Catastrophe, Part III: A Failure of Faith

As a Presbyterian, I was particularly interested in how the Joneses’ Presbyterian faith interacted with the catastrophe of war. The Joneses, good Calvinists, believed that God was sovereign over all events, and therefore war came from him, meant to induce repentance for sin. In trying to make sense of the war and predict its outcome, they consistently combined two seemingly contradictory impulses. On the one hand they were extremely confident that their cause was in the right, that they had been attacked for no cause by an aggressive and godless force from the North, and thus surely God would come to the aid of their armies and give them success. (They were well aware that the North outnumbered and outproduced them, so that Confederate victory could only come from a combination of God’s intervention and the superior honor and bravery of Confederate soldiers.)

On the other hand, they believed that God brings war as a punishment for sin, and therefore they must humbly repent of their sins in order that God would show them mercy and stop the punishment. So: we are in the right, and we are in the wrong.

It makes for a peculiar combination of bravado and humility:

Reverend Jones, in 1861: “I cannot divest myself of the impression that there will be some effectual interposition of a kind Providence in our favor and for our repose. It may be only what I desire; but surely we are right, and whatever be our sins that call for judgment—and they are many—yet so far as the North is concerned, we have not sinned against it, and therefore may pray for a blessing.” (686)

“It has been so far a summer of much anxiety and of excitement on account of the unnatural, unjust, and infamous war that is waged upon us… The Lord appears to be on our side, and so far has kept back the advance of the enemy and given us the victory in almost every encounter with him. We are in His hands, and our souls must wait only upon Him. We have been sinning with the Northern people as a nation for seventy or eighty years, and now we have become two nations, and the Lord may use us as rods of correction to each other. While this is so and must be acknowledged in all humility before God, we believe and are confident that in our strife with that people we are in the right, and can commend our cause to His protection and blessing with the assured expectation that we shall eventually triumph.” (709)

Mrs. Mary Jones, 1862: “I feel ever unwavering confidence in asking my Heavenly Father to defend and deliver my suffering country, for I believe our cause is just and right. At the same time I know that we have individual and national sins that merit the displeasure and judgments of a holy God. I pray daily that we may feel them, and so truly repent of them and forsake them that His anger and His wrath may be turned away from us, and the light of His countenance again lifted upon us through our Divine Redeemer!” (829)

Colonel Charles Jones, 1862: “War is a national judgment of the severest character; it comes from God, and is sent for wise purposes and to accomplish given ends. Among those objects perhaps the most important is the alienation of the hearts of the people from sin and worldliness, and a return of them to true contrition for past offenses, and the fear and love of God. It seems to me, as I look around me, that we have not even yet learnt the uses or accomplished the objects of this judgement. And this makes me tremble for the future.” (993)

Mrs. Mary Jones, 1862, upon news of battlefield victory: “I have not words to express the emotions I feel for this signal success in the outset of this last fearful and terrific assault of our enemies, when probably he has arrayed a force five or six to one, armed with all the deadly appliances of modern warfare to overwhelm and destroy us. Surely our strength to resist and overcome is immediately from above and in answer to prayer; and I believe if we trust in our Almighty God and Saviour and strive to perform our duty to our suffering land in His fear and for His glory, that our enemies will never triumph over us….

“What comfort and encouragement is afforded by the fact that we have so many Christian, true, God-fearing commanders; and that in many regiments of our army amidst the temptations and horrors of war the Blessed Spirit has been poured out for the conviction and conversion of officers and men; and that they who may be said to be treading the courts of death have had opened up to them the gates of everlasting life! … Oh, that our God would give us true repentance for our many, great, and aggravated sins, which have brought this awful judgment of war upon us, and speedily establish us as a nation in righteousness and peace!” (1001)

Mrs. Mary Jones, 1863: “How long will this awful conflict last? And to what depths of misery are we to be reduced ere the Sovereign Judge of all the earth will give us deliverance? It does appear that we are to be brought very low. May the Lord give us such true repentance and humility before Him as shall turn away His wrath and restore His favor, through the merits and intercession of our Divine Redeemer! I do bless God for the spirit of true patriotism and undaunted courage with which He is arming us for this struggle. Noble Vicksburg! From her heroic example we gather strength to hold on and hold out to the last moment. I can look extinction for me and mine in the face, but submission never! It would be degradation of the lowest order.” (1076)

What exactly do the Joneses mean when they refer to repentance? Repent for what, exactly? It appears they have in mind conventional sins like drunkenness, adultery, lies and gossip. They certainly don’t repent of the sins of slavery. Contrast that with Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, in which he sees the sins of slavery as belonging to both North and South: “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.’”

Lincoln possessed a comprehensive view of the war, but the Jones family, blind to the sins of slavery, find their moral universe fractured. Their theology tells them that war calls for repentance, but they only can repent of sins that have nothing to do with the war and are not really their own in the first place. (They are not drunkards or adulterers.) They will kill to defend their way of life built on imprisoning other people; but they will repent of gossip.

During the war, their rosy view of slavery comes slowly undone. To their distress, it seems that the only way to keep their contented slaves from running away is by military force. As early as 1861 Reverend Jones requests that the army “leave such a military force behind as will be sufficient to keep our colored population under supervision and control, and so prevent anything like an effort on the art of many or few of them to abandon the plantations and escape to the enemy.” (805)

By 1862 he writes, “Some Negroes (not many) have run away and gone to the enemy, or on the deserted sea islands. How extensive the matter may become remains to be seen. The temptation of change, the promise of freedom and of pay for labor, is more than most can stand; and no reliance can be placed certainly upon any. The safest plan is to put them beyond the reach of temptation (as to render it impossible for them to go) by leaving no boats in the water and by keeping guards along the rivers.” (925)

A few days later he writes his son Charles, “A public meeting of the citizens was called on the 8th at Hinesville to adopt some measure for suppressing if possible the escape of our Negroes to the enemy on the coast. Fifty-one have already gone from this county. Your Uncle John has lost five. Three are said to have left from your Aunt Susan’s and Cousin Laura’s; one was captured, two not; and one of these was Joefinny! Such is the report. The temptation of cheap goods, freedom, and paid labor cannot be withstood. None may be absolutely depended on. The only preservation is to remove them beyond the temptation, or seal by the most rigid police all ingress and egress; and this is most difficult.” (929) Reverend Jones later asks his (lawyer) son whether he can summarily execute as traitors any re-captured slaves.

Lt. Jones replies, “If insensible to every other consideration, terror must be made to operate upon their minds, and fear prevent what curiosity and desire for utopian pleasures induce them to attempt. If allowed to desert, our entire social system will be upset if the supremacy of the law of servitude and the ownership of such property be not vigorously asserted in cases where recaptures occur.” (940)

Their pleasant and comfortable way of life has been revealed to be a prison, with them as wardens using terror to maintain their supremacy.

When Sherman’s troops overrun their section of Georgia, the game is up. Mary Jones writes in her diary, “Nearly all the house servants have left their homes; and from most of the plantations they have gone in a body, either directly to the enemy or to congregate upon the large plantations in Bryan County, which have been vacated and upon which a plenty of rice remains.” (1248)

In the following months, the Jones’ letters repeatedly express loathing for their freed slaves. Mary Jones writes her son Charles: “I am thoroughly disgusted with the whole race. I could fill my sheet with details of dishonesty at [our plantations in] Montevideo and Arcadia, but my heart sickens at the recital, and a prospect of dwelling with them.” (1304) She later writes her daughter, “My life long (I mean since I had a home) I have been laboring and caring for them, and since the war have labored with all my might to supply their wants, and expended everything I had upon their support, directly or indirectly; and this is their return…. It is impossible to get at any of their intentions, and it is useless to ask them. I see only a dark future for the whole race.” (1308,9)

In the new regime the Joneses make attempts to hire former slaves, but the arrangements are contentious and not, evidently, profitable for the owners. The plantation system is not workable without coercion.

If you have wondered how a defeated Confederacy so soon violently tore power back and instituted Jim Crow terror, you have only to read these letters. The Jones family appears never have to reflected on their own failings or the failings of their beautiful way of life; the fault is always and wholly with the North and the Negroes. The Jones see themselves as blameless, and they are furious at the people they once enslaved, that they are ungrateful. Clearly, the Joneses’ calls for repentance in the face of war were pure cant. They never examined themselves. They never repented. Their theology was rhetorical, not real. It did not puncture their blindness, not even after war had destroyed the way of life they had been willing to kill to defend.

The implicit warning for us is that good theology provides little protection from our self-justifications. We can talk ourselves into anything. (Which is one meaning of the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity: even our rational faculties are under the power of sin.)

The South, including many sincere, honorable people like the Joneses, fortified itself against any critique of its way of life. They threatened abolitionists with murder. They burned their newspapers. They furiously attacked their moral character. If you anathematize your enemies, you cannot learn anything from them. And they did not. Their beautiful way of life was ruined and—even worse from their point of view—revealed to be a fraud. The peaceful plantation was a prison camp. Even then, they couldn’t see it.

To avoid cant and self-deception, we must refuse to vilify those who differ from us, but listen carefully and introspectively. That is surely one reason Jesus told his followers to examine their own eyes before operating on others’.