The American Civil War
Was Patrick Henry’s Prophecy

Ominously, Patrick Henry pointed ahead to the inevitability of an American Civil War. This is remembered as Patrick Henry’s Prophecy.

“This government cannot last,” he thundered, “It will not last a century. We can only get rid of its oppression by a most violent and bloody struggle.”

After the guns of the American Civil War fell silent, the voice of Patrick Henry’s great grandson echoed across the battle fields and down the corridors of time. Reverend Edward Fontaine wrote, “The violent and bloody struggle has ensued, and it has not yet ended…The government has been overturned, and the century has not yet rolled away.”

Judgment On The
Installment Plan

The American Civil War was the first installment in God's pay-as-you-go judgment plan for rejecting His covenant "four score and seven years" earlier. Christian historians such as John Eidsmoe, David Barton (WallBuilders), Peter Marshall, and D. J. Kennedy usually fail to make this connection. It was not just the South, but the entire country that was being judged. With the American Civil War, the process of centralization of power in the Federal Government began in earnest.

It's interesting to note the role reversal that we've seen in the two political parties since the Civil War. Today we think of the Democrat Party as the Party of Centralization and the Republicans champions of state's rights.

But in those days it was quite the opposite. Lincoln's primary motive was preserving the union -- political centralization -- with slavery just a convenient spark plug to ignite the conflagration.

The fact that Republicans claim Lincoln as one of their patron saints is an indication of the tremendous confusion surrounding this period. There is boundless hypocrisy associated with the whole era.

The South Was Right

For example, Virginia had voted on nearly 20 occasions to outlaw the slave trade, but in each case was prevented by the North, who owned most of the slave ships. That was one of the things that was so galling to the South. They felt that the emotional issue of slavery was being abused and the abuse of slaves vastly over-stated, to accomplish an underlying political agenda to destroy state's rights.

To give a modern-day example, it is possible to collect antedotal evidence to prove that we have an epidemic of child abuse and use that evidence to suppress the rights of the vast majority of families.

In many, if not most cases, slaves in the old South were purchased for much the same reason that Christians today engage in overseas adoption: to rescue them from a life of hopeless paganism. Their condition was usually happier, healthier and more secure than that of the typical European wage earner, who always had to wonder where the next meal was coming from.

A study of slavery in the Bible reveals that God condemns the slave trade as a capital offense, but it does not condemn slave owning under certain historical considerations -- it certainly regulates it and requires the kind treatment of slaves, but it does not condemn it (Eph 6:5; Col 3:22-4:1). If we condemn slavery, without exception as "morally unacceptable", in the same breath we condemn the Apostle Paul (Philemon 11).

If the South was right, why then did she lose the American Civil War, especially after so remarkable a beginning. It was not until Gettysburg that the vastly outmatched Southern army was finally beaten decisively and crippled permanently. A student of the battle can only stand in awe at the sovereignty of God, which frustrated Lee’s best efforts and seemed to employ the foibles of his three generals – rather than northern superiority – to defeat him.

The South Was Not Right

As a matter of fact, the South wasn’t right. For one thing, the Confederate Constitution repeated almost verbatim the blasphemous exclusion of the religious test oath for public officeholders. Although the practice of slavery in the South was generally mild and of a familial character, the legal structure governing it was not compatible with Biblical laws governing slavery. This left the weak and helpless in society unprotected, thereby permitting abuse in extreme cases and provoking the judgment of God.

This did not, however, excuse the slanderous and violent approach to the problem employed by the northern abolitionists. Abolitionist hatred and excesses led inexorably to the American Civil War.

So we have a choice: Are we going to listen to the Bible or are we going to listen to the 19th Century abolitionists who plunged the nation into a dreadful war to appease their sanctimonious version of morality. They chose to ignore the example of the British, who gradually abolished the slave trade peacefully over a 30-year period. In so doing, they firmly established the federal government as the supreme and unquestioned fountain of political authority in the United States of America.

Ultimately, we are met with the same perplexing question faced by the prophet Habakkuk, who foresaw the approach of the Chaldean barbarians to judge the people of God. Why does God use the wicked to judge His people?

Habbakkuk provides the answer: "Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteious: therefore wrong judgment proceedeth" (Hab 1:4). Our appeal must be to the mercy of God in judgment following the example of the prophet, "O Lord, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known: in wrath remember mercy." (Hab 3:2).