The beating heart of the Civil War
It was a Sunday in April, a church service in Brownsville. The pastor, Presbyterian minister R.M. Wallace, told his congregants, “It is the duty of all citizens to aid the constitutional authorities in maintaining the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws.
“The national government,” he exclaimed, “is being assailed and the Capital menaced by traitors.”
The editor of a Uniontown daily, a rascal by the name of Edward G. Roddy, told readers: “We owe allegiance to the federal government and are duty bound to sustain, protect and defend it without any reference whatsoever to the person who may administer it.
“It behooves every citizen to prepare for the defense of the government and state.”
This during a time of supreme emergency, the opening days of THE civil war, the only one we’ve ever had, the only one, hope to God, we ever have.
Last spring, the spring of 2020, writing a sentence such as the above would have been excessively alarmist.
A year later, it doesn’t seem excessive or alarmist at all. For while the new president has taken hold, January 6 is still out there, an ugly ripping of the national fabric that is far too close in time for comfort or ease.
The nation was ripe with expectancy in the early days of 1861. For a very few maybe, it was riches, as in the windfall resulting from the sudden appearance in Uniontown of a Captain Boyd of the U.S. Army, in town to purchase horses for the cavalry.
For others, the future promised not material wealth but spiritual awakening, though how this might work was hard to say. E.P. Oliphant, addressing the citizen-soldiers of Georges, Springhill and Nicholson townships, said, “It is not permitted to us who are finite to penetrate the future.
“Its curtain will not rise nor be drawn aside at our bidding. In speaking of things to come it must always be done potentially and uttered in wishes, hopes and prayers.”
Oliphant went on to speculate that “it may be that this nation is specially reserved by the great Ruler of the universe for this baptism of fire and blood, to purify her for a yet higher and holier mission.”
And what of our future? That’s to come. We shall find out. The “curtain will not rise nor be drawn aside at our bidding. In speaking of things to come it must always be done potentially and uttered in wishes, hopes and prayers.”
Here’s one wish, one hope, one prayer: That we cast aside our fixation on “values.”
The endless “values” wars emanating consistently from the right and periodically from the left are for losers. They get us nowhere. They distract, they bamboozle, they accentuate our differences, they pin us into corners from which the chances of escape are slim.
You want “values?” Here they are: free speech, free elections, freedom of religion (and non-religion), freedom from fear and from want, freedom of association, free assembly, equal justice under law.
Everything else is not a “value” and therefore negotiable.
To paraphrase: There are no Republican values; there are no Democratic values; there are only American values.
Not to worry: there’s plenty to argue about. For goodness sakes, we’ve been arguing for 250 years and more.
Of all the niche caucuses sheltered under the dome in Washington, the one with the greatest appeal, for me, is the House “problem-solving caucus.”
In politics, there should be fewer “issues” and more solutions.
Eight generations removed from the Civil War, the issues of national unity and race are still with us.
The war itself was brutal. Not far from here, in the hills of West Virginia, Confederate irregulars were the bane of the Federal army. They did a good day’s work by harassing and disrupting: tearing down telegraph lines, ripping up railroad tracks, and picking off isolated union pickets, killing them and then rifling their pockets for loot.
Lt. James Abraham of Smithfield despised them. He hated all rebels. They were barbaric, he told relatives at home by letter – hardly worthy opponents for the Union’s god-fearing legions.
Then came the late summer battle near Sharpsburg, Md., along Antietam Creek, a two-hour drive on I-70 from here, where thousands, both North and South, fell.
“Bill,” the lieutenant wrote his brother, “my imagination of a battlefield has fallen far short of the terrible realities.”
Though horrified and not a little taken back, Abraham wished the war against slavery and for “our glorious institutions” to continue until the rebels were crushed.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. His latest book, “JFK Rising,” is available on Amazon. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.