A Time to Kill, and a Time to Heal - Paperback

by L. M. Hopson (Author)

The bloody Civil War ended the year before at Appomattox Courthouse, but the South is in ruins, and over a third of the white male population (of eligible age) has died defending their independence. Lincoln is dead along with his commitment to reconciliation, and Andrew Johnson stands alone between the Radical Republican Congress and what is left in the rubble, including the three and a half million freedmen. The "Reconstruction of the South" has begun with measures that increase the bitterness and ultimately do little to improve the lives of the black families who remain in the deep South where famine threatens as many blacks as whites. With his "scorched earth" campaign in the fall of 1864, General Phillip Sheridan left the rich farmlands of the central Shenandoah Valley a wasteland, the same year General David Hunter shelled and burnt the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington and pillaged Washington College. Robert E. Lee has become the president of Washington College, and Edmund Claiborne is a professor of history at VMI, whose citadel is also in process of "reconstruction". Along with several other former Confederate officers, Edmund assumes responsibility to prepare the younger generation to provide the leadership needed to rebuild the South. In the summer of 1866, still coping with the tormenting memories of the killing fields of Civil War, Edmund finds happiness in his new marriage to his first and only love, Abby Graham. Abby, who also carries the scars of war, finds the home for which she longed and the opportunity to teach at the freedmen's school. Former Confederate Army chaplain Ben Graham is called to pastor the Presbyterian Church in Winchester, Virginia where his father Paul had spent his last years shepherding his beloved congregation through the brutal war. The call is initiated by Paul's closest friend and physician, Earl Patton, in whose home reside Ben's sister-in-law Mary Rose Graham and her son. None of the measures taken by Congress promote the healing so desperately needed to achieve racial harmony and equality. Can the Church provide the answers by demonstrating the inclusivity of the kingdom of God in this war-torn, bitter nation, in this time in history?