Kindle Notes & Highlights
Furthermore, a faith of the heart provided greater religious sustenance, especially to women. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison all preferred a reasoned religion of the mind, but “founding mothers” such as Martha Washington took comfort in a Christianity more personal than the latitudinarian, more orthodox than the deist, and more emotional than the rationality of the “Age of Reason.”
Like evangelicals generally, Meade and his group promoted three priorities: a deep awareness of personal sin, the need to be born again, and the mission of transforming the world in the name of God.8 By framing these objectives in the context of the Prayer Book and Episcopal tradition, they gave new meaning to the church’s rites while opening the door to renewed vigor within the institution.
In 1819 the group created the Washington Theological Repertory to set forth principles “of the Bible, as illustrated in the
Articles, Liturgy, and Homilies of the Protestant Episcopal Church,” “catholic principles” that supported “the Apostolical character of her institution, the pious tendency of her rites and ceremonies, and the evangelical nature of her doctrines.” It aimed “to humble the sinner, and to exalt the Saviour, to show him the utmost depth of his depravity, as the best and the only means of inducing him to fly for refuge to the Lord Jesus Christ.” With Wilmer as editor and McIlvaine a major contributor, the journal published sermons, articles, news, and views from the wider church, including from
...more
Growing the church was one major goal. Nurturing Christian lives was another. Evangelicals devoutly believed that the outward and visible reflected the inward and spiritual. A transformed heart will show forth in transformed behavior.
His theology appears in a testy letter to Jefferson Davis. In 1862 a new book, dedicated to the Confederate president, oddly combined “creationism” and “evolution.” It alleged that whites were descended from Adam and Eve, and blacks from apes. Meade took offense on two counts. Dismissing God’s creation of all races through Adam struck Meade as a “positive denial of the divine inspiration & truth of the Bible” and its teaching that all humankind is related, thus implying that Christ died only for some, namely, whites. Then, the “disgusting vilification of the whole African race” by “placing it
...more
For many years Meade pursued a popular though ultimately unrealistic plan to resolve the issue of slavery. In December 1816, he, Key, Wilmer, Edmund Jennings
Lee, Richard Bland Lee, and Mary Custis’s brother, William Fitzhugh, gathered in Washington with others to charter the Society for Colonizing the Free People of Color of America. It proposed to free slaves, send them to western Africa, sponsor missionaries to support them, and thereby create a Christian state i...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Lee did not side with Virginia to perpetuate slavery. The accounts of Mary Custis Lee and William Allan reiterate the position he outlined in letters to his family. He considered slavery to be an evil, a curse on white and black alike, that God, in due course, would bring to an end. Precisely how slavery would cease was best left to God and not to human intervention, which would inevitably be plagued by sin—as, in his eyes, Northern abolitionists amply proved. Although he never shared the Custis family’s passion for colonizing freed slaves in Africa, he claimed, after the war, “always to have
...more
A helpful note on Lee's motives for refusing command in the US Army, resigning his commission, and being available to Virginia.
Lee’s reference to Missouri as a “country” hints at another widely shared conception of his time. The United States was not yet a solidified nation. It lacked a truly national identity. Other than through its post offices, the federal government had little presence in the lives of most Americans. Rather, the state evoked a person’s primary loyalty. One was a Virginian or a Georgian or a Minnesotan before one was an American. Indeed, a common name for the country was plural—these United States—rather than singular—the United States. It took a civil war to forge the thirty-two states into one
...more
Finally, especially between 1857 and 1861, Lee believed the Constitution itself was under attack. Forces outside of the South threatened intrusions into the sovereignty of states (specifically over slavery), thereby contradicting the philosophy of a federal union and undermining the very nature of the nation. Fanaticism on both sides had prevailed precisely as the Founders—and his own father—had dreaded. In the early days of the Revolution, Henry
had grown skeptical of the people’s ability to attain and then sustain the public virtue deemed essential to American independence. Republics of the past had foundered when a free people grew selfish, corrupt, or lazy in their vigilance of liberties, allowing tyranny to grow. Now, Lee feared, the country had run “the full length of democracy.”29
Lee faced, then, an excruciating ethical dilemma. He wished slavery to end, but he opposed the means being used to abolish it. The end did not justify the means, especially because the means, he believed, would also destroy the very essence of the Union. Honor impelled him to rise
to the defense of both his state and the Constitution of the United States that he had sworn to defend. After honor came duty. Both were principles he had known and pursued since birth. They were integral elements of his paternal inheritance.
Ethics of the Enlightenment prized above all else “doing the right thing.”
Lee’s response to the death of Stonewall Jackson reflected that sensibility. When notified of Jackson’s severe injuries after the stunning Confederate victory at Chancellorsville, he refused to listen; “it is too painful a subject.” On learning that doctors amputated Jackson’s arm, he declared, “He has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm.” Then, when Jackson died, he was more philosophical. “In addition to the death of friends & officers consequent upon the late battles, you will see we have to mourn the loss of the good & great Jackson. Any victory would be dear at such a price,”
...more
“So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interests of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would cheerfully have lost all I have lost by the war, and have suffered all I have suffered, to have this object attained.”8
Lee on slavery after the end of the.Civil War.
Washington Standard in Olympia opined, “Whatever may be thought of the cause to which he pledged his life, fortune, and position, no liberal minded man will question the purity and sincerity of his motives. As a military man he had no peer; in his private character he had no superior.”
In short, Lee, the vanquished chieftain in war, had become a leader in peace, esteemed by even some of his former foes. His character impelled him to move from one to the other, and his character was shaped by his faith.
