Today is a day set apart for “Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer” as decreed by “his Excellency the President of the Confederate States.”
Many Southern Baptist divines, caught up in the Christian nationalist fervor that permeates the Confederacy, happily comply with Davis’ decree. One such prominent Baptist is Henry Holcombe Tucker of Georgia, professor of Belles-Lettres and Metaphysics at Georgia Baptists’ Mercer University and future president of that institution. Today Holcombe stands before the Legislature of Georgia, in the Capitol at Milledgeville and delivers a rousing sermon entitled, “God in the War.” Following is an excerpt:
Desolation! Desolation! Thousands of our young men have been murdered. Thousands of fathers and mothers among us have been bereaved of their sons. Thousands of widows are left disconsolate and heart-broken, to struggle through life alone. The wail of thousands of orphans is heard through the land, the Ægis of a father’s protection being removed from over their defenceless heads. Thousands of brave men are at this moment lying on beds of languishing, some prostrated by the diseases incident to the army and camp, and some by cruel wounds. Every house within reach of the seat of war is a hospital, and every hospital is crowded. Huge warehouses emptied of their merchandize, and churches, and great barns, are filled with long rows of pallets beside each other, containing each a sufferer, pale, emaciated and ghastly. Some writhe with pain; some rage with delirium; some waste with fever; some speak of home, and drop bitter tears at the recollection of wives soon to be widows, and babes soon to be fatherless. The nurse hurries with noiseless step, ministering from bedside to bedside. The pious chaplain whispers of Jesus to the dying. The surgeon is in frightful practice, bloody though beneficent; and as his knife glides through the quivering flesh and his saw grates through the bone and tears through the marrow, the suppressed groan bears witness to the anguish. A father stands by perhaps, to see his son mutilated. Mother and wife and sisters at home witness the scene by a dreadful clairvoyance, and with them the operation lasts not for moments but for weeks. Every groan in the hospital or tent, or on the bloody field, wakes echoes at home. There is not a city, nor village, nor hamlet, nor neighborhood that has not its representatives in the army, and scarcely a heart in our whole Confederacy that is not either bruised by strokes already fallen, or pained by a solicitude scarcely less dreadful than the reality ….
Come then my countrymen, and behold the desolation. What emotion does it excite? What passion does it stimulate? To what action does it prompt? Indignation at the fanaticism, folly and sin of those who brought it all about. Rage at the authors of our ruin. Retaliation! To arms! To arms! Let us kill! Let us destroy! Let us exterminate the miscreants from the earth! Up with the black flag! They deserve no quarter! They alone are to blame for this horror of horrors. We had no hand in bringing it on. We asked for nothing but our rights. Our desire was for peace. They tormented us without cause while we were with them. What we cherish as a heaven-ordained institution they denounce as the “sum of all villanies.” They regarded us as worse than heathen and pirates; they degraded us from all equality; they spurned us from all fellowship; they taught their children to hate us; their ministers of religion chased us like bloodhounds, actually putting weapons of death in the hands of their agents with instructions to murder us ….
In the economy of God the wicked are often used as instruments for the accomplishment of divine ends ….
My countrymen! it is right for us to resort to all the means of defence which Providence has placed within our reach. It is proper to call into action our best civil and military talent, to strain every energy to the utmost in supplying the material of war. As for that sublime faith which we have in the unconquerable valor of our troops, I admire it, I partake in it ….
While it is true that we need constant admonition to wean us from trust in human resources and lift our thoughts to a higher Power, yet it is also a fact, and one most gratifying to the christian, that thus far in the war, there has been a wonderful turning of the hearts of the people to God.– When Col. Hill wrote to the Governor of North Carolina that the Lord of Hosts had given us the victory at Bethel, he spoke the sentiment of the whole army. Our soldiers, from the highest officer to the humblest private in the ranks, habitually ascribe our victories to God. Even the irreligious seem to pause for a moment when they speak of Bethel or Manassas, and reverently acknowledge God in the battle. So universally does this feeling pervade our troops that it excites the wonder of all who have had an opportunity of observing it. When Mr. Memminger introduced into the Confederate Congress the ever-memorable and sublime resolutions ascribing the victory of the 21st of July to the King of kings and Lord of lords, a thrill of acquiescence and hearty appreciation flashed over the whole Confederacy, and the hearts of all the people were melted together. When the news reached this Legislative Hall only day before yesterday, that the Providence of God had brought across the ocean to our shores a ship laden with weapons of defence, and shoes for our feet, and other articles of necessity and comfort, the Representatives of the people here assembled, almost unanimously and simultaneously fell to their knees, and while tears of gratitude streamed from many a cheek, and amid a wide spread murmur of scarcely suppressed sobs, their presiding officer as the spokesman of the Assembly, offered up to God a tribute of prayer and thanksgiving!– Oh! that was a thrilling spectacle, and on which doubtless angels looked with beaming eyes and a new delight. Surely such a scene never occurred before. The record has been entered on the Journal and is now a chronicle of the times. Posterity will read it centuries hence with moistening eyes. Heartstrings will quiver and bosoms will heave with emotion all over the world on perusing this sublimest page in history. It is cheering to believe that the record is copied in heaven, and that this outburst of gratitude which thrilled the breasts of men and angels with such sweet and strange emotion, was not unacceptable to Him, to whom the tribute was paid and whose goodness was the cause of it. And now that His Excellency the President of the Confederate States has set apart this 15th day of November as a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, calling on all the people to flock to a throne of grace, as a father calls on his children to surround the family altar, the whole people respond; all business has ceased, and the nation is prostrate before God.
The scoffer and the infidel may question the sincerity of the christian, or if not, they will perhaps be surprised to learn that to his mind the most cheering evidence of our success in this war is this acknowledgment of God so wide spread in the hearts of the people. This pious and reverent feeling is not the natural offspring of the human heart. If it comes to us from external sources it comes from none that are bad. Satan never turns the heart to God. None but God himself could have inspired this confidence in himself: and he never inspires confidence merely to betray it.–This then is the chief reliance of the christian patriot in this emergency. It is gratifying to see that this devout and proper spirit so generally prevails, and it should be the great aim of all who love God to cultivate and cherish it ….
My countrymen, before God! in my heart and from my soul, I do believe that if the people of this Confederacy were to turn with one heart and one mind to the Lord and walk in his ways, he would drive the invader from our territories and restore to us the blessings of peace. I wish I could express myself with more plainness and with more force. Let me say again, I believe that the quickest and easiest way to terminate this war, and that favorably to ourselves, is for us all to be good. We imagine that the only way to get out of our difficulties is to fight out. There is a more excellent way. Let us by faith, obedience and love, so engage the Lord of Hosts on our side that he will fight for us; and when he undertakes our case we are safe, for “he maketh wars to cease,” and he will break the bow of the enemy, and cut his spear in sunder, and burn his chariot in the fire, and say unto him, “Be still and know that I am God!” Call it superstition if you please ye men of the world. Say that we are deluded by a religious enthusiasm. But know ye that faith in Israel’s God is not superstition, and that confidence in an over ruling providence is no delusion. Enthusiasm there may be, there is, there ought to be, we avow it, we glory in it. The heathen may rage and the people imagine a vain thing, but we rejoice when we can say,– God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof, Selah! The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge, Selah!” ….
Here then is joyful news to thousands of Christian patriots who burn with desire to aid their country’s cause, but who know not what to do. All you have to do is to be good, and in being good you are doing good; and in doing good you are securing the favor of God and contributing your share towards enlisting Him on the side of our armies. Joy to our venerable fathers, who bowing beneath the weight of years, are unable to gratify their intense desire to fly to arms! Fathers, learn from the word of God; the sins peculiar to old age. Struggle against them. Fixed as your habits may be, try to improve your hearts and lives; and be sure that every success you meet with in the improvement of your graces will tell upon our enemies with more power than the missile from the musket. Joy to our mothers and wives and sisters and daughters! While with busy fingers you ply the needle and the loom for the benefit of our brave defenders, remember that you can render aid far more efficient. Cultivate the graces and practice the virtues enjoined in the Gospel; and though no famous report will be made to the world, God will observe it; though no influence be seen going out from it, yet its influence will be felt in heaven and will descend to earth again. God yearns towards them who seek Him; and when His affections are drawn out towards us, He will be more ready to defend and deliver us. Joy to the invalid, to the blind, and deaf and dumb, and maimed, and poor, and all who by afflictive dispensations are seemingly helpless and apparently a burden to their country in these times of peril. You too can help us in the war. Bear your sorrows with patience, receive the attentions of your friends with gratitude, copy the spirit of Jesus, and as little as the world may think of it, you too will help to drive the invaders from our soil. Scoff sceptic if you please, but we rejoice in the assurance that whatever brings God nigh to us will drive our enemies far away; and what brings God so nigh as the exercise of the spirit and the practice of the duties which His word enjoins? Joy, Joy to you ye preachers of the Gospel! Know ye that whatever makes the people better makes them stronger; that in spreading truth and virtue you are supplying the true sinews of war. Your mission is one of love and peace, and yet in more senses than one you are warriors. Your profession may be thought valueless in these times of bloody strife, but in truth yours is the most efficient branch of the service. The influence of the Gospel is a wall of defence against enemies carnal no less than spiritual. Every pulpit is a battlement whence great moral Columbiads hurl huge thunders against all who would harm us. Joy, joy! ye ministers of the Gospel of peace, for you can fight for your country and yet keep your hands unstained with blood.
Holcombe thus leaves no room for doubt that the Confederacy is God’s chosen nation. Battlefield victories to date reinforce Holcombe’s prophetic words. Indeed, as Georgia’s legislators and the onlookers in attendance file out of the capital building following the Baptist minister’s sermon, the prospects of victory for God’s southern kingdom appear to be excellent.
Source: Henry Holcombe Tucker’s “God in the War” sermon to the Georgia Legislature in Milledgeville, delivered November 15, 1861; courtesy of the University of North Carolina’s “Documenting the American South” (link)
