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Old 09-28-2012, 06:03 PM
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MS Fowler MS Fowler is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Littlestown PA ( 6 miles south of Gettysburg)
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Lincoln, ( not unlike Henry Ford whom we have previously discussed), was a complex individual whose views on many subjects changed quite a bit over his lifetime--even over the years of the Civil War. To try and fit him into some convenient mold is a fool's errand.
The prewar Lincoln of wanting to save the union by freeing some of the slaves or all of the slaves, or none of the slaves is a different man from the Lincoln of the 2nd Inaugural Address-- "If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
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