On April 12, 1861 forces from the newly formed Confederate States of America fired a barrage of artillery attacking the United States military garrison at Fort Sumter, South Carolina. Less than two days later, the fort surrendered and no one was killed. However, the incident began the Civil War, as known in the North and as known in the South,’ the War between the States’.
It was by far the bloodiest conflict in American History on American soil.
The battles began after Fort Sumter in 1861: First Bull Run/First Battle of Manassas; Hatteras Inlet; Ball’s Bluff; Belmont; in 1862, the Monitor and the Merrimack; Antietam; Second Battle of Manassas; In 1863, Chancellorsville and then…. On July 1st, 1863 the most horrific three-day battle began at the Pennsylvania town of Gettysburg, with 51,000 causalities of both Union and Confederate soldiers.
Confederate General Robert E. Lee suffered his first defeat at the battle of Gettysburg. Prior to this battle, the Army of Northern Virginia was thought to be invincible. On November 19, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln traveled to that small Pennsylvania town to deliver the most famous address ever spoken by an American President. President Lincoln views the rows upon rows of caskets and newly dug graves of the fallen as he approaches the newly constructed platform at the Gettysburg National Cemetery.
In 1863 at Gettysburg…both armies thought God was on their side.
Both armies read from the same Bible and prayed to the same God.
President Lincoln said in his first inaugural address that he was elected to ‘preserve the Union’.
He soon came to know that this country could not be part free and part slave.
The late Secretary of State and former US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin L. Powell spoke of this legacy in the 2013 PBS special:
‘Lincoln@Gettysburg, marking the 150th Anniversary of Lincoln’s speech. Secretary Powell said that “the Civil War preserved the Union, the Civil War ended legal slavery. But for the next almost 100 years, we found that with segregation and Jim Crow, the reconstruction period failed. Slavery existed by yet another name. So, we needed another
Civil War, a Civil War of the mind, A Civil War of Courage, A Civil War of Character. That Civil War was not led by Lincoln, but by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” This fourth movement is dedicated to the memory of Dr. King and his three historic marches across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, Alabama during March 1965.
Lincoln completed his first inaugural address with these words:
‘I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely, they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
At his second inauguration, Lincoln left us with these final words:
‘With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, let us strive on… To finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan - - To do all which may achieve and cherish...
A just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves... And with all nations.’