Chapter 3: 1860 The Civil War

In our study of the year 1776, we noted that this date fell 2,520 years after the beginning of Israel's captivity in 745 B.C.

We also noted that Samaria, the capital city of Israel, fell in 721 B.C. and that 2,520 years later Washington D.C. was built in 1800.

The year 1860 brought the United States into another type of judgment that indicates "late obedience." Our founders postponed the slavery issue in 1776 when they signed the Declaration of Independence and again in 1787 when they drafted the Constitution. "Late obedience" is manifested by the number 434 or a multiple of it. In this case, from 745 B.C. to 1860 A.D. is precisely 6 x 434 years. I explained this principle of Judged Time in detail in chapter seven of my book, Secrets of Time.

Judged Time is relatively rare, but a good example of it is found in the story of King Saul and the Amalekites. Amalek was an Edomite tribe, since he was the grandson of Esau (Gen. 36:12). The people of Amalek had attacked Israel as they left Egypt, and after the battle, God put a curse upon Amalek (Ex. 17:14-16). This put Amalek on Cursed Time, which means that their judgment was to occur 414 years later. By the time 414 years had passed, King Saul was king in Israel. In fact, it was the 18th year of Saul. Thus, in 1 Samuel 15:2, 3 the prophet Samuel told Saul,

² Thus says the Lord of hosts, I will punish Amalek for what he did to Israel, how he set himself against him on the way while he was coming up from Egypt. ³ Now go and strike Amalek and utterly destroy all that he has. . ."

In the story, Saul did a partial job, but spared King Agag, the Amalekite, who (as king) represented the heart of the problem of Amalek. A judge does not have the power to judge beyond the parameters of his mandated authority. Part of Saul’s duty as king was to act as a judge to enforce the decree of God against Amalek. The only way a judge can suspend a sentence is if he is willing to pay the penalty himself. Thus, by sparing King Agag, Saul took upon himself the curse of Amalek, and I believe that Saul would have died soon thereafter.

But Samuel took a sword and executed King Agag on behalf of Saul. This act took Saul out of Cursed Time and put him on Judged Time for "late obedience." Thus Saul was given another 22 years of life and died on a Judged Time cycle. He died 434 years after Israel as a nation had refused to enter the land in the year 2450 from Adam. Israel did enter the land, of course, but they did so 38 years late. Hence, their time of judgment for late obedience occurred coincidentally with the death of King Saul who was also under judgment for late obedience.

This story is told more fully in Chapter 6 of Secrets of Time. I am briefly explaining it here to give you a good example of how Judged Time works in prophecy.

With this in mind, let us ask ourselves what our founders left undone in 1776 and 1787 that caused us "late obedience" problems in 1860. In the year 1860 A.D. the United States came to the end of a Judged Time cycle, and this is the real underlying prophetic cause of the Civil War from the long-term divine perspective.

There were certainly many economic, political, and social causes of the Civil War. But none of these would have been sufficient in themselves to cause such a deep divide in the nation. Prophetically speaking, the Civil War was caused by late obedience in regard to the slavery issue. The American colonies should have resolved the slavery issue at the time they drew up the Constitution. However, they postponed the slavery issue in 1776, because South Carolina and Georgia refused to ratify it unless it protected their "right" to hold slaves.

However, we should also take note that in Georgia, slavery had been outlawed until 1752, when it became a Royal Colony, at which time they were forced to recognize slavery. Even by 1776 there were many Georgians who still disavowed slavery. They recognized that all rights come from God alone, who has not given any man the right to force any man into servitude except as payment for sin. And certainly no one had a divine right to kidnap people from Africa and bring them to America as slaves—or to buy slaves from the kidnappers.

The great issue at the time of the early American colonies was whether or not certain men were privileged to rule over the "common" people. The right of kings and popes had long been established and assumed to be true. But the Protestant Reformation had sparked an entirely new look at the Bible, and this led to an entirely new theory of government based upon the concept of "equality."

Prior to 1776 the people focused primarily on the equality of the people as opposed to the privileged classes of the monarchy, aristocracy, and religious hierarchy. Yet there was also the growing concern about the black and Indian slaves, particularly among the Puritans in New England, who were the first to legislate against slavery of all forms.

By way of contrast, the Virginia Colony adopted slavery, though gradually. Their loyalty to the Stuart kings of England in the 1600's (who were Catholic at heart, if not in name) added to their acceptance of the philosophy of slavery (as did the Catholic Church itself). Thus, as Wayne Holstad points out in his book, Leviticus v. Leviathan, p. 95, "New England was fiercely fundamentalist and democratic. The South was traditional and aristocratic." Thus, it was inevitable that these two religious cultures would eventually clash over the application of "equality." The South largely believed in freedom and equality for white people; the North largely extended the principles of freedom and equality to all men regardless of race.

The Declaration of Independence, as originally written, explicitly disavowed slavery, but after the objections from southern states, it retreated to an acceptable vagueness. Yet it states that "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights." Though the finished text does not enter the racial debate, it does set forth the root of Puritan-Reformation philosophy and that of William Blackstone, who had written that slavery violated Common Law. The real question was whether “all men” included those of all races or just the white race. Definitions could always be contested.

Because the Declaration is vague as it was adopted on July 4, 1776, few realize that the issue of slavery had indeed been discussed and debated among the delegates. Wayne Holstad points out on page 97 of his book,

"In the first draft of the declaration, among the list of claims against King George, Jefferson had written:

" 'He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery into another hemisphere.'

"Southern delegates to the Continental Congress demanded that this statement be deleted from the Declaration."

According to General John A. Logan's 1885 book, The Great Conspiracy, which is one of the great books showing the background and progression of the American Civil War, there was more that was deleted from the Declaration of Independence. He makes the point that the writers of the Declaration defined "men" (as in "all men are created equal") as being irrespective of race:

"Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he [King George] has prostituted his negative for suppressing every Legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce [as in the case of Georgia in 1752]. And that this assemblage of horrors might want [lack] no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the Liberties of our people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." (pp. 2, 3)

As the term "men" is used in the context of black slaves being sold in the open market, it is apparent that the black slaves were included in the previous statement that "all men are created equal." The term was not to be taken in contrast to women, but in contrast to only white men.

This statement was omitted in order to secure the votes of South Carolina and Georgia.

After the Revolutionary War ended, Virginia ceded her claim to the western territory in 1784, recognizing them to be future United States territories, rather than simply a greater State of Virginia. It was presumed that these territories would soon form states that would join the Union.

In 1784 the new Republic began to move toward the abolition of slavery in all future states. Jefferson wrote that "after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States." He said that this fact was "unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress assembled, and of the particular State within which such alteration is proposed to be made." (Logan, pages 3, 4)

It seemed as if slavery itself would be firmly restricted to a few southern states with no new states being allowed to enslave others. But Logan then explains how "a signal misfortune befell." Six States voted for this 1784 resolution to ban slavery in all new territories and new States that would yet join the Union. Three states voted against it. North Carolina's two delegates split their votes. So there were 13 votes for the resolution and 7 votes against it.

One of New Jersey’s delegates was absent. The remaining delegate from New Jersey voted to retain this prohibition against slavery, but his 14^th affirmative vote was lost, because the rules required the vote of two delegates from each state. A single vote would not count.

The rules also required a majority vote from all states—not merely all state delegates present. If all delegates from the 13 states had been present, the outcome of the vote could have been different. But as it stood, the prohibition resolution only received 13 votes, which was not a majority out of 26, because the deciding vote from New Jersey was lost. Logan then concludes:

"Thus was lost the great opportunity of restricting Slavery to the then existing Slave States, and of settling the question peaceably for all time" (p. 4).

Three years later, a similar Ordinance called “The Ordinance of ‘87” outlawed slavery in the new Northwest Territories (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin). Unfortunately, this did not legally apply to any new Southern territories. The primary difference is that the Ordinance of ’87 excluded territory south of the Ohio River, whereas the 1784 Ordinance would have included all new southern territories as well.

And so, while the Ordinance of ’87 restricted slavery in the North, it also established a legislative crack between North and South that only grew until the Civil War settled the issue by force of arms. Though it was passed under the authority of the old Confederation of States prior to the passage of the Constitution, it still carried weight and proved to be the first of a long string of compromises over the slavery issue that seemed necessary at the time to hold the Union together. The majority had to yield to the minority in order to keep from losing everything.

And yet it was understood from an economic point of view that slavery would fall of its own accord because it could not compete with the labor of free men in the North. And so, the necessary compromises were made in drafting the Constitution. Logan writes on page 6,

“Thus it was, that instead of an immediate interdiction of the African Slave Trade, Congress was empowered to prohibit it after the lapse of twenty years”.

Wayne Holstad writes about the debate among the delegates at the Continental Congress in 1789 in his book, Leviticus vs. Leviathan,

“The founding fathers agreed that the slave trade would end in 20 years after the adoption of the Constitution. That would allow current slave owners, including some of the southern delegates to the Constitutional Convention, to make adjustments in how they did business, while, at the same time, essentially prohibiting the impairment of current slave contracts. The delegates all planned that slavery would end in a generation.” (p. 98)

“Rufus King of Massachusetts and Governour Morris of Pensylvania bitterly opposed slavery. But because slavery was dying out . . . and because the South was so economically depressed compared to the North, they agreed with the majority of delegates that the slavery issue could be avoided until after ratification.” (p. 99)

“The founding fathers’ hopeful predictions that slavery would simply disappear were all made wrong because of a revolution in technology.” (p. 99)

“In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. A new industry, dependent upon slave labor, was spawned. The South expanded as far west as New Orleans. Alabama and Mississippi entered the Union as slave states.” (p. 99)

“The tactical decision to postpone the confrontation with the slavery issue because it would die a natural death had proven to be disastrous to the North. The avoidance strategy had failed. An unforeseen technological invention created a new generation of slave owners. The South had passed a point from which it could not retreat.” (p. 99)

And so this slavery issue festered for the next half century through compromise after compromise. The North argued from the standpoint of morality and natural law—as stated broadly in the Declaration of Independence—while the South argued from the standpoint of Constitutionality that gave them the freedom to possess slaves.

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was one of the most important of them all. The southern states were fearful that if free states outnumbered the slave states, the Congress would pass anti-slavery laws by a majority vote. Likewise, when Missouri applied as a slave state in 1818, the 11-11 balance of slave and free states was jeopardized, and northern states opposed their entrance into the Union. The Compromise was worked out later when free-state Maine applied for statehood. The Compromise was that a free state and a slave state would be admitted to the Union together, so as not to upset the balance of power between the two philosophies.

This Compromise lasted until 1854 when it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Tumultuous events in Kansas during the 1850’s brought the slavery issue to a head. Then in 1857 came the infamous case of Dred-Scott vs. Sanford, a case involving a slave who had been brought by his owner to Minnesota, where slavery was prohibited. In this case, the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice Roger Taney, went beyond the question before him, writing that “slavery could not be prohibited by Congress in the territories of the U.S.” (Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia, “Dred-Scott Case”) This had the effect of permanently incorporating slavery into the Constitution by direct ruling, and it had the immediate effect of arousing bitter and even violent opposition in the North.

Taney was a Catholic from Maryland. In 1806 he married the sister of Francis Scott Key, the author of our National Anthem. He replaced Chief Justice John Marshall at his death in 1836. Of the Dred-Scott decision, the Wikipedia says,

“Taney’s intemperate language only added to the fury of those who opposed the decision. As he explained the Court’s ruling, African-Americans, free or slave, could not be citizens of any state, because the drafters of the Constitution had viewed them as ‘beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect’.

“By the time he wrote his opinion in Dred Scott he labeled the opposition to slavery as ‘northern aggression,’ a popular phrase among Southern supporters of slavery. He evidently hoped that a Supreme Court decision declaring federal restrictions on slavery in the territories unconstitutional would put the issue beyond the realm of political debate. As it turned out, he was wrong, as his decision only served to galvanize Northern opposition to slavery while splitting the Democratic Party on sectional lines.”

Attorney Wayne Holstad comments on the Supreme Court’s decision on page 102 of his book, saying,

“At the same time, the United States Supreme Court permanently incorporated slavery into the Constitution in the infamous case of Dred Scott v. Sanford (1857). Based upon the dubious attempt of a freed slave to exercise the rights of a free citizen in the South, the Supreme Court struck down the Missouri Compromise of 1820. It did so by misinterpreting the reason that the drafters of the Constitution had postponed the abolition of slavery. The opinion of the Court misstated Congress’ intent to permit slavery for a period of years as an unqualified right to own another person. The court incorrectly claimed that it created a constitutionally protected right to own a person as property. The Supreme Court’s misinterpretation of the drafters’ intent is found in the following passage of its opinion:

“The right of property in a slave is distinctly and expressly affirmed in the Constitution. The right to traffic in it, like an ordinary article of merchandise and property, was guaranteed to the citizens of the United States, and every State that might desire it FOR TWENTY YEARS. And the Government, in express terms is pledged to protect it IN ALL FUTURE TIME, if the slave escapes his owner.”

Just as our Revolutionary War was caused by bad laws in the time of King George III, so also was the Civil War. The Dred-Scott decision made slavery “Constitutional,” but the Constitution was not the highest law of the land—at least not in 1857 when Dred-Scott was decided. The Declaration of Independence stood higher, and it recognized the highest law to be that given by God by right of creation. The Northern states based their case essentially upon this Declaration.

There were, of course, other causes of the Civil War, particularly economic causes, but these served only as a further stimulus to bring us to accountability in 1860 under Judged Time.

The slavery issue became a thorn in the flesh of the new Republic until it finally erupted in the great culture clash called the Civil War. The South argued that they had a Constitutional Right to hold slaves--which technically they did. The North felt betrayed and were angry at itself for compromising at the beginning. The culture conflict finally came to a head in 1860 when President Lincoln was elected, and erupted in open warfare in 1861. They seceded, not because they were being oppressed, but because they saw that it was LIKELY that anti-slavery legislation would now be passed which was disagreeable to them.

The southern states began to secede from the Union shortly after Lincoln was elected, but four months before he was inaugurated. South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Secession on Dec. 20, 1860. Mississippi seceded on Jan. 9, 1861; Florida on Jan. 10; Alabama on Jan. 11; Georgia on Jan. 18; Louisiana on Jan. 26; and Texas on Feb. 1. Other states followed later. On February 18 the Confederate States of America was formed, and Jefferson Davis was elected provisional President, appointed on Feb. 18, 1861.

But meanwhile, President Buchanan, a southerner, did nothing to prevent the disintegration of the Union. Meanwhile, President-elect Lincoln could do nothing but watch in horror as the nation was torn apart. By the time Lincoln was inaugurated in March of 1861, the revolt was nearly complete, and he had to deal with this mess during his entire presidency.

Because the United States is fulfilling the time cycles of the ancient House of Israel, we became liable for our "late obedience" on a 434-year cycle dating from the captivity of Israel in ancient times. We were judged in this, but the Union was saved. In understanding Judged Time, let us not repeat the mistakes of the past.