Ominously, Patrick Henry predicted the American Civil War, in what is remembered as “Patrick Henry’s Prophecy.”  “This government cannot last,” he thundered, “It will not last a century.  We can only get rid of its oppression by a most violent and bloody struggle.”  And sure enough, 87 years later the American Civil War consolidated power under a godlike central government.

At its conclusion, the voice of Reverend Edward Fontaine echoed down the corridors of time.  Patrick Henry’s great grandson wrote, “The violent and bloody struggle has ensued, and it has not yet ended…The government has been overturned, and the century has not yet rolled away.”

This was the first installment in the Divine pay-as-you-go judgment plan for breaking the national covenant “four score and seven years” earlier.  The entire country was being judged by the consolidation of power, although the South bore the brunt in losing the American Civil War.

“Preserving the Union” was Lincoln’s euphemism for wresting power from the states.  Slavery was a convenient spark plug to justify the holocaust.  The emotional issue of slavery was exploited for Lincoln’s purposes.  The abuse of slaves was greatly exaggerated, for the subtle agenda of consolidating power.  As we are told today, “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

What is the evidence?  During the Great Depression of the 1930s the federal government employed journalists to interview former slaves.  They collected over 10,000 pages in the 40-volume “Slave Narratives.”  Only 4% of the slaves reported having “cruel masters,” according to Steve Wilkins in “America: The First 350 Years.”  Ten percent said they had “hard masters”, and the vast majority — 86% — said they had “good masters.”

Although Southern slavery was generally familial and mild, it nonetheless violated Biblical laws governing slavery.  Thus, abuse was possible under the law in rare instances, provoking the judgment of God.

But there was no excuse for the slanderous hypocrisy of the northern abolitionists and their call for a violent revolution.  Abolitionist hatred and mischaracterization polarized the sides and made The American Civil War inevitable.

Ignoring the British example of gradual abolition, they spurned a peaceful solution.  The inflammatory abolitionist rhetoric invited federal involvement and centralization of supreme and unquestioned political authority in Washington D.C.  This has accelerated to the present day.

God condemns slave trading as a capital offense, but He permits slave owning in certain situations.  Otherwise, why would he give regulations for the kind treatment of slaves (Eph 6:5; Col 3:22-4:1)?  By condemning slavery, without exception as a “great moral evil”, we are condemning God and His Word spoken through the Apostle Paul (Philemon 11).

Why then did the South lose The American Civil War, especially after so remarkable a beginning. As we have noted above, the South wasn’t right.  Biblical slave laws were not instituted and the Confederate Constitution repeated almost verbatim the blasphemous exclusion of the religious test oath for public officeholders.

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