Tag Archives: Abraham Lincoln

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 “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, ↩︎

Church, Education, Mennonite, Virginia

A House Divided Against Itself

Just before the American Civil War Abraham Lincoln declared that the United States could not continue as a divided country–either it would outlaw slavery altogether or slavery would become legal in all the states. Lincoln did not believe the United States could continue as a divided society. Lincoln borrowed his “house divided” phrase from the gospels of Jesus, revealing that Christ’s teachings from two millennia ago are as timely today as they were in the ancient era.

Our houses today cannot remain divided and hope to stand. Our country is as divided as ever, and we must find ways to unite, to speak in civil ways to each other, to build coalitions and bridges among those of very different points of view. Ours is a national crisis of a house divided–let us find leaders who can reach across our aisles that divide and help unite us.

In the church, we need to find ways to seek unity and not division. In the small town of northeast Ohio where I grew up and where I write this blog, we have a Mennonite history of churches dividing when there have been differences, finding that an easier solution than doing the hard work of creating a united house. A denomination, be it conservative or progressive, will need bridge builders to help liberals speak to conservatives, and vice versa, or otherwise the house will divide and collapse. In our congregations there are always differences of belief, opinion, or persuasion. We bring different upbringings, different assumptions, and different theological streams that we drink from. Let us learn to work together.

When I attended college years ago, we students occasionally tried to change things on our campus by speaking to the administration. But my memory is that most of our student energies went outward, challenging the powers beyond our campus. We marched against the production of nuclear weapons, protested the military-industrial complex, and tried to alleviate social injustices. Recently I attended a theological speech at the college I graduated from, where students and faculty greeted me outside the chapel doors with signs of protest for a lecture from a world-renowned theologian. It seemed to me the students were inward-focused, in contrast to my own college days where we mostly directed our energies outward toward the powers. The students who met me with protest signs and sidewalk chalk drawings were speaking into the community, revealing our inside-the-house differences, and trying to make me and others, it seemed to me, to feel concerned about an issue that I believe was an internal debate about ethics. How can a church institution stand when we attack one another from within?

Let us learn from Lincoln’s assessment, first articulated in the dusty towns of Palestine years ago. A house divided against itself cannot stand, be it a country, a denomination, a church school, a congregation, or even our own homes. It took determination for Lincoln to declare his vision in 1858, now eight score years ago. May those who are able to help bridge our current divides be found, enabled, encouraged, voted for, and empowered to cross the chasms that keep us apart. Otherwise we cannot stand.

Education, Illinois

Lincoln Hall at University of Illinois

P1020014

Abraham Lincoln’s father lived for a few years as a boy in Rockingham County, Virginia.  While attending a graduate seminar at the University of Illinois, the historian was pleased to meet for class in a newly furbished Lincoln Hall, dedicated to the memory and legacy of one of our nation’s greatest presidents.  The University of Illinois is located in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois.