One of my most important goals as a father is to train my sons to be best friends for life. This has been my theme with them since their birth. I have thought and vigorously prayed about this for years. A week does not go by when I do not discuss with them the importance of brotherhood. Today, they are best friends, but I do not presume upon tomorrow. For my part, I want to be faithful, and never take for granted by my inaction God’s wonderful grace. (I realize the best of my efforts are meaningless apart from His divine grace.) However, because I believe in covenantal faithfulness, I recognize that eternal vigilance and proactive parenting are non-optional. I will reap what I sow. With this in mind, I encourage my boys to stick together, to protect each other, to do just about everything together, to physically and to vigorously wrestle with each other (but to finish by shaking hands and hugging), to encourage and respect each other’s unique giftings, and to never let the sun go down with an unresolved problem between themselves.

Why this seemingly obsessive passion for cultivating brotherly affection? I am painfully aware that the history of the world is the story of how fratricide destroys families and nations. From Cain and Abel to the American Civil War, Hebraic and Western civilization has been tainted by struggle between brothers. Ron Maxwell, director of my favorite film, Gods and Generals, described how this theme factored into his epic:

“In Gods and Generals, for example, I have Chamberlain, who was a professor of rhetoric and religion and had studied the classics, look across the Rappahannock from Stafford Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg while quoting from Lucanus’ epic poem about the Roman Civil War. As Hancock’s division crosses the Rappahannock Chamberlain talks about Caesar’s cohorts crossing the Rubicon. Because the conflict is as old as Cain and Abel these images resonate through history.”

Along this line, I found John Waugh’s book, The Class of 1846, to be a compelling overview of the problem in the context of West Point. No single group of men at any American military academy were ever so indelibly written into history as the class of 1846, whose graduates included Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, George B. McClellan, Ambrose Powell Hill, Darius Nash Couch, George “Edward” Pickett, and many others. The class split almost fifty/fifty between Northern and Southern commands, a division which paralleled the untold tens of thousands of fraternal splinters occurring throughout the country. In his foreword to Waugh’s book, James McPherson explains:

“The description of the American Civil War as a war of brothers is more than a cliché. The war did divide families, especially in the border states. In hundreds of cases brother and brother, uncle and nephew, even father and son or son-in-law chose different sides. More than once they faced each other on the battle field. Senator John J. Crittenden of Kentucky, whose ill-fated compromise proposal of 1861 failed to avert war, had one son who became a Union general and another who became a Confederate general. Seven brothers and brothers-in-law of Mary Todd Lincoln fought against the army whose commander in chief was her husband. In a metaphorical as well as a literal sense it was a brothers’ war.”

From Doug’s Bookshelf: The Class of 1846: From West Point to Appomattox: Stonewall Jackson, George McClellan and their Brothers, by John Waugh, published by Ballentine. 1994.