Better angels of our nature

Digging deep to help immigrants

Beginning in 1874, over 1,200 families from Ukraine sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and traveled by train to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Russian Tsar Alexander II had revoked some religious freedoms for thousands of Mennonites and required military service. So, the families, whose ancestors had migrated for religious freedom from the Netherlands to Prussia and then to Russia, picked up and moved again, this time to the U.S. and Canada.

 Because so many families moved at about the same time, farm prices were depressed when they sold, and the farmers arrived in New York with little money. In the better angels of their nature, hundreds of Mennonites in the United States gave money to help pay ship crossing fares and to help them buy land in the American Midwest.

“In a Strange Land–Asking the Way.” Mennonite group from Odesa, Russia (Ukraine), bound for Nebraska or Dakota. Harper’s Weekly, 1874 May 30, p. 452, Library of Congress

I was startled recently by how deep some families in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia dug to help pay ship crossing fares and enable farm families from Russia who spoke no English to buy land. In 1874, four small Mennonite congregations just north of Harrisonburg, Va., raised $195 to help pay ship passage fees and offered $245 in loans to help two families buy land in Kansas and Oklahoma. The immigrant family names were Unruh and Schmidt.

Earlier this year, I reviewed a folder of previously unanalyzed primary source material from Jacob Geil, a Mennonite deacon, who kept good records. The financial notes that Geil issued to Mennonites from Russia were for seven years. The correspondence includes letters that Geil wrote to Unruh and Schmidt seven years later, inquiring about repayment. I figured that about two dozen farm families in the Shenandoah Valley, in the four small congregations, collected over $12,000 in today’s money to help.

Money given and loans made to immigrants in the 1870s, combined with the economic incentives offered by the Santa Fe Railroad Company, helped them prosper and flourish. The settlers repaid the loans from Mennonites whom they did not know, making Kansas a breadbasket for the world.

House where Jacob Geil and family lived in the 1870s, Linville, Va. (photo by Elwood Yoder)

In October 2024, I took two grandsons, ages 5 and 8, to visit a heritage museum in Goessel, Kansas, one of the centers where Russian immigrants settled 150 years ago. We learned history, sat on old farm machinery, learned about wheat threshing stones, and had fun.

We paused to examine and talk about a swords-into-plowshares outdoor metal sculpture created to mark the centennial in 1974 of the first wave of Mennonite arrivals from Ukraine. These immigrant farm families believed in the way of peace and nonviolence. To the credit of President Ulysses S. Grant and Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, who welcomed immigrants, the Mennonites turned the ground with plowshares and grew acres of wheat. Many of their descendants rejected violence when Uncle Sam went to war.

Swords into Plowshares sculpture, Goessel, KS (Elwood Yoder photo)

My wife and I have six grandchildren who live in eastern Kansas. They are growing up where thousands of Russian immigrants settled and prospered. One lesson I want to help teach them is that the better angels of our nature should embolden those of us who have been here a while to, in turn, assist immigrants and help them get started in their new lives. And we may need to dig deep.

Better angels of our nature

Washhouse Politics

Decades of interactions in an old washhouse demonstrate how people with different goals and backgrounds can live together in concord and peace. In 1840, the Burkholders, a Mennonite family in Rockingham County, Va., built a washhouse. Since then, many have used the building, and today it is a fun learning station during K-1st-grade field trips at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg, Va.

From 1840 to 1865, ten percent of those in the Shenandoah Valley were enslaved, though the Burkholder family did not use them to work in their washhouse. If they had, their Mennonite church would have removed them from membership. In 1860, Rebecca Burkholder suffered the death of her husband, Martin, and lost two children to influenza. When the Civil War began in 1861, widow Burkholder had four small children in her care, and neighbors and family helped her farm the fields.

Burkholder-Myers house (left), 1854, and washhouse, 1840, Harrisonburg, Va.

The Burkholder family washed their clothes in their washhouse, using water heated in a large metal pot that hung over the fire. They used homemade lye soap, hung clean clothes outside on a line to dry, and poured the wash water on the garden plants. The washhouse also served as a butcher house, where cattle and hog meat were cured and smoked.

Rebecca Burkholder hid men at her home during the Civil War who, for religious reasons, would not fight for the Confederacy. No one knows where she hid the men, but the basement or attic in the washhouse is a likely guess.

In 2026, well over 100 K-1st-grade children will visit the washhouse each week in April and May. Many parents, teachers, and chaperones follow their children. They come from public, private, and homeschool groups. On April 23, 2026, in the washhouse, education students from a nearby university and two faculty observed the guides. I led a Connecticut tourist couple into the smoky wash house, where logs burned in the fireplace, and they were delighted to watch children actively learning.

Burkholder-Myers washhouse, Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.

The washhouse guides demonstrated how 19th-century families washed their clothes. The kids used a washboard to clean socks, then went outside and learned to hang wet clothes on a clothesline.

During lunch, when the kids ate their packed lunches outside, the 40-50 adult volunteers ate a delicious lunch delivered by a local Mennonite church.

In the washhouse, Confederate scouts searched for Mennonite men who hid from conscription, and the Burkholders washed, ironed, folded their clean clothes, and prepared summer meals over the fireplace. In recent years, thousands of elementary students have learned about the tasks performed in a 19th-century washhouse. Amid these many people, cultures, and beliefs, the washhouse has been a great setting for diverse people to learn from one another. For me, “washhouse politics,” where people interact with good intentions and respect one another, is how I’d like to see our U.S. society work together and get along.

Washhouse at Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.

Better angels of our nature

Patterns of peace in a broken world

On Easter, a leader lit a peace lamp on the pulpit. Not a big deal, I guess, but I was six states away from where I usually worship, and her simple act of lighting a lamp for peace and praying for our divided world got me thinking.

Despite stark political divisions in the United States and a war in the Middle East, we can still see patterns of peace in our lives if we look for them—the small peace lamp kept my attention and burned during the entire Easter service.

While driving away from the barn where our family gathered for an early morning Easter sunrise service, I stopped the van. The farm’s owners had placed a small cross in the yard, strategically positioned to catch the bright rays of the rising sun. It stunned me, so I stopped, with four grandsons buckled in behind me. I needed to move quickly to take the photo of the crude cross that reminded me of the peace that I hope for in our world today.

And the sunrise service had been ecumenical, welcoming people from several area congregations. Again, to notice the pattern of peace was heartening to me.

Back in Virginia, after 4.5 hours of sleep, I spoke to a group of about 30 men for an early Tuesday morning Bible study. Again, I noticed and thought about the reality that these men and I came from 8-10 different congregations. It helps to look for patterns of peace because the small things we notice help to cope with larger differences in the world.

At work that first day back from Kansas, I ate lunch on the Welcome Center deck that faces toward the Massanutten Mountain. I’m always encouraged by the ancient mountain’s peak and its silent elegance, with the Blue Ridge beyond. Above the deck was a glorious pink dogwood, in full spring bloom, delivering beauty to my lunch break that was glorious, enchanting, and memorable.

It doesn’t always work for me, but when I can notice patterns of peace around me, in wholesome relationships, societal systems that still work, and natural wonders that amaze, my spirit fills with hope for peace in a broken world.

Better angels of our nature

A good local association in a time of national peril

This week, I attended an energizing and hope-filled press conference held in a local congregation’s parking lot. About seventy community members gathered on a sun-drenched but cool Monday morning to hear about the progress of an innovative tri-party association. A new preschool that held the press conference emerged from families who want their children enrolled in a quality program while they work.

With families of preschoolers, the public school superintendent, and city and state politicians in attendance, the innovative preschool model shows how local entities can come together to improve the community.

Valley Early Education Reimagined press conference, Harrisonburg Va., March 23, 2026. E. Yoder photo

There was energy in the press conference. A mother of a boy in the preschool program explained that she could continue teaching at a local high school because her son was well cared for. Another mother detailed her anxious choice between having her children in a good preschool or staying home to care for them.

With kids, educators, pastors, grandparents, and politicians, those who gathered created a sense of purpose and renewed hope for our community. We are in a time of national peril, about which few would disagree. But here in my backyard, less than a mile from where I live, is a new association bubbling up from below, showing what we can achieve together.

Launched by Valley Interfaith Action, of which I’m a part, Valley Early Education Reimagined (VEER) is a new model seeking employers and state officials to help fund preschool expenses.

VEER press conference, Harrisonburg, Va., March 23, 2026. E. Yoder photo

Alexis de Tocqueville, a French traveler and writer who came to the United States in 1831, described the unique way Americans create associations for their own betterment. Tocqueville’s description of associations unfolded before my eyes as speaker after speaker at the March 23, 2026, press conference explained how we in this community could work together for our common good.

The mood was positive and hopeful. Two men thanked me for a recent history lecture before the event began. But when the press conference started, I listened to every word. “Together,” a Church of the Brethren pastor declared, “We are pioneering a sustainable childcare model for Virginia.” And the mayor of Harrisonburg, Virginia, called us to work “together, together, together.” The mayor’s energy was the kind of civility and cooperation that James Madison described in Federalist #10, where factions in society come together, working from the bottom up, to create a better world for the participants.

This community movement, driven by diverse local people working together, offers hope that we can overcome divisions and build a stronger society.

VEER press conference, March 23, 2026, Harrisonburg, Va. E. Yoder photo
Better angels of our nature

Happy Birthday, James Madison!

James Madison image courtesy of James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

Happy 275th birthday, James Madison! At my job in Harrisonburg, Virginia, I’ve created a small historical exhibit to honor the fourth president, James Madison, from nearby Montpelier, Virginia.

A few days ago, when James Madison University, a major university I can see from the Heritage Center where I work, celebrated James’s 275th birthday, we did the same. We brought in bagel bites, muffins, candles, and a Jimmy Madison bobblehead. About fifteen volunteer carpenters had come to work for the day, and at lunch, around tables, they humored me by singing “Happy Birthday” to James Madison.

In the earlier Julian calendar, Madison was born on March 6. In the Gregorian calendar, adopted in the United States when James was one, his birthday moved to March 16. Take your pick — JMU and the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center each had a party in Harrisonburg, Va., on March 6 (Julian), but March 16, 2026 (Gregorian), is Madison’s 275th birthday.

So here’s a tribute to the political philosopher who brought religious freedom to the United States. I’m a Mennonite, and for these 250 years of the United States, my people have been privileged to worship in freedom, even with minority religious beliefs. Madison’s First Amendment says it all: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Celebrating James Madison’s birthday, March 6, 2026
M. Garber photo

Better angels of our nature

Madisonian Checks and Balances

I believe that James Madison would have approved the Supreme Court’s recent overturn of the Trump tariffs. I’m writing this blog on the campus of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, named for the chief architect of the U.S. Constitution. The outstanding JMU Rose Library is one of my favorite places to work.

James Madison (1751-1836) developed the concept of checks and balances in the federal government. He envisaged three branches, each of which could check the wrongful constitutional impulses of the others.

James Madison University, Harrisonburg, Va.

The Virginian understood human nature and its tendencies toward self-aggrandizement. “If men were angels,” Madison wrote in The Federalist #51, “no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, no government would be necessary.” Perhaps the most politically minded of the nation’s founders, Madison wrote that the federal government must be able to control the governed. Further, he emphasized, the national government is obliged to control itself.

I think that James Madison would have applauded the Supreme Court’s nine-member ruling on February 20, 2026. But to guess how he would have argued and voted had he served on the Court would be mere speculation. The six-member majority ruled that Trump lacked the legal authority to impose his tariffs. The power to tax, the Supreme Court asserted, was Congress’s responsibility, as outlined in Article 1, section 8: “The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises.”

It has been eight or nine generations since the U.S. founders wrote the Constitution. On our nation’s 250th birthday, it is not too much to be concerned about the effectiveness of Madison’s checks and balances among the Judicial, Executive, and Congressional branches. For example, the President has declared that he will seek other legal means to collect the import tariffs, thereby circumventing the Court’s ruling. But regardless of the outcome of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the very fact that a presidential action can be stricken, in such divided times as we live in, is remarkable.

There were those in the Constitutional era who wanted state governments to have greater power than the national government. Madison countered that only a strong central government could effectively rule a large republic. Further, he sought a way to keep the national government from becoming too powerful or domineering. Thus, as he read history, especially Montesquieu, he believed that a system of checks and balances at the national level was essential.

James Madison statue at JMU, Harrisonburg, Va.

While at times it seems to many of us that the U.S. federal government is in perpetual gridlock, what we are actually observing is the sometimes-volatile interplay among three powerful branches of government, each with constitutional authority over the others. President Trump has been impeached twice by the House of Representatives, and each time the Senate acquitted him.

In the flow of national politics today, the Congress, divided and self-absorbed, seems unable to use the power granted it in the Constitution. When the Supreme Court, however, asserted its constitutional power and ruled 6-3 against the President’s tariff policies, it seems to me that James Madison would have applauded the nerve of those who voted against one of the most powerful chief executives in U.S. history.

Better angels of our nature

James Madison’s defense of religious dissenters

We need a new Enlightenment. James Madison, a proponent of Enlightenment values, spoke for the rights of religious minorities in Virginia and in the new United States. Madison defended the rights of Baptists, Quakers, Brethren, and Mennonites, who were dissenters from the sanctioned Anglican church of the Virginia commonwealth. Madison argued that they should be able to hold their beliefs independently of the state’s official religion.

Among Madison’s many political involvements, he served in the Virginia House of Delegates for two years, 1784-1786. Brethren and Mennonites in the Shenandoah Valley sent a petition for exemption from militia duty to the Virginia delegates in 1784. Again, in 1785, a group of 71 Mennonites submitted another petition to the Virginia House of Delegates seeking exemption from militia duty because their faith did not allow them to carry or use weapons in military service.1

During his years serving in the Virginia House of Delegates, Madison wrote a historic defense of religious freedom. He asked in the widely read essay whether the “Quakers and Menonists were the only sects that think it is unnecessary and unwarrantable to support their Religions compulsively?”2 Madison argued that each Christian denomination in Virginia should be able to worship freely as they choose. Madison had been baptized into the Anglican church and was from the privileged class. Still, he heard and read about Baptist ministers whom the authorities jailed for preaching their doctrine in Virginia, which upset him. A sheriff near Luray, Virginia, chased Mennonite Jonas Blosser Jr. into hiding because Blosser’s nonresistant convictions prevented him from mustering (marching) with the local militia.

Madison’s determination to establish the new country on the principles of freedom and equal rights for all religious groups became woven into the fabric of the new United States. Madison persuaded the Virginia delegates in Richmond to approve a “Statute for Religious Freedom,” written years earlier by Thomas Jefferson.3 The Statute disestablished the Virginia state religion and supported tolerance for all believers, regardless of denomination.

Elwood Yoder

Four years later, in 1789, Madison wrote the First Amendment for the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” In the Second Amendment, Madison defended the right of all to bear arms, and he added a phrase in his original draft that “no person religiously scrupulous of bearing arms shall be compelled to render military service in person.”4 The phrase that would compel no one to render military service if opposed on religious grounds passed in the U.S. House but not in the Senate.

The 1780s were an axial time in Virginia and U.S. history, a hinge era when minority beliefs came to be accepted. James Madison, an Enlightenment philosopher, articulated a defense of dissenting religions in Virginia and then again during the formative political moments of the United States.

Researching the origins of freedom of religion in the 1780s is why I’m starting to think we need another era of Enlightenment. We need a resurgence of the belief that we must respect all people for their beliefs, nationalities, convictions, and heritage. The Enlightenment ideas of James Madison inspire me, and it’s time for a new Enlightenment in the twenty-first century.

  1. Richard K. MacMaster, Samuel L. Horst, and Robert F. Ulle, Conscience in Crisis (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1979), 331-334. ↩︎
  2. “Founders Online: Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments, 1785,” National Archives and Records Administration, accessed February 15, 2026, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-08-02-0163. ↩︎
  3. Contributor: John A. Ragosta, “Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786),” Encyclopedia Virginia, February 18, 2025, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-statute-for-establishing-religious-freedom-1786/. ↩︎
  4. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt2-2/ALDE_00013262/ ↩︎
Better angels of our nature

With malice toward none and charity for all

We’ve fragmented in recent years. We seem tribal, isolated in echo chambers of like-minded opinions. Yet in one-on-one conversations, many Americans are remarkably similar. We help each other when needs arise, we talk when we meet in public, but we argue politics until we can no longer reconcile.

I think that the loss of common regional news sources has increased our tribalism — now we each choose our own media sources and interpretations of events. Ours is a time like in 1865, near the end of a protracted and gruesome Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln called the American people to exercise “malice toward none and charity for all.”1

Just before the Civil War, Lincoln asserted that the country could not survive divided. He dedicated four years to the presidency and worked to keep the country together, achieving that goal, but at the cost of his own life.

Lincoln worked from an attitude of respect toward those who disagreed, yet he was forceful in his call for the abolition of slavery. The sixteenth president grounded his speeches and government in moral principles, often recognizing the providence of God in leading him.

Elwood Yoder

We need healing today, as when Lincoln called for the nation to finish the work of binding up the nation’s wounds. At the end of his second inaugural address, Lincoln called on Americans to care for the vulnerable, including those in the soon-to-be-defeated southern states. Whatever our political views, it is incumbent on us to help people in need, those in distress, and those less fortunate than we are.

With a certain degree of humility, with a generous recognition of the providence of God in our world, with a commitment to binding up the wounds of those around us, we can achieve a just and lasting peace, as Lincoln wrote.

The political landscape keeps changing. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, was drunk at his swearing-in as vice president, never attended school, was impeached, and is often thought to be one of the worst presidents in U.S. history.2 In the twenty-first century, politics swing back and forth like a pendulum, inciting arguments and hostile opinions on both sides of the continuum.

But I think most of us live in the middle, able to speak with liberals and conservatives, committed to building a better society despite divided politics, and seeking a just and lasting peace. As Lincoln spoke in his second inaugural address, when we extend malice toward none and charity for all, peace has a chance to emerge within us, our country, and in the world beyond.

  1. https://www.nps.gov/linc/learn/historyculture/lincoln-second-inaugural.htm ↩︎
  2. Jon Meacham, And There Was Light: Abraham Lincoln and the American Struggle (New York: Random House, 2023), 365, 415. ↩︎

Better angels of our nature

Rebuilding out of the ashes

The story of how Mennonites in Virginia rebuilt out of ashes after their barns, mills, and houses burned in 1864 somewhat parallels the difficulties faced by Anabaptist Mennonite believers in Venezuela in 2026.

First, the numbers are small. When Union General Philip Sheridan torched the capital resources of residents in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia in October 1864, there may have been 500-600 Mennonites in Rockingham and Augusta Counties. On January 3, 2026, when the United States bombed Caracas, Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira, there were fewer than 500 baptized Anabaptist Mennonites in the Latin American nation.1

Second, many refugees have fled Venezuela to neighboring Colombia, hosted there by Anabaptist Mennonites. In an instance of the better angels of our nature, the rugged Union General Philip Sheridan invited Mennonites and other families who had been left desolate from the burning campaign to leave Virginia on a military-escorted wagon train to northern states. No one knows precisely how many Mennonites departed the Valley, but many did. Others, however, remained and weathered the brutal winter of 1864-1865 by sharing scarce food, huddling in the houses that Sheridan’s men did not burn, and surviving in the most primitive conditions imaginable.2

Elwood Yoder

Third, there are parallels between how Mennonites in Virginia responded to the burning of the Valley in 1864-65 and how Anabaptist Mennonites in Venezuela responded to the 2026 bombings. While there was heightened anxiety in Rockingham County, and church life was disrupted, the continuities of nonviolence, peace, and community support remained steady. Today, Mennonites in Venezuela continue to trust in God, seek peace for their country, and do not want to leave unless they must.3

In my study of Mennonites during the American Civil War, the resilience of Catherine and Samuel Shank has inspired me. Even when Union soldiers burned their house and barn on October 6, 1864, they exhibited the better angels of their nature.

On that fiery day of burning, Catherine Rhodes Shank protected her five children, all under the age of ten. She watched her recently ordained minister husband race into the house to try to save a few things. He rescued a small table and the family Bible. To save him from burning, Union soldiers stopped him from reentering the inferno.4

During the winter after the burning, 1864-1865, the family first found refuge at Catherine’s brother’s home. Then the Shanks lived in their small spring house while they rebuilt. From a kiln they constructed and from clay they dug from their nearby orchard, they made bricks for their new home, which the family constructed. They also built a new barn. Catherine had one more child after the Civil War, born five years before she passed away in 1875, at the age of 43, from pneumonia.5

From the ashes of their farm rose a new house and a new barn. Catherine made all the family’s clothing without a sewing machine, and three of her sons were later ordained ministers in the Mennonite church. One of Catherine’s cousins, Henry E. Rhodes, was among a group of barn builders who worked hard in the years after the war, rebuilding barns from the ashes across the Shenandoah Valley, like flowers blooming in springtime.

Despite political turmoil, war, or economic uncertainties, we can exhibit the better angels of our nature, as Abraham Lincoln called for in his first inaugural address. Whether after Sheridan’s fires that destroyed barns, fences, mills, and houses, or amidst the uncertainties faced by Venezuelan Anabaptist Mennonites, we must choose how to respond. The better angels of our nature, including peace, nonviolence, trust in community, and faith in God’s providence, seem the better course to take.

  1. “Membership, Map and Statistics,” Mennonite World Conference, November 28, 2025, https://mwc-cmm.org/en/membership-map-and-statistics/. ↩︎
  2. Elwood Yoder, Shenandoah Mennonite Historian 22, no. 4 (Autumn 2014): 2–5. ↩︎
  3. Karla Braun, “A Pastoral Letter Regarding Anabaptists in Venezuela,” Mennonite World Conference, January 8, 2026, https://mwc-cmm.org/en/stories/pastoral-letter-venezuela/. ↩︎
  4. Elwood E. Yoder, Under the Oaks: A History of Trissels Mennonite Church, Broadway, Virginia, 1822-2022 (Broadway, Va.: Trissels Mennonite Church, 2022), 26-27; 49-56. ↩︎
  5. Steven M. Nolt and Elwood E. Yoder, People of Peace: A History of the Virginia Mennonite Conference (Morgantown, PA: Masthof Press, 2025), 57; 63-64. ↩︎

Better angels of our nature

Abraham Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address

In his first inaugural address, March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln offered one of the most optimistic and beautiful turns of phrase in U.S. political history. Lincoln’s reference to the “better angels of our nature,” symbolizing our highest virtues and moral compass-at the end of his long speech still rings out today: “The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Elwood Yoder

Seven southern states had already seceded from the United States; other states, like my own, Virginia, were poised to follow. The political outlook for the Union was gloomy. Most realized war was inevitable.

In 1861, Elizabeth Shank Showalter, 30, lived seven miles north of where I live today in Harrisonburg, Va. “Betsy,” as she was affectionately called, wanted to attend Lincoln’s inaugural address in nearby Washington.1 Why would a Mennonite woman leave her husband and four young children at home in Broadway, Va., travel north to Winchester, and then pay for a train ride to the nation’s capital? Probably, one of my historian friends has guessed that it was because she had neighbor friends who were going to the inauguration.2 Some of Betsy’s neighbors were second- and third-cousins of Lincoln, who still lived in the Shenandoah Valley. Years earlier, Abraham Lincoln’s father’s family moved west from Virginia to Kentucky. Abraham himself never lived in Virginia. “Virginia John” Lincoln moved to the Shenandoah Valley in 1767, and he is buried at the Lincoln Homestead in Linville, Va.

Lincoln delivered the standard rhetoric of a political speech at his inauguration, but then he used poetic license in the closing to appeal to his listeners’ hearts. One wonders how many of the thousands who attended actually heard his voice without a public address system. Perhaps Betsy Showalter and others had printed copies of his speech in their hands.

We are divided today, but not like when Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated. There are those all around me on the strident left and on the intractable right. The vast majority of Americans are like me, I think, in the two-thirds middle category, who on most issues can be reasoned with and persuaded to think differently with good ideas and information.

I’d like to appeal to the “better angels of our nature,” to grasp, as Lincoln stated in his inaugural speech, that “we are not enemies, but friends.” It’s impossible to ignore the hellishness of the American Civil War, especially as it was experienced by Betsy Showalter’s family and others in the Shenandoah Valley who suffered through the burning of their barns, mills, and some houses. Lincoln appealed to the better angels of our nature, but he also demonstrated the worst angels of our nature in the brutal Civil War that killed hundreds of thousands. I still see signs of southern resistance as I travel throughout the Shenandoah Valley today. The raw feelings are not healed, much as we’d like to think they are.

One moment of “better angels of our nature” stands out to me in the American Civil War. On the night of October 5, 1864, Union General Sheridan gave orders to burn every barn and home in the vicinity of Dayton, Va. When an unknown Union sergeant and his men came to the farmstead of Peggy Heatwole Rhodes, intending to burn everything, Peggy pleaded for the men to preserve her house and barn. The night sky was full of fire when Peggy begged for mercy. While the sergeant listened to Peggy, his men looted the house, taking whatever they wanted.3

Peggy Rhodes, with five young children, explained that she had helped the Union cause by secretly hiding and assisting objectors to the war who fled Virginia to Northern States. She explained that her husband, who had just died a few months earlier, did not fight for the Confederacy. The Union sergeant ordered one of his men to ride over the hill to the church cemetery and confirm Peggy’s story. When her story was confirmed, the sergeant, under the better angels of his nature, blew his whistle, which meant that his troops were to move on to the next farm. Peggy’s barn and house were preserved, and the log barn still stands today.

I can describe more moments in the Civil War in Virginia, which I know something about, where better angels prevailed. I shall detail more stories in the coming months. Join me in 2026 on a journey to discover the “better angels of our nature” that occasionally prevail.

  1. Elizabeth “Betsy” (Shank) Showalter (1831–1913) married Michael H. (Herbert) Showalter (1831–1905), and Michael and Elizabeth Showalter are buried at Weavers Mennonite Church, Harrisonburg, Va. ↩︎
  2. Elwood E. Yoder, Under the Oaks: A History of Trissels Mennonite Church, Broadway, Virginia, 1822-2022 (Broadway, Va.: Trissels Mennonite Church, 2022), 75. ↩︎
  3. David S. Rodes, Norman R. Wenger, and Emmert F. Bittinger, Unionists and the Civil War Experience in the Shenandoah Valley, vol. 3 (Harrisonburg, VA: Valley Brethren-Mennonite Heritage Center, 2005), 691-714; and, ↩︎

"Articulating historical perspectives that inform current trends in the church, society and the world," by Elwood E. Yoder