Diary of Captain Luman Harris Tenney: February 12, 1865

Snowing in morning. Blowing all day. Batt. inspection in A. M. Undress parade in P. M. Read sermon in Independent and considerable miscellaneous matter. Wrote home.

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 143

Diary of 2nd Lieutenant Luman Harris Tenney: Sunday, October 23, 1864

Rode to Army Hdqrs. and to fortifications. Artillery parked near Hdqrs. Read Independents. Splendid sermon by Rev. R. W. Hitchcock. “Blessed be the Lord who teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight.”

SOURCE: Frances Andrews Tenney, War Diary Of Luman Harris Tenney, p. 134

Samuel Gridley Howe to Charles Sumner, March 1847

March, 1847.

My Dear Sumner: — I will not write a notice of Rev. G. Putnam's sermon¹ to-day, because I have just read it, and it has given me so much grief, shame and pain that I could not write calmly. The sermon seems to me (now) to be an atrocious one.

I impute no bad motives. I believe the writer to be as honest a man as I am, and a much better one, but unwittingly he has broached doctrines which seem to me treasonable to God and to humanity.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s!” ay! had I been a Jew I would have done so, and rendered him defiance, opposition and war, — war to the knife, while a Roman eagle floated over my country. “Government must be regarded as a divine institution!” ay! and so must right and justice be regarded as divine institutions; older, more sacred, more imperative; and when they clash, let the first be as the potsherd against the granite.

But enough; I am excited, and will go and get a cool breakfast.

S. G. H.

_______________

¹ Practically defending American slavery.

SOURCE: Laura E. Richards, Editor, Letters and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe, Volume 2, p. 254-5