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[4 Nov 1999] When the Killing Stopped [5 Nov 1999] Worst Crimes of the Millennium [8 Nov 1999] Four Gates to the City [9 Nov 1999] Conviction of E. German Chief Upheld [10 Nov 1999] Prisoner's Dilemma [11 Nov 1999] The Mechanical Demon [12 Nov 1999] Psalm 23 [19 Nov 1999] Translator's Note [22 Nov 1999] Future Shocks [24 Nov 1999] Worlds Enough, and Time [26 Nov 1999] Everybody Knows [29 Nov 1999] The German Atomic Bomb [30 Nov 1999] The Endless Frontier [1 Dec 1999] The Scarlet Pimpernel |
[2 Dec 1999] Was the Great War Necessary? [3 Dec 1999] Bullet Proof Soul [6 Dec 1999] Rocannon's World I [7 Dec 1999] Rocannon's World II [8 Dec 1999] Rocannon's World III [9 Dec 1999] The Intelligence Gap [15 Dec 1999] A Deepness in the Sky [16 Dec 1999] Evil Isn't Banal [17 Dec 1999] The Scarlet Letter [20 Dec 1999] Political Science [21 Dec 1999] The Mysterious Device [24 Dec 1999] Christmas Bells [27 Dec 1999] Physics and Metaphysics [28 Dec 1999] Childhood's End |
Providence and the PresidentBy BRET LOUIS STEPHENS Thus Lincoln, who with Washingon was the indispensable man of American history, believed that human conduct was determined not by free will but rather by a vast web of circumstances only an inscrutable Providence could govern. "The Almighty has His own purposes," he said in his Second Inaugural Address. It was neither for Lincoln nor for others to gainsay them or to assign blame and exact retribution for the "terrible war" that God had willed, apparently, as the woe the nation must suffer for the offense of American slavery. What was within human power was to "bind up the nation's wounds," to do so "with malice toward none" -- but also with "firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right." |