June 21, 2019 Friday
Bedtime Story
Origins of the Civil War
This single-image political cartoon that
you saw last night shows how unpopular the Lincoln Administration was when it
kept on borrowing money from the people via printing of endless paper
currencies to fund a civil war that no one wanted.
It was after all fought over the issue of
slavery which meant Black Africans who were barely recognized as citizens of
the Union; if at all they could be termed citizens they would belong to third-rate
category with very few civil rights.
The odd thing was that both the sides, that
is the Northern Union and Southern Confederates were using religion or rather
the Bible and the same Kings James version of it to defend their diametrically
opposite stands.
In fact – and it really is an
under-appreciated and lesser stressed fact of the American civil War – religious
differences and conflict which seem unimaginable in today’s America literally
divided the Union of the 1860s into two horizontally down the middle.
In his second inauguration address that
Abraham Lincoln delivered on 4th of March, 1865 when the American
Civil War was still in progress (albeit it was to be over soon and the
Reconstruction Era to begin following it) he delved on the issue of religion
and how it had divided one people into two:
“Both read the same Bible and pray to the
same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.”
The speech was delivered at a time when the
people of nation were passing through a nightmarish hell where the devil was
their own people.
It was a speech being delivered by a
President who during his first four years of tenure had given to its people an
endless civil war and a monetary policy that at best deserved ridicule by all
economic standards.
And yet the American historian Mark Noll
who specializes in the history of Christianity of the United States has labeled
this speech as:
“…among the handful of semisacred texts by
which Americans conceive their place in the world.”
I would like to quote for you some of the
passages from this speech which I think are relevant to our story and our
understanding of the state of the Union that was then still torn apart and the
Southern part of it battling to keep it that way.
“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 from saving the Union without
war, insurgent agents were 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.”
We shall continue with the Lincoln’s second
inaugural address of 1865 in the nights to come.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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