OUR LEGACY FROM THE PAST - NCCUMC

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miasma over our beautiful hills and fertile valleys, and to impregnate
our salubrious atmosphere with its like
poison, that our firesides may be desolated, our hearthstones
stained with blood shed by servile hands, and our country, one
grand mass of ruins, they have inaugurated Civil War. They are
pushing that war with a vigorous hand. In less than two months
since the first clarion note of war sounded out from Washington
City, over 100,000men in battle array are crowding along our
borders. What in the name of God, is our sin against them: Have
we wronged them? Did we owe them ought and repudiate that
debt? Have we interfered with their domestic institutions? Have
we ever stolen their property or retained it when it has fallen into
our hands? Have we ever coveted their lands-their gold, their
wealth? Have the doors of hospitality ever by us been closed
against them? Have we ever harmed their commerce? The
answer to each of these interogations must come forth a stunning
negative! Then is not the cause for which we contend just? and the
grounds we occupy right?
4. The setting up our banners in the name of our God, Implies
that we will use no means that God forbids in the War.
I shall not detain you with disquisitions on the morality of war.
I suppose and shall proceed upon the supposition that we agree
upon the teachings of the Bible. The grand objection that I have
heard against Defensive war is, The opposing physical force to
physical force. I shall admit that Offensive physical force is different,
but with it we have nothing to do, but to repel it in the
present war. We defend in the name of God, not offend against the
claims of humanity; the spirit and letter of our holy Christianity;
the tears of premature widowhood; and the cries of destitute and
suffering orphanage. The foe-man swarms along our borders
belching forth destruction upon our property. Our wives,
daughters, sisters are exposed to their madness and shall we not
repel them? Drive them from their ruinous purpose upon our soil?
Did we fail to oppose physical force to repel our advancing foe and
hinder his ingression to our homes, we could not ask God's blessing
upon us.