Why would I care if you take anything I say seriously? Seriously.
I find your view that the Civil War was NOT a punishment from God OR initially fought to free the slaves (end the oppression) in the Southern states as competely idiotic and not one shared by Abraham Lincoln, the President of the United States during the war.
I never said that it was shared by President Lincoln. It was his personal view that all men would be free, but he stated in a letter to Horace Greely in 1862 that to save the Union he would do anything, even put up with slavery. Abraham Lincoln did not start the war, South Carolina did, and it was over slavery. The war came about because of slavery. Lincoln tried to rectify this with the Southern States, (compromise) but they would have none of it. Hence, it was forced upon the Lincoln and the nation. But was the war fought over slavery? Yes it was. And why? Who were the men who forced the issue, knowing the outcome?
In 1850 the Fugitive Slave Act was passed. The Northern States refused to comply with it. It brought a defiant response from abolitionists. They would not back down, and this was one of the principle reasons that South Carolina seceded from the Union. During the war, generals such as Benjamin Butler freed slaves under the contraband rule of war. By 1863, during the height of the war, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, using his war powers. The Proclamation made abolition a central goal of the war along with reunion of the States.
South Carolina’s “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union” reads in part,
The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that "Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free," and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.”
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_scarsec.aspWhile later claims have been made that the decision to secede was prompted by other issues such as tariffs, these issues were not mentioned in the declaration. The primary focus of the declaration is the perceived violation of the Constitution by northern states in not extraditing escaped slaves (as the Constitution required in Article IV Section 2) and actively working to abolish slavery (which they saw as Constitutionally guaranteed and protected). The main thrust of the argument was that since the Constitution, being a contract, had been violated by some parties (the northern abolitionist states), the other parties (the southern slave-holding states) were no longer bound by it.
The group of men that I spoke of, where those in the Northern States that stood up to slavery. They well knew that the election of Lincoln would start a Civil War. You sir, are being naïve, and just want to pick a fight, but I know my history. Perhaps you should brush up.
As for all the quotes by Woodruff and Brigham Young, of course you would ignore them. They are devastating to Mormonism.
Lincoln’s letter to Horace Greely was a political tool. The draft for the Emancipation Proclamation was already written when he sent that letter off. Stephen Douglass often commented that Lincoln changed his views to suit his audience. But we do know this fact, he was against slavery and he freed the slaves in 1863. It doesn’t matter as much what he said, as what he did. Lincoln’s first goal was to preserve the Union. His Generals were divided over slavery, but as Lincoln realized that no matter what he said nothing would change with the South, he doubled down and stood up against the oppressors which saved the Union as he stated in an 1864 letter to Albert G. Hodges.
As for the Civil war being God’s punishment on the nation, in his second inaugural address that you cite, he also said,
One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.
And then,
Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 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. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
And Lincoln said it just right. But my comment was,
The Civil War wasn’t the punishment of the fictional Mormon God on a sinful nation…
And the Civil War was not the punishment of the fictional Mormon God on a sinful nation that had spilled the blood of the “prophets”. If you had bothered to read those quotes you ignored, perhaps you would have understood the context of my sentence.
Your claims about continuing war and how that applies to Smith's "prophecy" have been readily answered, so to save me the trouble just read up:
http://www.mrm.org/civil-war