America the Beautiful Day 21: The Civil War

One of the things I love the most about America is that when we do something wrong, we eventually correct it.  The Civil War is a perfect example.  While the founding of our country was a great thing, and changed the face of the planet, it was not perfect.  During our creation of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution we did not abolish slavery.  It’s easy to criticize our founders for that.  However there is a really good chance that our nation would never have been founded if we did abolish slavery in the late 1700′s and early 1800′s.

However the sin of slavery would be addressed.  Our nation would go through a great and bloody Civil War that would lead to the end of that peculiar institution.  In President Lincoln’s second inaugural address he said:

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.”

I have always been impressed with this passage.  In part, Lincoln says that if all of the blood sacrificed by slaves up until that point be required in payment from the armies of the North and the South, then perhaps God would finally be ready to end the Civil War.  Perhaps that was what it took.  At any rate, the Civil War took and incredible toll in blood and treasure  on our nation.  However, it is a price we paid to end slavery.  For that, our country should be celebrated.