Amazing grace the movie

I know of it, and I know the true history on which it is based. The only reason why I have not yet been to see it is my shortness of money at present.

The history of abolitionism in America features similar Christian heroes. A preacher by the last name of Garrison was instrumental in prodding President Lincoln to go ahead and issue the Emancipation Proclamation. And believe it or not, after the Civil War ended, ROBERT E. LEE demanded that his church serve communion to blacks and whites together.
 
Lee was actually quite even-minded in his racial tolerance, as was much of Virginia. Three years before the war, Virginia's state legislature came very close to banning slavery in the state, though it would have been a gradual thing. Ironically, historians speculate that one of the factors that scared the Virginia Legislature away from doing this was the appearance that they had "caved in" to radical abolitionists. This was one way that the truly firebreathing abolitionists (e.g. John Brown) helped defeat their own cause - something modern pro-lifers would do well to remember!

By all unbiased accounts, Robert E. Lee was a fine Christian gentleman who was evenhanded to all and terribly torn between loyalty to his country and loyalty to his state. His nobility of character was admired by even his enemies. An indication of what kind of man he was is given by the fact that he could not tolerate cruelty to animals, and if anyone under his command was caught maltreating a beast, that man was in big trouble. He was a slaveowner, but this was common for large estate holders. By all accounts he was a just and decent slaveowner, never overworking or mistreating his people.
 
Now that Robert E. Lee has been given a fair shake, even John Brown deserves fairness too. If John Brown pushed too hard from his end, it was at least in part because HE HIMSELF had been pushed by STILL EARLIER excesses on the PRO-slavery side. Years before the Civil War, when the territory which was to become the states of Kansas and Missouri was up for grabs as far as the slavery issue went, pro-slavery men resorted to terrorism to try to FORCE that territory to vote pro-slavery. The first major violent act committed by John Brown was in retaliation for a prior murder committed by the pro-slavery side.

Meanwhile, as for British law: unless a huge amount of information I've seen is all false, the British laws against citizens defending themselves have had ONE AND ONLY ONE result: making criminals bolder because no one's allowed to hurt them!
 
Back
Top