A Sermon Using Alexander Campbell’s Address on War
Introduction/Foreword (by Bob McCollough)
- In 1836, the Republic of Texas won its independence from Mexico. Nine years later, in 1845, the United States officially annexed the Republic of Texas which was then admitted as a state. Because Mexico still felt like Texas belonged to them, this brought about the Mexican-American war (1846-1848)[1]. As a result of its decisive victory in this war, the U.S. gained a huge chunk of Mexican territory which is now the states of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming. When the war ended, Alexander Campbell (b. 1788; d. 1866)–who was arguably the most prominent and influential pioneer (esp. during the first half of the 1800s) of what eventually became known as the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement–gave an address on the subject of war. The words and thoughts contained in this lesson I am presenting this morning are essentially his. Campbell’s Address on War (delivered in 1848) is sixteen pages long. So, for the most part, I just condensed his words down to about three pages and put them in modern, everyday English.