A Conversation with Allen Guelzo

[Music] [Music] [Music] dr ellen galzo is the william l garwood visiting professor in the james madison program in american ideals and institutions at princeton university he is also director of civil war era studies and the henry luce professor of history at gettysburg college he is the author of abraham lincoln redeemer president and lincoln's emancipation proclamation the end of slavery in america both of which won the lincoln prize and the abraham lincoln institute prize his most recent book gettysburg the last invasion spent eight weeks on the new york times best seller list and also won the lincoln prize he's a graduate of cairn university and we're happy to welcome him back in advance of our university homecoming professor gilzo thank you for joining me today thank you for having me here dr gelson it seems as if nearly everyone who looks at america today in in terms of our political uh debates and and the social climate talks about how it's marked by pronounced division and it's not uncommon to hear people say that we're more divided than ever so i wanted to ask someone who's an expert on the civil war are we as divided as we've ever been no we have always been a divided nation we take our politics seriously this is what happens uh in a democratic republic if you want some examples of bad political behavior name-calling division let's go look up the 1790s let's let's take a long look at john adams and thomas jefferson i mean i mean during adams's administration you had the alien and sedition acts um the alien acts really don't get much enforced but the sedition act does and you have arrests and trials of opinions for saying unpleasant things about president adams if you want to talk about division we're really talking about division at that point look at the rhetoric that is used by the supporters of adams versus the supporters of jefferson it makes today's complaints about politicians look actually rather mildly polite take other periods in our history andrew jackson versus john quincy adams john quincy adams was convinced that andrew jackson was the destruction of the republic everything was over it was lights out and then of course you come to the civil war where actually people do reach for the firearms beyond that though there have been other times even closer to our own when the level of political nastiness has been very pronounced i can remember in the 1980s we look back to the 80s and we think oh that must have been very peaceful ronald reagan was president well i can remember president reagan at press conferences being hectored in the worst way by sam mcdonald a division and controversy name-calling and and pettiness are part of the price that you pay in a democratic environment so people who are saying oh woe is us uh today is clearly um the worst that it can possibly be we're all about to convulse ourselves in civil war i think are doing so with a good deal of exaggeration and a good deal of missing the fact that we have been through some some pretty violent political hurricanes in the past and have still come out reasonably well from them so so this is sort of par for the course for the united states i i think so uh there have been very serious moments the civil war the most serious when in fact it all did break down where it did become a deluge in blood but that was because at the time of the civil war the nastiness the partisanship the division all found one particularly concrete issue to focus on and that was slavery and that really did become a divider around slavery a huge amount of political mass was attracted but in these other in times these other controversies there hasn't been that single central issue which has divided people which has become enough for people to say we're finished we're done we're bringing up the country there have been divisions over personalities but americans don't go to war over personalities with each other we may throw mud at each other we may have unhappy things to say but we don't make personalities the causes belly it is when a particularly clear-cut non-negotiable either or issue enters into the subject that matters really become dangerous slavery was an issue like that in the 1980s i had to wonder if abortion was going to be an issue like that now it did not turn out to be do we have an issue like that today no not really we have personalities we have mud slinging but look we had that in the days of jefferson and andrew jackson and we'll continue to have more of it in times to come if we can avoid that central hard-edged issue then we will survive as we have survived before so it has to go beyond just regional differences or we hate this particular individual who's in power right now and and the civil war in your mind the coalescing issue was it was slavery slavery was the wedge that split the nation you have to have a single non-negotiable wedge issue like that it can't just be about personalities we just don't do that it's not in our dna uh it and it can't just be about sections or regions either what there has to be is a wedding of the personalities and the sections or regions with the single non-negotiable up or down wedge issue when you make all of those parts align then you have a situation to worry about but not before that before that it's more like political business as usual i don't mean to make light of it i'm not trying to be a part of no no i don't it's not fun to listen to it's not fun to watch people behave in public uh in in these ways because it's the kind of thing it makes you say if this is what a democracy is oh my goodness i feel embarrassed but we have done that and somehow we've shaken ourselves awake afterwards and we've gone on the civil war is the big example of when that didn't happen now in the in the context of the civil war slavery is this coalescing issue but aren't there uh aren't there leaders on the confederate side who say slavery isn't the main age this isn't about that or even even ones who expressed maybe personal reservations about the institution of slavery but but but but claimed this was about some broader issue well you can claim anything you like for yourself but at the end of the day all the official rationales for secession were somehow wrapped up with slavery but let's understand that the civil war is more than just a single cause affair just like any human event is more than a single cause affair you really have to see that what happens with the civil war it makes a civil war possible is a coalescing of causes the long-term cause you might say is the fact that the united states is a federal republic in other words it is not a single national entity it is a union of states well as soon as you say it's a union of states there's always the possibility of fracture along the lines of state sovereignty it's simply there in the nature of things and that was there and that was what helped to make possible the idea that states could secede from the union if that idea hadn't been there then even if you'd had slavery on the ground you would not have been able to talk about uh secession and then secession leading to civil war at least it would have been very difficult too then there's also the question about sectionalism it's not just that the united states is divided about into states it also culturally speaking tends to group itself in sections and as soon as those sections get weaponized so to speak then you have a problem that is posed there so sectionalism plays a role here takes sectionalism out of the picture and the civil war doesn't happen slavery is you might say the the final cause because slavery is what people are really arguing and fighting about fighting for fighting against but slavery alone would not have been enough to do the job in causing the war if you had had slavery legalized in minnesota maine louisiana and florida there would never been a civil war because even though slavery might have been legalized there and people might have been disturbed by it they're they're too remote from each other they can't form a political mass but in 1860 you had at least 11 of the southern states of the american union which are slave states which can identify themselves they have got political mass they also have sectional identity they also have the notion that states are part of a union that can be broken up when you put all those together that then begins to be the cause of the civil war one further thing they seceded from the union they could have sectionalism they could have slavery they could even talk about the rights of states but the immediate trigger cause of the war is quite technically and i don't mean to be overly technical but it is the secession of those southern states from the war there was there would be no civil war if those states had not seceded so when we talk about the causes of the civil war bear in mind we have to watch the interplay of a number of things which have long histories and long routes in american life it wasn't that simply one fine day someone popped up and said wouldn't it be nice to have a civil war over slavery uh no not quite on its own you have to have all these other causes working with it on the other hand the people who say well slavery never entered into it at all could not be more wrong and i think that the reason that they will assist that so strongly is because they're looking for a way to dodge the moral program of slavery nobody wants to be for one thing on a losing side but still less do we want to be on a losing bad side and the the eagerness with which some people want to eliminate slavery from that slate of causes suggests to me that there is a certain level of unease and guilt that they would like to talk about the confederacy as though slavery had never existed well the confederacy would never have existed had it not been for slavery the state's rights they often complained they were fighting for really came down to the state right to legalize slavery it's very curious to see that states rights really functioned very much as a wax nose in the 1850s southerners wanted to talk about states rights for legalizing slavery but as soon as the subject changed to retrieving runaways slaves from the north all of a sudden they became the partisans of federal authority and federal power whereas in the north when we talk about personal liberty laws that were passed by state legislatures to afford some kind of legal protection for fugitive slaves suddenly they started talking about states rights very famous case called abelman versus booth which goes up to the supreme court in the 1850s was really triggered by the state of wisconsin having passed personal liberty laws to protect and effect fugitive slaves the wisconsin state uh supreme court insisted that its personal liberty laws had to be respected on the grounds of states rights so it really depended on whose ox was getting gourd i do not put a lot of confidence in the people who tried to persuade me that the confederacy was all about states rights and not about slavery that's boulder dash it was about slavery it's about these other things as well but the moment you try to take slavery out of the picture and substitute states rights for it you have done a violence to what actually happened in the 1850s so when we talk about today certainly uh the the the nature of the union has in some sense been parts of that have been settled but but the the regionalism is still with us yes the regionalism is there and we are still a federal union how can we help it be federalism is in our very bones sometimes we miss that sometimes we take it for granted but you cannot give the constitution even the most superficial reading without understanding that this really is a union of states it is a federal system uh in much the same way that for instance the german republic is a federal republic and and for some of the same reasons because a united german nation of course didn't exist before january of 1871 and it could only come into existence if the existing parts of the german-speaking peoples the kingdom of bavaria the kingdom of vertemborg the kingdom of prussia the grand duchy of hez if all these states had not been willing to agree to become a union in this case in 1871 an empire but even when the german empire was created still the ruler of it who happens to be the king of prussia is only ever referred to as the german emperor not as emperor of germany the difference in there is the difference between a single united entity and a federal creation and to this day the german republic remains a federal republic of various states that enter into a federal parliament the bundestag so there's a lot of parallels that way of course and we're not the only federal arrangement that way canada strictly speaking is a federal arrangement as well mexico is a federation of states so you go through uh the the various political organizations of modern states we're by no means peculiar in being a federation what we often miss is how deeply that federal idea is worked into the marrow of our politics and it's reflected at almost every level so looking at some of the things that happened in the 19th century can illumine and and and some in some senses provide sharp contrast to some of the things we're going through today um so hopefully some perspective somebody i certainly hope so but is that i i'm curious about your own your own studies is that what first interested you about the civil war was it because you thought uh here are these contrasts or or these this regionalism that i'm seeing now i wish it was that lofty and elevated no i got the bug very early as a kid i got it through comic books i mean i i have no better or more honest way of explaining it you know i'm five or six years old i'm living out on the west coast and what do i see i see a comic book in a grocery store it's a comic book version of the red badge of courage you know the classic stephen crane novella above the civil war it's a classics illustrated uh comic book uh which which has got a comic book rendering of a story and even had uh i think an eight-page or 12-page backstory giving a quick illustrated history of the civil war i pestered to have that bought for me i was successful in the pestering i loved it and you might say that that classics illustrated number 98 i can still remember the number number 98 that that got that got the hook in my mouth not only about the red badge of courage but about the civil war as a whole and you might say that uh well you know it's all been history since then so it really was just you know the the uniforms the rifles the the territory the color of the event the drama the characters and and to this day you you really do have to understand that so much of the interest that we devote to the civil war as a subject uh really is dependent on what a stupendously impressive event this was in our history the american civil war just take it in demographic terms the american civil war picks up three to four million people and just scatters them across the landscape i mean these are the soldiers these are these are soldiers from iowa from uh northern wisconsin from the logging forests of northern michigan and they're suddenly picked up by this war and they find themselves marching through georgia under sherman they've never seen this place before they can hardly imagine it for some of them when they thought of the american union they'd never dreamt that it included places like georgia some of them in fact when they were marching through georgia kept thinking we're fighting to keep this so demographically there is no event in american history quite as dramatic and as impact as the civil war that's only demographics look at the literature look at the issues that are generated by the war look at the personalities abraham lincoln ulysses grant robert e lee you almost cannot find another point in american time apart from the revolution where you had so many remarkable people accordioned into just four years of american experience the civil war really is the pig in the python uh for american history it's just got so much there of interest to deal with so you can camp out in the civil war you can release you can you can spend your whole professional life with it which in a sense i've done and and never be tired of the subject and i am even to this day i am not tired of the subject i can still go back and read the comic book and still get excited by it but apart from the spectacle and the personalities the the territory all what are the in your in your mind what are the the things that we need to uh learn from the civil war to understand ourselves as americans better you talked i think there in about the issues that it that it brings up that emerge from it sure it really asks this fundamental question do democracies self-destruct i mean lincoln asked that question in may of 1861 very early on he was talking with his uh staff secretary john milton haye and lincoln said let me let me let me put this war to you in a very simple and direct fashion what this war is asking is whether in a democracy when the people when the majority speak is that necessarily going to be respected because if it isn't then majoritarian democracy is clearly a failure and he asked this question not only if hey he actually puts it a short while later into the special message he delivers to congress in july of 1861. what is really at issue here is this can a minority which doesn't like the results of a majority's decision just completely disrupt the thing and then still have it be called a democracy afterwards for lincoln the fundamental issue that you're confronting in the war is this when a minority meets an issue that it loses on what should be the result for lincoln the result should be this the majority gets to rule it gets to have its way but the majority agrees not to put the minority up against a barn wall and shoot it the minority agrees to acquiesce in the majority decision because in a democracy further undone the pike perhaps the minority will persuade a majority that they had the better argument and then they'll be the majority it can change in a democracy that can happen but if that minority says we don't like the way the game has resulted we're going to take our baton ball and we're going to go someplace else what that says is that democracy really doesn't work and in an environment where sovereignty is rested in the people if the people cannot abide the result of their own majoritarian decision then what you've really said is that ordinary people are really not competent to be their own sovereigns in a political regime and as soon as you arrive at that conclusion then democracy has gone up the spout as they used to say in the 1860s democracy has been demonstrated to be a failure so for lincoln then it wasn't just about preserving this union although that was i'm sure paramount is mine but it wasn't just about preserving this union it was about vindicating yes the whole the whole experience democratic process this is what he says at gettysburg when he gets up at on the platform for the dedication of the cemetery in november of 1863. he puts it as plainly and concisely as anyone has ever done or could do he looks to the past four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal there it is long-form short form now takes people to the present now we're engaged in a civil war testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure this is really the final exam this civil war is the final exam of democracy lincoln once said that in order for a democracy to work you have to have three things first of all you have to get it started you have to set the thing up and get it running that's the first challenge and we met that challenge in the revolution then it has to work on a day-to-day basis and as far as lincoln was concerned we had met that challenge too from 1776 until 1861. the third challenge lincoln said is always going to be whether that democracy can protect itself from an internal attempt to overthrow it i mean we're always going to be in danger from external enemies every nation is but a democracy is particularly vulnerable to internal disruption because if sovereignty is located in the people then the disruption of that from within means the eruption of that very sovereignty and thus destroys the whole notion of democracy itself and lincoln said that is what is being put to the test here in the american civil war so we're testing not just whether the united states can survive the united states is simply one example in this long history of the contest between commoners and kings no this is a test as to whether the democratic ideal really works or whether all the kings and potentates and princes and dukes and counts and tin pot dictators have been right all along which is to say that they have always insisted that ordinary people are not competent to run their own affairs they need an inherited aristocracy to guide them and direct them and rule them this is a test lincoln says of whether these ordinary people can really manage their own affairs or whether by seceding from the union we have in effect testified that we're not in control of of things and we can never agree and we can never move on and that democracy is a null set that's the real issue that's the real test the final exam of american democracy when you look at the civil war in that context then suddenly you begin to see yes yes this is the great event not only of our history but it is the event that casts the shadow forward because we always have to remember does this government work does this form of government work does the principle on which it is created work we can look back to the american civil war and say yes if we survived that and survived it with that basic principle intact if we passed lincoln's exam if we passed it then we can continue to pass it in the future it's important for us to hold on to see i always heard lincoln's words there as being a sort of uh talking about undermining slavery that in other words that that democracy in which certain people are enslaved couldn't exist and so we needed to sort of test that out and make sure that was abolished but i take your point that he's thinking not so much about the slave issue there about people who don't have any opportunity to vote or participate but actually just talking about democracy period for for lincoln slavery is a contradiction of democracy he once said that slavery is the one retrograde institution that makes the world around us watching us doubt whether we're really sincere and that's what i was hearing on the address yeah but it's important to understand that for lincoln slavery is a subset of the overall question about democracy what slavery has done has pushed right to the fore whether we really mean what we say because you have to you have to you have to reflect on how with the outbreak of the war every aristocrat every monarch in europe would have thrown their cocked hats into the air to rejoice because here the american republic which had been such a bad example i mean think of it in these terms here in 1776 we have our revolution and that looks like the beginning of an of a new way of of conceiving of political order and then it's followed by the french revolution hey this looks like the wave of the future oh wait the french revolution circles downwards into the reign of terror and then into the dictatorship of bonaparte and from that moment onwards the monarchs and the aristocrats are quick to say see this democracy thing is a bad idea i mean not only does it not work but when it fails what you'll get is bonaparte so the united states by 1861 is really the only full freestanding large-scale democracy still working in the world as a result of the 18th century and when the united states decides to blow its own brains out with with a civil war they're they're delighted the united states is is a it's embarrassment to them but now we're going to oblige them by by self-destruction and we're going to do it over the issue of human enslavement that gave joy to every aristocrat in europe and lincoln is very keenly aware of that but he understands that the real issue is not shall we legalize slavery shall we not legalize slavery that's a symptom that's a symptom of a disease and the real patient here is democracy itself if we can remove that symptom if we can treat that symptom we can eliminate it that still hasn't addressed the overall question we have to do both people sometimes wonder well you know lincoln was about restoring the union not about slavery or lincoln was all about slavery and didn't care about the union that's a very that's a very binary way of looking at things for lincoln preserving the union and eliminating slavery was simply two sides of the same coin there was no point in preserving a union that would continue to enslave people whereby the same token if you eliminated slavery but also lost the union then you had suffered a catastrophic loss of both things both things and the price was not worth to pay for him it had to be both and the future had to be both even when he is elected he works on the assumption that his election signals a change a sea change in american politics that his election sooner or later ineluctably is going to lead towards the elimination of slavery from america he takes that his election as a sign that way now southerners read it exactly the same way that was why they seceded from the union because they looked at the election of abraham lincoln with only 39 percent of the popular vote but a majority in the electoral college and they saw that from now on anti-slavery presidents wouldn't even need to get a single electoral vote from the southern states they would coast to victory so they said okay well let's let's get out while the getting's good they read his victory in exactly the same terms he assumed that slavery was on its way out they were going to fight to make sure that didn't happen that's why the restoration of the union is important but for him they are working together they're not rivals they're not opposites restore the union eliminate slavery you do the one you do the other you you can't have you you you can't have the goose without the gander so you talked about having spent a great deal of time in the civil war and and you still have the sense that you could spend even more time in the civil war we've also spent a considerable amount of that time with lincoln studying lincoln and so one of the arguments that's made about lincoln vis-a-vis slavery is that while he was opposed to it he he was sort of opportunistic in terms of emancipating slaves that really wasn't high on his agenda i i've heard over and over again the objections for instance well if lincoln was really opposed to slavery why didn't he wake up the morning after the bombardment of fort sumter or the surrender of fort sumter and emancipate the slaves then okay well there's a very obvious answer and that is he doesn't have the authority to do that abraham lincoln is the president of the united states he is only the president of the united states slavery exists in the united states not because of federal enactments there is no federal slave code slavery exists where it's legal in the united states because of state enactments state legislatures state statutes state slave codes he doesn't have the authority as president to reach over the firewall that exists between federal and state authority and start meddling with with the affairs of the states he said he doesn't have that authority if he had waked up the day after fort sumter surrendered and issued some kind of uh statement freeing slaves the response would not have been oh i guess we'll have to free the slaves no the response would have been that every slaveholder still in the union would have gone straight to their local federal courthouse and obtained an injunction against the operation of whatever lincoln was was issuing and then that would have gone into the courts would have gone up the levels of the federal court system and it would have landed eventually with the united states supreme court oh by the way who was the chief justice of the united states supreme court in 1861 oh wait a minute roger b tawny yeah that great champion of emancipation the author of the dred scott case tawny wanted nothing so much as an opportunity to put his stake through the heart of emancipation he was simply waiting for lincoln to trigger something like that lincoln won't do it now curiously what lincoln does do and people don't often see this as early as the fall of 1861 he's only been in office six months as early as the fall of 1861 he is devising a federal buyout program there are still four states in the union which legalize slavery delaware kentucky maryland missouri he wants to approach the state legislature of delaware with a federal buyout plan for slavery the federal government will provide seven hundred thousand dollars in united states bonds to the state of delaware and the state of delaware will then take that and purchase the freedom of every slave in delaware there's only 1700 slaves in delaware well the idea is you you buy out those and if it works in delaware what's the next thing you do turn around in maryland make the same offer there and one by one the dominoes begin to fall when those critical border states decide to agree with the emancipation plan what conclusion do the confederate states the seceding states draw it's like oh boy the tide is setting in against us we can't expect these other slave states to join us maybe we'd better cut our losses and at that point then he can set the whole process working straight across the south maybe it'll take 10 years maybe it'll take 70 years maybe it'll take a lot of money it'll sure be a whole lot less expensive than civil war so lincoln really believes the buyout plan will work now the hitch was that the delaware legislature preferred racism to buy out and so they threw the plan back but what this means is that six months into his presidency he's already working on emancipation schemes so please no one come to me and say well why did abraham lincoln wait so long he's at this very early and he's at it in an indirect way because if he can entice these state legislatures to do the emancipating themselves because of the buyout then there's nothing that roger tawney and the federal courts can do to obstruct it still a state matter and it's a very shrewdly devised program the hitch of course as i say was that delaware decided not to go along with that it's not until the middle of 1862 that he realizes that is really not going to work and he decides to go in a different direction and this is to use the theory and then it was very much a theory of the war powers of the president as commander-in-chief and it's on those terms that in 1862 he issues the emancipation proclamation now people criticize it even then because they say well he only does this as what he calls a military necessity yes i know of course he does it like that because that's the only constitutional limb he can shinny out on he hasn't got any other authority than that to emancipate slaves that's why the emancipation proclamation first of all reads in such a dull legalistic fashion well because it's a very least it's a legal document what else do you expect uh it's going to accomplish something and secondly it's also why the proclamation includes all these zones of exemption why he says well it's not operating in certain counties in virginia it's not operative in the border states it's not operative in certain places in louisiana why they weren't at war at that point border states had never been at war with the united states and those places in virginia and louisiana had been reconquered by federal forces so they they weren't within the reach of his war powers either he has to craft this thing so precisely because he knows that if he doesn't then any blunder he makes in the in the construction of the proclamation is is going to be food for judges like tawny to peck at uh he actually constructs it very well it it is never challenged in the courts but even then he's not convinced that he's home free that's why by 1864 he begins pressing for the 13th amendment to the constitution because he knows that only amending the constitution to abolish slavery is going to permanently guarantee that we get rid of this birth defect which had been part of the life of the republic since its founding so his his process here while to some people it looks half-hearted and halting is actually a process which is guided by what he knows he can do what he can push forward he is guided by the virtue of prudence not the most popular virtue but still it is the virtue that works because he does get us there and slavery is wiped out by the 13th amendment and your point about the southern states recognizing that he was on the march to eliminate slavery from day one sort of puts the lie to the notion that he didn't care about it until much later no they they knew the very fact they had they could read they could read what he had said now what he says always is in terms of i'm opposed to the extension of slavery i don't believe i have the authority direct or indirect to meddle with slavery in the states where it's legal well he wasn't making that as a claim that was simply a fact of course he didn't he knew that and they knew it too but what they also knew was that as president he could make sure that the western territories were never going to legalize slavery and when they saw that they thought all right we have no room for expansion then if we are cemented in behind these anti-slavery walls even if we're allowed still to have legalized slavery in our states we're going to consume ourselves it's going to asphyxiate on its own so they say hey we're not we're not going to stay around and wait for the kind of inevitability that lincoln is creating for us we need to bolt now and this is how we're going to do it professor kelso i have one last question for you you're you're uh um an accomplished historian and um and your christian believer and i i wonder what kinds of things you would say to christian students really to any students i suppose but i am thinking in particular of christian students as to why history is worth studying maybe they maybe they didn't pick up the comic book and get excited about the civil war but but why is it that as christians we're also citizens of this republic the study of history is vital why did why did saint paul direct his readers especially the corinthians to reflect back on the history of god's people i mean he he directs them to the red sea he directs them to moses to abram look to the rock from which you were hewn in the old testament what are god's people told to identify themselves as being i my father was a wandering aramaian this is what moses is telling us we're always encountering in the bible the importance of rooting yourself in that history of looking to that rock from whence you are hewn because for us abraham and sarah moses jephthah barack the the the cloud of witnesses who are invoked in hebrews 11. these are not just dead people they are not just someone who lived a long time ago and who have no relevance or no connection to us for in the vision of god both past and present are alike real and alive and therefore when we look to abraham we're looking to a character from the past yes but we're also looking to a character who has immediate relevance to us we are to model ourselves on someone like abraham as a man of faith we are to model ourselves on moses we are to model ourselves on david because god had worked in a very special and particular way in their lives and when god works in the past that has a meaning for us in the present and in the present pointing to the future as well this is how we to live our lives so the bible is a constant testimony to the importance of that history because god creates that history in the past fully as much as god creates the present that we live in right now so to suggest that historical example is unimportant is in a way to thumb your nose at god not a position i want to recommend for people god has a very different view of history because to him this is all in his eternal present so don't spite that you know god has created the past for very particular reasons to bring us as it was said to esther who knows who knows what you have been brought to the kingdom for such a time as this that assumes that there is a historical trail that points us that there is both purpose and providence in historical realities so our job then becomes first of all to respect that you don't have to become a student of it you can simply begin by respecting it but you often can become a student of it and see what the record of god's people has been in the past and how you can learn from that and guide your life by it who could find a better example to live by than abraham and sarah but we're going to the past so right away these are people who might have lived a long time ago but they are as much our our brothers and sisters as if they were living down the street instead of in a different century so justin looking at this theologically someone who expresses contempt or despite for history or professes to be bored by it is actually being bored by god and i'm not really sure that's a position they really want to think about themselves as being in i think too that the study of history gives encouragement to christians because we are a minority we have always been a minority we have we have always been beleaguered wrong has always been on the throne right has always been on the scaffold but it gives us strength to look at the example of those in the past who have stood against that of george whitefield preaching in the fields when the churches were closed to him he goes out in the fields and preaches to 70 000 people in kensington common we look back to the example of great thinkers to the writings of people in the past to to charles hodge to benjamin warfield we look to those who have created the paths in which we walk prepared for us to walk in and on those scores alone they give us courage to sustain us today as if to say well if they could do it then we can do it now i think that's an important fortification for us it is so easy to become discouraged when you think that you are alone when you think that you are like the prophet in the desert and no one cares for you and no one is interested in you and then the lord comes along and says wait a minute there are still six thousands who have not bagged the knee to bail i like to think of those six thousand not only as six thousand contemporaries but i also like to think of the six thousand from the past who have not bowed the knee that gives us strength to be part of a 6 000 into the future in large measure that's why i do the history i do we're glad you do and we're glad you're here with us today thank you very much for your time thanks for having me

Channel: Cairn University

Views: 11,690

Keywords: allen guelzo, jonathan master, conversations, interview, cairn university, gettysburg college, cairnu

Id: dxACNaxnA-g

Length: 46min 30sec (2790 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 13 2017