Journal #20: "A Nation Reborn"

Quite a shocking and informational video, "God in America" -- Part III: "A Nation Reborn," Shows the religious aspects on the issue of slavery between both the North and the South. The North made fronts on how evil and sinful the institution was while the South tried to defend by claiming its a god supported institution, both sides had ministers to back them up along with verses on the bible. The civil war was like a religious crusade for both sides to determine once and for all, who really had god's support. As the war reached its latter stages, the North saw the war in a new way, that it was a punishment for two hundred and fifty years of slavery, and that god was truly on their side.

The great president,Abraham Lincoln, had went through his own religious moment in the Civil War. Troubled by his son's death, he used the Minister's eulogy as the guide to his spiritual decision to ban slavery. Doing so, he effectively set a new path and goal for the Union, as a religious crusade to banish slavery, and racial equality, which he helped set up the progress to do so. His new religious view of god, that God chose to have this war decide the fate of America and Slavery, changed America forever as blacks now had a chance for equal opportunities and freedom. What surprised me about Lincoln though, was how deeply he believed that god was making him suffer to help change America, Comparing him to an old biblical tale of how a man was forced to wonder how one with a connection with god must suffer. Lincoln can be compared very closely with Frederick Douglass, the Black Abolitionist with his view on god's support of abolishing slavery and the recognition that force must be used to free the blacks as Lincoln showed as he declared that Slavery must be abolished with the might of the Union Army as they rushed to defeat the south. A religious man that did many great things for his country, Abe Lincoln will be remembered how his religious views changed the United States forever.