From 1861 to 1865, the post-Second Great Awakening generation of the United States was engaged in what is commonly called the Civil War. Today there is as much romanticism of that war as there is jingoism for today’s. Like the participants in the Civil War, the supporters for today’s wars are generally deeply religious. The majority of people today have not experienced a time without war, or a time without a strong Christian support for war.
The dead from the Battle of Antietam
Regardless of reasons concerning the instigation of the Civil War, we generally see it portrayed in film and book for its nobility, honor and courage. Clean uniforms and inspiring battle portrayals sanitize the reality and the brutality of war. The field hospitals of both sides looked like human butch shops and were feared slightly less than being engulfed in brush fire while wounded on the battle field. Soldiers were haunted by the sights of bodies ripped to pieces during battle, rotting quickly in the summer sun, and consumed by scavenging animals. As well, we need to be reminded how those bodies came to their end: other soldiers. It was other soldiers that launched the canon balls, and fired the rifles. It was men that commanded men, to charge other men, that called themselves believers in the same God, and until recently, brothers of the same nation. Unfortunately, this is the same formula for even wars today, although different pigmentation, languages, and religion make it even easier to ignore that the other man is indeed another man.
George Washington Lennard
George Washington Lennard, at that time Lieutenant Colonel of the 57th Indiana regiment, wrote a small entry that should give professing Christians pause. “How can a soldier be a Christian? Read all Christ’s teachings, and then tell me whether one engaged in maiming and butchering men, men made in the expressed image of God Himself, can be saved under the Gospel.”
This is the reality of war that is unrealized by nationalist that fervently support war but have never experienced it, or passionately defend their experience as a necessity for duty to God and Country, while pushing away the things that haunt them with a clinical diagnosis of PTSD. The point is we don’t talk about what Lennard wrote about. It’s a narrative changer. It brings responsibility to our actions, and therefore the shame and guilt that we can’t be repentant of if we’ve justified it and ourselves. It brings back the fear that we rely on our almighty Military, and omniscient Government, to remove.
The dead at the Battle of Gettysburg
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More information on George Washington Lennard, and some religious implications mentioned, can be found in For Cause & Comrades by James M. McPherson. As well as https://digital.library.in.gov/Record/BSU_LSTACivWar-2304.
He was killed in battle on May 14, 1864 during the Battle of Resaca, in Resaca, Georgia.
Special thank you to Professor CJ of the Dangerous History Podcast for bringing Lennard’s words and McPherson’s book to my attention.
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