There is an incredibly rich body of scholarship focused on explaining the outcome of the Civil War, but pastor John Hagee takes a slightly different approach.
Lincoln’s proclamation for a national day of fasting was signed in March 1863. I think Hagee needs to explain why it took another two years for Lee to finally find the “grace” to surrender. This is par for the course for these two clowns.
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Too bad Lincoln didn’t think of prayer and fasting before those “53,000″ poor guys got killed at Gettysburg. Lee was only holding out for some good old prayer action.
The Confederacy and Confederate Army did the same at the same time:
William Dorsey Pender wrote his wife from Camp Gregg, VA on March 26, 1863 stating, “Tomorrow we have a fast day and may the Lord grant us the grace that will enable us all to so importune Him that he will grant our prayers.” William Hassler, ed., The General to His Lady: The Civil War Letters of William Dorsey Pender to Fanny Pender (Chapel Hill, 1962), 211. Jed Hopkins writes in his journal on March 27, 1863, “This was the day appointed for fasting and prayer and it has been well obeyed in the army…over 50 sermons were preached in our Corps,” Archie McDonald, ed., Make Me a Map of the Valley: The Civil War Journal of Stonewall Jackson’s Topographer (Dallas, 1973), 123. E. Merton Coulter states that it was estimated that five thousand people crowed into the New Richmond Theatre during the fast day in March 1863, A History of the South Volume II: The Confederate States of America, 1861-1865 (Baton Rouge, 1950), 531.
That’s funny – I always thought the Union army had something to do with it.