Our forefathers in some measure foresaw our greatness; but they did not foresee the magnitude of the sin of slavery, tolerated by them against their better judgment, and now crowding [the] banks [of the Rappahannock River] with immense and hostile armies. Since that day the country has grown, and with it as part of its growth, the iniquity, but the purposes of the God of battles prevail nevertheless.
-William H. Armstrong, Lt. Col. 129th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, 1863.
Those sentiments, expressed by a Pennsylvania lawyer and soldier, are astonishingly similar to those delivered by an Illinois lawyer and his Commander in Chief on March 4, 1865. For Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address, slavery was America's Original Sin, an offense that, according to God's will, "must needs come," perpetrated by the South, perpetuated by the North, God's judgment on both: "And the war came."
-William H. Armstrong, Lt. Col. 129th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, 1863.
Those sentiments, expressed by a Pennsylvania lawyer and soldier, are astonishingly similar to those delivered by an Illinois lawyer and his Commander in Chief on March 4, 1865. For Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address, slavery was America's Original Sin, an offense that, according to God's will, "must needs come," perpetrated by the South, perpetuated by the North, God's judgment on both: "And the war came."
