The American Civil War is my favorite war. Outrageous, such a formulation found only those who deny that there can not be justified wars. And never was a war for a just cause listed as the "War Between the States", which involved the abolition of slavery - even if say the apologists of the South today, it would be for the rights of States left. At that time, that can be in the standard work of James McPherson read as well as in the narrow latest German monograph by Michael Hochgeschwender , it was declared as the secessionists always only one right: the right to hold slaves.
The British military historian John Keegan writes at the beginning of his published recently in German book about the struggle between the northern and southern United States:
"One of my earlier books, I began with the sentence, The First World War was a cruel and unnecessary war. "The American Civil War was certainly also cruel, both in As for the suffering of the participants and the concerns and needs of the civilian population. But it was not an unnecessary war. In 1861 the split was caused by slavery as the most important of all the things that separates North and South, has become so virulent that only a comprehensive change could lead to a solution. "
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| Abraham Lincoln |
But frankly, such considerations are subordinate rationalizations of an originally very naive pulse. Because my enthusiasm for the civil war touched her since childhood, and then I have not reflected the size. First was the Civil War, the almost perfect symbiosis of two things when I was about ten or eleven years old, my imagination employed: A war in the Wild West, where you could simultaneously be a cowboy and a soldier! What could be more desirable for an adventure-seeking boy?
The epitome of all these fantasies were the one hand, the Western director John Ford with John Wayne was filmed and well known, in which Wayne played very often the typical Yankee soldiers with his blue cavalry uniform. In at least in two films, namely "The Shadow" and "The West Was Won" , he was even directly as an officer in the civil war against the South in use. On the other hand, I have since started the magazine "Zack" in April 1972, the Western series "Lieutenant Blueberry" to publish in German, has always remained a fan of this masterpiece - now I know I stand with my enthusiasm is not entirely alone but that both the author Jean-Michel Charlier and the artist Giraud as the largest in their field are counted. The main character is a young Lieutenant Blueberry Southerner who hates slavery and the Army of the North followed.
But my enthusiasm for the just cause during the American civil war has also shaped my Christian faith. At the same time I was the first Blue Berry read comics, I in the summer of 1972 with the hawks in a tent camp in the Austrian village of Jenner (Burgenland). In this socialist youth organization, SPD-close, but still something left of the party, one would expect at youth camps hardly Christian edification. But the general repertoire of songs, which the caregiver with the long dark hair, then sang with us always included "Glory, Glory Hallelujah". The song from the American Civil War was in any songs left fibula, because it had acquired in the civil rights movement of the sixties, a renewed popularity. Even the communist black singer Paul Robeson, named after my quarter in Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg in East German times, a road, had it in the repertoire. And in East Berlin in 1966 called a facts novel "Glory, Glory Hallelujah - The Song of Old John Brown" published.
But "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" is, of course, as the title says, a deeply religious song. It is about the life of John Brown, who fought as guerrillas against slavery. Brown did so, as almost all opponents of slavery in the mid-19th Century, called abolitionists, from the deep Christian conviction that it is a sin for people to steal their freedom. In his choice of means he was not very Christian. James McPherson writes of him: "Brown was God Jehovah, the Pharaoh's soldiers in the Red Sea drowned, his Jesus was the angry hothead, who drove the money changers from the temple 'Without shedding of blood is no remission." Was his Lieblingsvers from the New Testament . (Hebrews 9, 22) "(p. 192f)
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| John Brown |
Today I have to say that Brown actually was a terrorist - and also a fairly unsuccessful. After an unsuccessful attack on an arsenal of federal troops at Harpers Ferry , which he wanted to trigger a slave rebellion, he was captured and hanged. Brown estimated its effect a fairly realistic. McPherson quotes a letter that Brown wrote to his brother: "I am good far more to hang than to be for any other purpose." He was right. Because of its impressive appearance and his moving rhetoric in court, he impressed even his opponents. For the abolitionists, he was made a martyr of Ralph Waldo Emerson carried away by the prophecy. "The old warrior will glorify the gallows as well such as [Christ] the cross. "(at McPherson, p. 199).
His propaganda afterlife was certainly much more sustainable military and its success. In" Glory, Glory, Hallelujah "or " John Brown's Body " as fact is, Brown is transfigured into a second John the Baptist, who preceded the actual Messiah Abraham Lincoln as a sort of secular Messiah, the "Liberator" and forerunner of Christ's return was Lincoln actually seen by the freed blacks -. and his martyrdom by an assassin from the South contributed to this myth, the slaves -. illiterate, without voting rights and their Possession Tern aware "stupid" kept - had their own oral information system. They knew as early as 1860 also run the election of Lincoln, what would, and they knew better than most whites (and when Lincoln himself), that in civil war for the abolition of slavery was (in this article a from the New York Times "on the subject).
McPherson describes the arrival of Lincoln on 3 April 1865 in the newly conquered Confederate capital of North Richmond so (p. 832):
"... in no time was the liberator of the slaves of black people surrounded the cheered him:" Glory to God Glory Glory! ! ' God be praised! The great Messiah! I immediately recognized him when I saw him. For four long years, he lives in my heart. He has come to free his children from bondage. ! Glory, Hallelujah "
In" John Brown's Body, "it says about Brown's relationship with Lincoln and Christ:"
John Brown was John the Baptist of the Christ we are to see, Christ who
of the bondmen shall the Liberator be.
All this was to me then, in 1972, not known and I doubt that we sang in the literary camp Jennersdorf much more sophisticated version of the song later, the quote comes from. I can remember actually only on the lines:
John Brown's body lies a-Mouldering in the grave;
(But) His soul is marching on!
He's gone to be a soldier in the army of the Lord,
(But) His soul keeps marching on!
because I was particularly fascinated by the idea that God has an army, you could join. I was at that time but much more inspiring than all the peaceful messages of the New Testament, whose pacifist content on the horizon of a called for pistols, rifles, stalking and shooting inflamed year old. The soldiers being had very little time for me Attraction and what it could be more honorable than to fight in the army of the Lord against slavery?
Today I see the matter and the personality of John Brown, as indicated, somewhat different. But still I'm proud have played the role of Christians in the abolition of slavery not only in the U.S.. And still I can, "John Brown's Body" does not cease to tremble, and without wanting to immediately start tramping .
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