when they look on the...
Illustration
"... when they look on the one whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn."
Jesse and his only son, Ben, ran a huge Virginia plantation. By the late 1850s they owned more than 60 slaves. Theirs was a wealthy family, able to enjoy all of the comforts that one could imagine at that time. Still, there was something that gnawed in the pit of Jesse's stomach. He had been listening to the heated debates about slave ownership, and he observed cautiously as anger and panic swept the South. If slavery were outlawed, Jesse knew that they could lose everything. But in his heart he vowed to find a way to operate the plantation without slaves.
Bitterness weighed heavily on Jesse's heart whenever he approached Ben about this. Ben ridiculed his father's attitudes about the slaves. "You can't get soft in the head if you're gonna keep it above water in this business," he argued. Their debate was sharp, like daggers in the heart.
As was the case in so many families in that tragic era, when the war between the states broke out, Jesse dressed in blue and Ben in gray, and off to the battlefields they went. The imagination shudders when it tries to comprehend the bloodshed that ensued. The heart throbs and shatters at the scene of Jesse coming across the dead body of his son in a charge through a meadow.
--Kaul
Jesse and his only son, Ben, ran a huge Virginia plantation. By the late 1850s they owned more than 60 slaves. Theirs was a wealthy family, able to enjoy all of the comforts that one could imagine at that time. Still, there was something that gnawed in the pit of Jesse's stomach. He had been listening to the heated debates about slave ownership, and he observed cautiously as anger and panic swept the South. If slavery were outlawed, Jesse knew that they could lose everything. But in his heart he vowed to find a way to operate the plantation without slaves.
Bitterness weighed heavily on Jesse's heart whenever he approached Ben about this. Ben ridiculed his father's attitudes about the slaves. "You can't get soft in the head if you're gonna keep it above water in this business," he argued. Their debate was sharp, like daggers in the heart.
As was the case in so many families in that tragic era, when the war between the states broke out, Jesse dressed in blue and Ben in gray, and off to the battlefields they went. The imagination shudders when it tries to comprehend the bloodshed that ensued. The heart throbs and shatters at the scene of Jesse coming across the dead body of his son in a charge through a meadow.
--Kaul
