“A Divinity That Shapes Our Ends”: Providence and the American War of 1861-1865

 

“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,/ Rough-hew them how we will.” –  Hamlet V, ii, 10-11

“I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow’s Providence, but if Miss Watson’s got him there warn’t no help for him any more.” – Huckleberry Finn, Ch. 3

That the concept of Providence was much discussed in various writings—speeches, letters, sermons, and so on—during the American War of 1861-1865 should not be surprising. It was a time of great turmoil, conflict, and violence over fundamental issues dividing the country. Among these were the relation of the States to the United States, the interpretation of the Constitution, slavery and the Constitutional sanction of that institution, the meaning and scope of freedom and equality—all of these and others considered in the context of a country “realizing westward,” in the phrase of that Yankee poet, Robert Lee Frost. Both North and South hoped and prayed to the same God and hoped and prayed that He would bless each of their causes.

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