The "God of battles"*

 

It's a diary and it's personal, but it was also penned 265 years ago by a lieutenant in the 19th Cavalry Regiment of the Missouri State Guard, 8th Division, who was clearly writing only for his wife, Bettie. Whether or not the diary ever got to her isn't known, but it's likely it did and thereby lived/lives on, one of the most treasured Civil War memoires. 

This page was penned just a few days before Lt. Fisher's bunch of the 19th Cavalry rode into Humboldt, Kansas, and torched the place, burned it to the ground. Date? October 15, 1861, six months after Ft. Sumter. Understanding the gulf of misunderstanding that prompted the secession of slave states requires a stretch from those who unwilling to paint angels' wings on the backs of either side or admit that there was more to blame than the single, horrific issue of slavery.

. . ."we may have a hard time of it as it is reported that there is a force of 500 men with 4 pieces of Cannon at Humboldt and several detachments at LeRoy, Emporia and Cofachique," he explains to Bettie. As it turned out, Humboldt put up less of a fight than Fischer and his Reb troops eventually encountered. When the 8th Division of the 19th Cavalry left the town, they left it in ashes, burning everything in sight just as Fisher says, and exactly what Missouri Gov. Claiborne Fox Jackson once famously claimed rebel forces would do, burn the whole state on their way to the Missouri River.

But then, right here on what remains as the first page of the diary, comes an admission/confession/testimony that those of us who know little about the rebel cause or mind find not only unexpected but beyond imagination--the Christian faith:

". . . if they are there they will give us 'fits,'" Fisher tells his wife, "but our cause is just and the God of battles has been with us in every fight yet and with Him on our side we are sure of success may he be with us and prosper us."

I remember learning sometime in grade school that the Civil War of these dis-United States ironically posed "brother against brother"; but this kind of testimony still gives me fits. How he can claim righteous standing with the Lord God of Hosts, while at the same time, Union troops and civilians in Humboldt, Nebraska, are scared stiff of the destruction they will suffer in the next few hours, many of them praying for protection from the same God who the seceders claim is on the side of the men in gray who can't fold their hands in prayer because one hand holds a torch?

________________________

*Lt.