Easter Sunday, one hundred, fifty-two years ago, March 31, 1861, there had been no American Civil War. The firing on Fort Sumter would occur in less than two weeks (April 12). People of the time still hoped- people still prayed- for peace on that Easter.
More than a year later, Easter came again on April 20, 1862. The telegraph and the newspaper allowed Americans to know that something awful had occured a few days earlier at a place called Shiloh. The amount of bloodshed at Shiloh shocked, dismayed and even angered Americans, but then they had not yet seen the Seven Days' Battles in Virginia that would give rise to Robert E. Lee. They had seen the amateurish First Battle of Manassas but not the professional Second. What made the American Civil War horrible was still largely in the future.
It is interesting to note that the city of New Orleans fell to northern forces a few days after Easter, 1862. In a culture that assured itself that as a people, they, the southerners, were fulfilling God's will (the north did this just as much), the loss of so famous and grand an American city as New Orleans (I think of this when I remember how many Republican politicians could not be convinced to help after Katrina) was met with self-criticism and self-doubt. Many ascribed the loss to punishment for slaveowners who mistreated their slaves.
Read More