Abraham Lincoln said of the war in his 2nd inaugural address in 1865 only weeks before his assassination: “Neither party expected for the war, the magnitude, or the duration, which it has already attained… Each looked for an easier triumph… Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other. [How strange it is] that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces.*”
It wasn’t until December 18, 1865 that the 13th Amendment was officially adopted, abolishing slavery in the United States. However, many slaves continued to live on as slaves. Shelby Foote, in his three-volume work on the Civil War, documents an unexpected reaction: “[Most slaves] could repeat, with equal validity, what an Alabama slave had said in 1864 when asked what he thought of the Great Emancipator whose proclamation went into effect that year. ‘I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout Abraham Lincoln,’ he replied, ‘cep they say he sot us free. And I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout that neither.’**” Precious blood was shed on the battlefield to set those slaves free, yet many continued to live on as slaves for fear that free life would be dangerous. Even more disturbing and sad is the fact that the precious blood of
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