Category Archives: Civil War

OUR ANCIENT FAITH: LINCOLN, DEMOCRACY, AND THE AMERICAN EXPERIMENT

Allen Guelzo is one of my favorite historians. I recently reread his Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction. It brilliantly captures the sights and sounds of The Civil War.

If you want to know how Professor Guelzo writes and does his research, you can find it in my interview with him:

https://www.christianitytoday.com/scot-mcknight/2020/september/how-and-where-i-write-allen-guelzo.html

A productive scholar, Professor Guelzo has a new book. Our Ancient Faith: Lincoln, Democracy, and the American Experiment is only 171 pages long, but I made over 150 marginal notes.

When I started reviewing and interviewing authors I came up with “Moore’s Law of Worthwhile Reading.” It goes like this: Take the total number of pages in a book and divide by two. If my marginal notes exceed that number, then it was a worthwhile read. You can see by that calculus that Professor Guelzo’s more than made that cut.

If you were to ask whether I find Professor Guelzo’s writing optimistic or pessimistic, I would answer, “Neither.”

In Our Ancient Faith he certainly offers sober reflections on the fragility of the democratic experiment. His characteristically judicious treatment of Lincoln has all kinds of inherent warnings for us today.

However, I find Professor Guelzo, after reading four of his books, both realistic and genuinely hopeful. His hope is certainly a tough earned one. It is tethered to his Christian convictions, but not in the irresponsible way where the past is ransacked for talking points that fit one’s preconceived bias.

The flow of history also informs Professor Guelzo’s hope. He doesn’t sugarcoat the bad actors, nor does he gloss over the weaknesses and error of those like Lincoln whom he clearly respects. In a word, Professor Guelzo does not traffic in either hagiography or cynicism. Again, you get “thick realism with hope.” (HT: Will Willimon)

If you are looking for wise and beautiful reflections to make better sense of our own tumultuous time, I highly recommend Our Ancient Faith. And if you are not looking to make better sense of the present, then read Our Ancient Faith to see why you should!

 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND AMBITION

I recently read Allen Guelzo’s terrific new history of the Civil War, Fateful Lightning

Guelzo describes how restless Lincoln was for more responsibility.  Others around him, even early on with his law practice, commented on Lincoln’s ambition.  It was sobering to read of Lincoln’s ambition in the 1850’s for the next decade would obviously find him with more responsibility than he could ever imagine.

If you are ambitious for more influence, that is not necessarily a bad thing.  God hard-wired us for making a difference, but we must be ever so careful.  Being ambitious for God’s glory and kingdom is one thing.  Being ambitious to “make a name for ourselves” is no less sinister than those in Babel who wanted to do the same thing.

Remember God’s words to Baruch, “Should you then seek great things for yourself? Do not seek them. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord, but wherever you go I will let you escape with your life.’”

YOU ARE NOT AN EXPERT ON EVERYTHING!

An occupational danger for anyone who regularly speaks in public is to overreach and say something (with presumed authority) about a subject one has not adequately studied.  General Kelly is the latest example of this, but he will be followed by many making the same mistake.

For a correction to General Kelly’s comments see Professor Caleb McDaniel:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/states-rights/544541/

HT: John Fea

 

MARCHING HOME TO UNCERTAINTY, BOREDOM, AND A LACK OF APPRECIATION

https://www.amazon.com/Marching-Home-Union-Veterans-Unending/dp/0871407817

Brian Matthew Jordan’s new book addresses an issue that others have either missed or been mistaken about: the poor treatment of Union soldiers upon coming home.

Since the war was fought in the South, those civilians experienced the horrors up close and personal. Their soldiers came back to a very appreciative homeland.

Since the war was not fought in the North, those civilians largely wanted to move on to more “positive” realities rather then be reminded of what the so-called Civil War had wrought.

Jordan has done yeoman’s work on the research and writing. It is no wonder this book was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize.

There are some difficult and dark issues to wrestle through when it comes to the horrors of war. It is hard to imagine a better starting point than Jordan’s fine book.

THE CIVIL WAR’S BEST THEOLOGIAN?

Historian Mark Noll likes to answer the question above with Abraham Lincoln.  Not because Lincoln was a Christian, but because of his acute awareness of the mysterious tracings of God’s providence.  Here is an important except from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, the greatest American speech according to well-known Civil War historians like James McPherson and George Rable:

“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.”