Justice

“Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.” – Frederick Douglass

During the years leading up to the Civil War, Frederick Douglass was a free black man and an outspoken abolitionist. Discrimination ran wild against him as he spoke before large crowds of people on the issue of slavery. An escaped slave, Douglass tirelessly pursued the goal of freeing his people.

The world had seen this extreme devotion to freeing a nation before. Moses relentlessly strove toward the seemingly impossible goal of freeing the Israelites from Egypt. It took ten miraculous plagues sent directly from God and the drowning of the entire Egyptian army to accomplish it. America itself had experienced this devotion before. In their own pursuit of freedom, the founders of America spent eight years in a war to achieve their goal.

America’s Second War for Independence, or the Civil War, lasted four years.  It was half as long as the Revolution, but one of the main goals was the same – to free an oppressed people. For no man has the right to own another man. Justice is fair judgment. Slavery is not just, and the founders of America knew that, which helped drive their independence from England. Many of the founders did not agree with the practice of slavery, yet the practice continued for many years.  If the founders had known that slavery would erupt into a national war with brothers killing brothers, do you think they would have made efforts to end slavery sooner rather than later?  Do you think that the Civil War would have still occurred if slavery was not an issue in America?

As our Founders boldly fought, we must too fight for justice.  All it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.