemners, so with you My grace shall deal;
Let the Hero,
born of woman, crush the serpent with His heel,
Since God is
marching on.
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Since God is marching on.
He has sounded
forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat;
He is sifting
out the hearts of men before His judgment seat;
Oh, be swift, my
soul, to answer Him! be jubilant, my feet;
Our God is
marching on.
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.
In the beauty of
the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in
His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to
make men holy, let us live to make men free;
While God is
marching on.
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! While God is marching on.
He is coming like
the glory of the morning on the wave,
He is wisdom to
the mighty, He is honor to the brave;
So the world
shall be His footstool, and the soul of wrong His slave,
Our God is
marching on.
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory!
Hallelujah! Our God is marching on.
Words: Julia
Ward Howe, 1861
Music:
Originally "John Brown's Body," composer unknown
This hymn was
born during the American Civil War when Howe visited a Union Army camp on the
Potomac River near Washington, DC. She heard the soldiers singing the song
"John Brown's Body" and was taken by the strong marching beat. She
wrote the words next day.
Quote:
"I awoke in
the grey of the morning, and as I lay waiting for dawn, the long lines of the
desired poem began to entwine themselves in my mind, and I said to myself:
"I must get up and write these verses, lest I fall asleep and forget
them."
So I sprang out
of bed and in the dimness found an old stump of a pen, which I remembered using
the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the
paper."
2, ABRAHAM
LINCOLN - SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS - SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1865
Weeks
of wet weather preceding Lincoln's second inauguration had caused Pennsylvania
Avenue to become a sea of mud and standing water. Thousands of spectators stood
in thick mud at the Capitol grounds to hear the President. As he stood on the
East Portico to take the executive oath, the completed Capitol dome over the
President's head was a physical reminder of the resolve of his Administration throughout
the years of civil war. Chief Justice Salmon Chase administered the oath of
office. In little more than a month, the President would be assassinated.
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Fellow-Countrymen:
AT
this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less
occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement
somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at
the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been
constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which
still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little
that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else
chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I
trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the
future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured. 1
On
the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously
directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it.
While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted
altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city
seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and
divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them
would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept
war rather than let it perish, and the war came. 2
One-eighth
of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the
Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a
peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the
cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the
object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the
Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial
enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the
duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of
the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and
astounding. 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." 3
With
malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to
bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle
and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a
just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.