Lessons on Discipleship from Abraham Lincoln & American Slavery

I’ve spent the past week in the nation of Colombia helping to make disciples of a new generation of missionaries. For the flight down I purchased a copy of Eric Foner’s The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. Foner is one of America’s foremost historians on the Civil War period and his book won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010.

I started reading it on the ten hour flight and finished it in Colombia near a place where Lincoln once wanted to colonize the freed slaves.

This book blew my mind about American slavery. I realized how little I knew of the real struggle this nation went through in the 1860s.

It also taught me how important it is for believers to have a vision for discipleship. Many 19^th century Americans didn’t have it—including President Lincoln. That mistake led to a tragic “fiery trial.”

First let me share a few thoughts on the trip. I began in the capital city of Bogota—a vast metropolis of seven million people that is a mile and a half above sea level—and I ended up in Ibague in the tropical western plateau. Our YWAM workers here are very ethnically diverse, just like the local population—a wonderful blend of Spanish, Indian, African, and other nationalities.

But they are excited about making disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19) and I believe they will succeed in doing it. These dynamic young followers of Christ are part of a huge spiritual wave that is building in Latin America.

Did you know that there were only 50,000 born again Christians in Central and South America in 1900? Today there are 100 million!

How’s that for making disciples?

But now back to the myopic vision of the American Civil War.

The focus of Foner’s book is to trace the evolution in thinking that Abraham Lincoln and the entire American nation went through in grappling with slavery. Reading the book showed me how ignorant and simplistic my views were of this critical period in history.

Here’s what I thought. Lincoln and the North were against slavery. The southern states embraced it. We fought a war to bring equality to those slaves with Abraham Lincoln being the Great Emancipator.

Right?

Well, somewhat. However, it was much more complicated than that. Here are a few of my discoveries from The Fiery Trial.

Lincoln is commonly viewed as being consistently against slavery. He is quoted as saying: “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel.”

This is probably a sincere statement, but he matured greatly over the years. He was born in a southern state—Kentucky—but spent most of his adult years in Illinois. He rarely had contact with black people, and during his lifetime was known to use the word “nigger” and tell racist jokes from time to time.

He probably never saw the horrors of slavery firsthand. So for most of his life he was a moderate on the issue though he didn’t like the overall idea of the institution of slavery.

Lincoln was no abolitionist—and even when he became president in 1860, he had no strong desire to free the slaves. His purpose in the Civil War was preserving the Union. This was the paramount goal. What would happen to the Negro people was not really his concern—at least not early on.

The real heroes of the War Between the States were the Christian abolitionists who perseveringly changed public opinion over time to bring about the emancipation of the slaves. These included Charles Finney the well known evangelist, Wendell Phillips who gave hundreds of speeches all over the nation, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton of the Woman’s National Loyal league, and Frederick Douglas the black journalist who often questioned whether Lincoln was on the side of the slaves or not.

Key point: It was the moral compass of the Church and its leaders that led to the elimination of slavery—not our political leaders. It was groups like the Quakers who visited the White House on June 20, 1862 to express “their earnest desire that he might free the slaves and thus save the nation from destruction.” And, “northern ministers delivered sermons and dispatched petitions and delegations to the White House explaining the war as a divine chastisement for the sin of slavery and assuring Lincoln that God wanted him to free the slaves.”

Right up until the end, our political leaders did have not the courage to give the black slaves their rights. And there were four million in this country. But it was the Church that prayed, molded public debate over decades, and pressed the issue of freedom.

Interestingly enough, it was the Democratic Party of the day that was blatantly racist and uncaring of the black man. Foner  reports: “Democrats in 1864 conducted what one historian called ‘the most explicitly and virulent racist campaign by a major party in American history…Speaker after speaker referred to blacks in the most derogatory terms. One spoke of the ‘flat nosed, long-heeled, cursed of God and damned of men descendants of Africa.’ Democratic speakers warned that emancipation would flood the north with an influx of unwanted blacks.”

And that was northern Democrats, not the southern ones who owned slaves. I thought the Democratic Party always for civil rights.

Not in 1864.

The Republicans were better on the issue—but all over the map on what to do about black freedom. Some favored states making those decisions and others lobbied for gradual emancipation. Many politicians, like Lincoln, thought that blacks should be free in terms of life and liberty—but still not be allowed to vote.

Eventually Lincoln saw the light—and immediate emancipation became the rallying cry. However, for most of Lincoln’s presidency, he like others, preferred either “gradual emancipation” (taking until 1900 to accomplish it!), or allowing the states to decide the issue.

That doesn’t sound like a ringing denunciation of the evils of slavery.

Another point really got my attention. Even as Lincoln began to see that the slaves needed to be free—at least to save the Union—he didn’t know what to do with them once they were given their liberty. His strong preference, for most of his years in the White House, was “colonization”—to actually transfer them (four million!) to another nation.

That’s where Colombia came into the picture. Lincoln sent envoys to Colombia, Liberia, and Haiti on a number of occasions to try to find land to colonize the slaves. He felt that they could never be “equal” to whites on American soil, and probably preferred a warmer climate anyway due to their African roots. This was a foolish idea he only abandoned late in the struggle.

Why did Lincoln and many other northerners favor colonization? Because they did not share God’s view of “making disciples of all nations.” Lincoln and his contemporaries had bought the racist position that blacks were not fully human; That they could never be equal with whites; That they should not be given the right to vote; That they were inferior, indolent, and would only bring anarchy and misery to America if liberated.

So the answer was to free them and get them out of the white man’s way--not to elevate them through love, compassion, education, job training, and overall “discipleship.”

Lincoln and his fellow politicians—except for the passionate abolitionist Christians of the day—had lost track of God’s desires for all human beings: that they be liberated from their savagery and backwardness through the practical power of the Good News.

In the end, Abraham Lincoln changed his mind—but only after he saw the true humanity and sacrifice of the Negro slaves who fought alongside the North in the bloody Civil War. Nearly one tenth of the Union Army eventually became populated by blacks who fought nobly for their families, their freedom and their nation.

Very few of them wanted to leave America. Most had been born here. They just needed respect, dignity, education, opportunity, training, and encouragement to rise to become a noble race that was transformed by the power of Christian discipleship.

Millions of black people suffered, and 600,000 young men died in battle because many of our leaders and countrymen—150 years ago—forgot the Great Commission. Not only did all men and women deserve to be free, but they also were entitled to godly discipleship and civilizational development to change their state in this life and the next.

All civilizations need such help. My European ancestors were also barbarians who were lifted out of heathenism by Roman Empire evangelists and missionaries. They were discipled into the blessings of the Christian faith.

I talked to a current crop of young Colombian missionaries about the fiery trial of the Civil War. I exhorted them to learn from the past and to “go and make disciples of all nations.” I encouraged them to use Mathew Henry’s words as a road-map:

“What is the principal intention of this commission: to disciple all nations, to do your utmost to make the nations Christian nations…to go and disciple them. Christ the Mediator is setting up a kingdom in the world, bringing the nations to be his subjects; setting up a school, bringing the nations to be his scholars…The work that the apostles had to do was to set up the Christian religion in all places and it was an honorable work; the achievements of the mighty heroes of the world were nothing to it. They conquered the nations for themselves and made them miserable; the apostles conquered them for Christ and made them happy.”

I believe they will succeed in this noble task in the 21^st century.