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The Bible played a role on the Civil War’s battlefields
Civil War soldiers were said to carry few personal belongings. Of those, the Bible, a journal and playing cards were usually the most popular. There were some stories that soldiers, at the time of battle, would toss their playing cards. While the Bible served as a good luck token, the soldiers didn’t want to meet their maker with gambling paraphernalia in their pockets.During the Civil War, there was a religious awakening among soldiers and citizens alike. While the North used the Bible as a means to rid the nation of slavery, the South found passages defending the “peculiar institution.” In his second inaugural address in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln spoke of this oddity. “Both [North and South] read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.”...
Lincoln, could very well have been a believer, how deeply I don't think anyone knows, but he wasn't much a church goer, that's for certain. Anyway, Neil, I'm glad you gave a larger quotation from Lincoln's second inaugural address than the article did.
I would also doubt that many slave owners gave their slaves Bibles, it seems to me that most, though not all, were hostile to the idea that their slaves should become literate.
I'm not sure Lincoln was serious, in that employers in the North also wrung their bread from the sweat of other men's faces. Something about the curse wrought by Adam in that, presumably.
Perhaps this Mississippi journal finds the rest of Lincoln's quote too pointed:
“Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.”
BTW, while it is doubtful that Lincoln was a believer, he knew theology: his parents were dedicated Primitive Baptists.
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