"We have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his Batteries"
Today is the 150th anniversary
of the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, which began the U.S. Civil War. In a
fascinating entry from the New York Times "Disunion" series, which has been "covering"
the war since last fall, Adam Goodheart describes how Maj. Robert Anderson,
commander of the fort's garrison, learned of the attack. Two Confederate aides
handed him this note:
Sir
By authority of Brig
General Beauregard commanding the provisional forces of the Confederate States
we have the honor to notify you that he will open the fire of his Batteries on
Fort Sumter in one hour from this time.
We have the honor to be
Very Respectfully
Yrobtservts,
James Chesnut Jr., Aide de
Camp
Stephen D. Lee, Capt.,
S.C. Army, Aide de Camp
Anderson then escorted them to
their boat and said, "If we never meet in this world again, God grant that we
may meet in the next."
The subject of religion and
the Civil War is certainly a complicated one, addressed perhaps most notably in
recent years by Mark Noll. Metro Lutheran has an interesting piece on Lutherans on both sides of the war,
and USA Today offers a thoughtful take on a familiar argument: that the Bible
has too often been "used to defend what history later determined was
indefensible."
