Slavery

St Basil on Social Justice: Assisting the Poor During a Famine in a Roman Province
Cappodocian Church Fathers

St Basil on Social Justice: Assisting the Poor During a Famine in a Roman Province

10/04/2024 Bruce Strom 0

St Basil teaches us: “If you also give from your lack, you will have the vessel of oil ever flowing by the gift of mercy and the inexhaustible jar of flour. For the faithful, the grace of God zealously imitates these vessels, ever poured out yet never exhausted, returning double for what is given. Lend, you who lack, to the rich God. Have faith in the one who always personally undertakes the cause of the oppressed and makes recompense from his own resources.” […]

St Basil On Social Justice To the Rich SMALL
Cappodocian Church Fathers

St Basil the Great, On Social Justice, His Homily to the Rich

09/29/2024 Bruce Strom 3

St Basil speaks to the Rich Young Man: “It is thus evident that you are far from fulfilling the commandment, and that you bear false witness within your own soul that you have loved your neighbor as yourself. Look, the Lord’s offer shows just how distant you are from true love! For it what you say is true, that you have kept from your youth the commandment of love and have given to everyone the same as to yourself, then how did you come by this abundance of wealth?”
“The more you abound in wealth, the more you lack in love. If you had truly loved your neighbor, it would have occurred to you long ago to divest yourself of this wealth. But now your possessions are more a part of you than the members of your own body, and separation from them is as painful as the amputation of one of your limbs.”
St Basis warns the wealthy: If you have “sound judgment, you should should recognize that you have received wealth as a stewardship, and not for your own enjoyment; thus, when you are parted from it, you rejoice as those who relinquish what is not really theirs, instead of becoming downcast like those who are stripped of their own.” […]

General Grant Post-Civil War and Reconstruction
Civil War and Reconstruction

General Grant Supporting Civil Rights and Reconstruction After the Civil War, and His Conflicts with Andrew Johnson

08/30/2024 Bruce Strom 1

When the new Congress convened, the House Judiciary Committee voted by a 5 to 4 vote to impeach President Johnson. When the Senate overwhelmingly voted to restore Stanton as Secretary of War, Grant vacated his interim position. In the upcoming political struggle, as Chernow relates, “The worse things looked for Andrew Johnson, the brighter was the political future for Grant. In early February, the New York Republican Convention endorsed Grant for President.”
During the Senate trial, Grant argued privately with Congressmen on the need to convict Johnson, but he thought it would be inappropriate for him to appear during the Senate trial. Chernow puts it best: “During the war, Grant had learned that it was better to let power seek him rather than to pursue it; a good general waited to be summoned by his superiors.”
In the end, Johnson was acquitted by one vote. Seven Republicans in total voted to acquit, as they did not think that Johnson’s actions were not the high crimes and misdemeanors that the Constitution declared were needed for impeachment. Ulysses S Grant would handily win the 1868 Presidential election, and Grant’s Presidency will be featured in a future reflection. […]

States' Rights v Federal Power From the Nation's Founding to Civil War, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights Movement
Civil Rights

States’ Rights v Federal Power From the Nation’s Founding to Civil War, Jim Crow, and Civil Rights Movement

08/23/2024 Bruce Strom 1

The Constitution was drafted to correct the many weaknesses of the Articles of Confederation. Congressmen now swear allegiance to the United States rather than to their native states, as was done under the Articles. The Constitution grants the Federal government not only the power to levy taxes, but also to collect them, as well as sole control over trade and commerce. The Constitution establishes a Federal court system that can override state court decisions if there is a conflict. The US Congress, unlike the Confederation Congress, can pass routine legislation with a simple majority vote. […]

Brutalities Suffered By Slaves on the Plantations of the Antebellum South
Civil War Memories

Brutalities Suffered By Slaves on the Plantations of the Antebellum South

08/03/2024 Bruce Strom 0

In most systems of slavery, in both the ancient world and the Antebellum South, masters could beat, maim, and even murder their slaves, since slaves were property. However, abuse of slaves eased somewhat under the influence of the Stoic Philosophers and early Church Fathers. But it was common, in the Antebellum South, for masters to abuse their slaves, though they rarely killed them, since they were valuable property. But no mercy was shown to slaves who were brutally whipped by their masters, which Frederick Douglass often witnessed. No mercy was shown to suffering slaves in the Antebellum South. […]

Margaret Fleeing to Freedom With Help From Watch, Her Mastiff, and Epictetus on True Freedom
Civil War Memories

Margaret Ward Fleeing to Freedom With Help From Watch, Her Mastiff, and Epictetus on True Freedom

07/26/2024 Bruce Strom 0

Margaret was willing to make the best of her situation, she was willing to serve her master’s family as she served Jesus, she compassionately cared for her master’s family, as long as they respected her human dignity. Once they crossed the line, without hesitation, she immediately fled for freedom with her infant, guided and protected only by God and the North Star.
Epictetus discusses how the Spartan lawgiver Lycurgus that “slavery is no more bad than good, and freedom no more good than bad,” he proclaims proudly: “If I were a slave and one of these men was my master, I would torment him, even if it earned me a thrashing a day.” […]

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves
Civil War Memories

Arnold Gragston: Slave Conductor on the Underground Railroad Assists Runaway Slaves

07/13/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Gragston remembers: “Mr Tabb was a pretty good man. He used to beat us, sure; but not nearly so much as others did, some of his own kin people, even. But he was kinda funny sometimes; he used to have a special slave who didn’t have nothing to do but teach the rest of us—we had about ten on the plantation, and a lot on the other plantations near us—how to read and write and figger. Mr Tabb liked us to know how to figger. But sometimes when he would send for us and we would be a long time coming, he would ask us where we had been. If we told him we had been learning to read, he would near beat the daylights out of us—after getting somebody to teach us; I think he did some of that so that the other owners wouldn’t say he was spoiling his slaves.” […]

General Grant’s Memoirs, Civil War Diplomacy, Post-War Events in Mexico and Santo Domingo
Civil War Memories

General Grant’s Memoirs, Civil War Diplomacy, Post-War Events in Mexico and Santo Domingo

06/21/2024 Bruce Strom 2

Grant assures us: “The cause of the Great War of the Rebellion against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery. For some years before the war began, it was a trite saying among some politicians,” including Lincoln in his House Divided Speech, “that a state half slave and half free cannot exist. All must become slave or all free, or the state will go down.” “Slavery was an institution that required unusual guarantees for its security wherever it existed.” Grant then criticizes the Fugitive Slave Law, in force before the Civil War, that compelled Northerners to help apprehend and return runaway slaves. […]

Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Ending the American Civil War
Civil War Memories

Surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, Ending the American Civil War

06/19/2024 Bruce Strom 5

Robert E Lee ceremoniously offered his sword, but Grant refused it. Grant wrote out the terms, which paroled the Confederates on the condition that they “would not take arms against the Government of the United States.” “The arms, artillery and public property are to be parked and stacked.” “This will not embrace the side-arms of the officers, nor their private horses or baggage. This done, each officer and man will be allowed to return to their homes, not to be disturbed by the United States authority as long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside.”
Grant recalls that when General Lee “read over that part of the terms about side arms, horses, and private property of the officers, he remarked, with some feeling, I thought, that this would have a happy effect upon his army.” […]

Gettysburg: Ordinary Soldiers and Generals Pickett and Longstreet Remember the Bloody Charges
Civil War Memories

Gettysburg: Ordinary Soldiers and Generals Pickett and Longstreet Remember the Bloody Sacrifices

06/12/2024 Bruce Strom 6

Confederate General George Pickett wrote a doleful letter to his fiancée on July 4th, 1863, the day after his disastrous Pickett’s Charge. Pickett remembered: “A little before three o’clock I rode up to Old Peter,” the nickname for General James Longstreet, “for orders. I found him like a great lion at bay. I have never seen him so grave and troubled. For several minutes after I had saluted him, he looked at me without speaking. Then, in an agonized voice, the reserve all gone, he said:
‘Pickett, I am being crucified at the thought of the sacrifice of life which this attack will make. I have instructed Alexander to watch the effect of our fire upon the enemy, and when it begins to tell he must take the responsibility and give you your orders, for I cannot.’” […]