Joseph Smith and the Civil War

OK, I'll bite for this. Now understand that, as I have made clear before, one of the things that so speaks to me regarding the existence of God is that He left no trace of "magic" or "miracle" in the natural world. Everything natural has an explanation once we develop the toolset to understand it. Prophesy as you confine it, then, becomes contradictory to the natural order of the world. God isn't revealing things to be scientifically tested or repeated. Aside from that, there are plenty of things that are of such minute importance as regards the affairs of God's purpose that prophesy regarding those things would not be possible - who would God tell it's going to rain in Haiti as some sort of evidenciary prophesy? God will not be mocked, and such an undertaking as to use a direct line to God do discuss the weather seems like the sort of thing that would mock Him. So before I offer up something for us to discuss, I need to amend a couple of your conditions.

In "e." you said that if something offered as a prophesy came true, such as someone winning the lottery, you would find it more likely that there was tampering than that there was divine causation. Firstly, this would fall under the heading of God being mocked - someone asking for revelation regarding a game of chance - and secondly you have already discounted any possibilty of godly assistance by saying "there must be some logical explanation, i.e. the game was rigged." What if the divine interaction was to rig the game? God's natural, logical methods are in evidence all around us - the motion of the planets, the conditions for life on earth, etc. - so why would his methods at fulfilling a prophesy be any different? You are presuming that His prophetic fulfillment would be through some sort of "magic," when it is just as likely that it would be through some incredible series of logical events. Consider miraculous healing as an example. If a doctor gives some patient with a terminal disease some finite amount of time to live, and that patient - a religious person who prays devoutly - suddenly recovers and the doctor discovers that some extremly rare condition of events occured to cure the illness, is it because God knows the body more intimately than anyone (being that He designed it) or is it just some fluke chance - fluke because the odds of beating such a disease are slim but the doctor can explain how the body healed itself? My point is that this condition you outline presupposes the methods by which God would accomplish His goals. Being able to explain something after the fact does not necessarily prove that God wasn't involved. Of course this has been the nature of our debate since day one. But I must make that caveat known before I continue.

Point "h." is like "e." so I won't say any further regarding that one. Regarding point "i." there is again some element of relevancy to prophesy. I could list dozens of prophesies from the book of Revelation alone, and just because we can go back in hindsight and explain them logically doesn't make them wrong or incorrect. So to this end I will add another condition: the prophesy must be judged from the perspective of its contemporaries. Would the people in the day have been able to explain the prophesy? We can look at satellite imaging of weather patterns today and compare those images to previous years and notice trends that tell us things like when hurricanes will strike or form, and that allows us to look back at events like Katrina and say, "oh, we should have seen that coming." This is simply for instance, not that such a conversation actually happened. I'm using it as example to say that we need to judge the veracity of prophesy against the information that was available to the people of the time.

All of this said, I will offer up an intriguing event for evaluation as prophesy. I have debated this one specifically with people whose knowledge of history and predictability I greatly respect, and the consensus is that it is extremely unlikely that the author of this passage could have predicted this event with the level of detail or accuracy that he did. In short, that the writing was not yet on the wall, even if the seeds of the event were well-sown. To me, it is evidence, if not proof, of some divine revelation.

From the Doctrine & Covenants, section 87, verses 1-4 regarding the Civil War:

"Verily, thus saith the Lord concerning the wars that will shortly come to pass, beginning at the rebellion of South Carolina, which will eventually terminate in the death and misery of many souls;
And the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place;
For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war will be poured out upon all nations.
And it shall come to pass, after many days, slaves shall rise up against their masters, who shall be marshalled and disciplined for war."

This was recorded in December of 1832. It offers distinct prophesies: that a) South Carolina would rebel first, beginning b) the war between the states (war being part of the prophesy, not that it was between the states); that c) the South would call on other nations, specifically Great Britain, for aide; and that d) slaves would rise up against their masters and be marshalled for war. All 4 predictions came true - SC rebelled in 1860; the South called for the aid of Great Britain and France, among others, in 1861; the slaves who were freed by the Union were marshalled and trained to fight against their former masters, and in fact many slaves even in the Confederate South rebelled of their own volition when they heard that the Union Army was coming.

The question becomes this: what could Joseph Smith have known in December 1832 that would taint the validity of this prophesy? James Calhoun, a senator from SC, had threatened secession in November of 1832 at a joint session of Congress over the issue of freesoiling (non-slave states, not wonton bedwetting) and other issues of concern to the South. News didn't travel fast in those days, but such a thing could have made it from DC and SC into Ohio and Missouri in a month's time. Perhaps Smith could reasonably have predicted that SC would secede first. Really that part of the prophesy is 2 parts: that the South would secede and that SC would be first. Clearly there was no real love between the North and the South, so that part of the prophesy I don't even include since, even in 1832, contention between the North and South was brewing. That it would come to war was not so obvious. My sources concede that the likelihood of all-out war was not readily obvious to most contemporary observers until 1848-50, after the Mexican-American War. Modern historians have attempted to refine that date and provide evidence that the roots of the Civil War were obvious in the 1830's, but the evidence for that claim is circumstantial at best. So on the first count, while Smith could have known the trouble in SC would lead to rebellion, it is unlikely and even moreso that he could have predicted all-out between the North and South.

Smith had no way to know that the South would call for aide from Britain. Such and event may be considered likely because the Continental Army under Washington had sought aide from France against the UK, so perhaps an astute observer could have assumed that one side or the other would ask for help from an overseas ally. The South did do a great deal of business with Britain, and it was concievable that, should things deteriorate into war, the obvious move would be to rally any and all allies to the cause. But this was not evident in 1832. The North did more business with the European nations at the time, and both Britain and France were in the process of abolishing slavery by this time. Clearly the slave South wouldn't be so brazen as to ask for aide from nations that abhored slavery, would they? Well, turns out the South was that bold, but it wasn't for 29 more years that they did so. So on the second count, there is really no way that Smith, or anyone else for that matter, could have first predicted total war, and second predicted that one side (to say nothing of which side) would call for help from an overseas nation.

Given the behavior of the slavers in the South and the pitiful condition of the slaves, it is also unlikely that slaves would be employed as soldiers against their masters. Even the free North was not overly friendly to blacks, and the Union Army was entirely white at the time. Militias employed blacks, and blacks had served in the revolutionary Army, but the Union Army didn't have black regiments until the Civil War - presumably as a psychological weapon against the South. If so, it worked well. So on the third point, there was likewise no indication in 1832 that the North would employ freed slaves against their former masters.

In short, in 1832 Smith could not have known with this level of accuracy or detail that a) the South would secede from the Union beginning in SC, b) that secession would lead to all-out war, c) the South would call for aide from the UK and other nations, and d) that the North would marshall freed slaves to fight against the South. 30 years prior to the event, this information would have been between speculative and non-existant to Smith. As such, I submit it as prophesy.

So, there's exhibit A for consideration as prophesy. I think it meets all of your criteria except repeatability, but even in today's virulent political climate it seems unlikely that the nation will deteriorate into civil war again - thus the chances of repetition are terribly slender at best. There is one part of this prophesy that is still open - regarding the outpouring of war upon all nations preceding the 2nd coming of Christ (D&C 87:5-8) - but that, too, has valid arguments on both sides. Some historians claim that this prophesy is void because the biggest part never came true - the Civil War ended, so obviously Smith was wrong. Other historians have drawn timelines linking the Civil War to almost every other war in every other corner of the world since that time. The roots of the Civil War can be traced back to the Revolution, if you think philosophically enough. The point is that it is still possible for that element of the prophesy to be true, but it has not been fulfilled yet and there is still debate about to this day. For both of those reasons, I have left it out. But I am sure it is something you will come across as you research this so I wanted it out there in the interest of full disclosure.

Let me know your thoughts. This is a great line of discussion; thanks for posting it!

Cory