They fought for a cause
This past Spring, I had the honor and pleasure of getting to
know my great-great-grandfather, William McAdams, as I studied and transcribed
letters that he wrote while in the Union Army during the Civil War.
I frequently wonder what he’d think of things the way they
are now: how much farming has changed
since his days, how big our cities have become, how quickly and easily we
travel. Except for his 3 and a half
years in the Army, he stayed at home or nearby.
Home was a busy, multifaceted, yet simple farm on the prairie of central
Illinois, near a town called Kansas.
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| William McAdams, Sr. |
I know that he would be perplexed, to say the least, to know
that monuments to Confederate officers stand in places of honor in many public
squares, and that schools and military bases are named for Confederate
generals. Throughout his letters, he
referred to the enemy as “rebels,” “Secessionists,” and “Secesh.” He considered them to be treasonous traitors.
He and several of his neighbors volunteered to serve in the
Union Army because they believed they must fight to preserve the Union – to
preserve democracy. They enlisted
together in August 1861. Miraculously,
almost all of them survived, but the personal and economic cost to each of them
was great.
In October 1863, upon learning that he was missed at church,
he wrote, “I am glad to know that my classmates still remember me at a throne
of Grace as well as others who went to fight for the maintenance of the
Union. May God bless them and answer their
petitions in our behalf and when our trials and battles are o’er may we have a
better Union than before and may they who survive the struggle and generations
yet unborn enjoy the blessings of civil and religious liberty.”
There was no doubt about it; the cause for which he
sacrificed so much was the preservation of the Union. He fought for “generations yet unborn,”
meaning that he fought for us.
President Lincoln believed that no state had the right to
secession. In his inaugural address in March
1861, the President said, “I hold that, in contemplation of universal law, and
of the Constitution, the union of these States is perpetual....It
follows....that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the
Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that
acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the
United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to
circumstances. I, therefore, consider that, in view of the Constitution and the
laws, the Union is unbroken.”[1]
In 1860, the United States was the only democracy in the
world. Lincoln firmly believed that it
must be preserved so that there would be hope for the entire world – hope that
democracy was possible. The rest of the
world was ruled by monarchs, dictators, and other kinds of authoritarians.
When the President addressed Congress in 1862, he said, “Fellow-citizens,
we cannot escape history . . . We say we are for the Union. The world will not
forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do
know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the
responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -
honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or
meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”[2]
The long and deadly Civil War dragged on. In Georgia in May 1864, when he’d been away
from his farm and family far longer than he ever imagined, my great-great
grandfather wrote, “May success attend our arms until not an armed rebel will
be left to attempt the severing of the Union and may the grace of God be
sufficient for us in every trying hour.”
No, he would not have understood the honoring of the
Confederate cause at all. He would be
aghast to learn that I live in a county named for General Lee.
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