Confederate

Memorial Day is coming up in a day or two and will pass unnoticed in most

of the country and in much of the South. However, the occasion causes

me to think about choices and the effect they have on people and on the

generations to come. I have heard it said that we are the sum of our choices

but I would modify that and say that we are the sum of our choices and

the choices of those who have come before us.

In April of

1863, Alexander Epps was a 35-year-old farmer living with his wife and

several children in Hawkins County, Tenn. I wonder what he thought about

the events that swirled around him for the first several years of the

War Between the States. Did he have strong feelings? Did he hope the war

would end shortly or pass him by?

He had no slaves,

that much we know. He was a dirt farmer trying to scratch out a living.

What did he think about Lincoln, secession, and all the rest of the issues?

No one knows. But on April 7, as Union troops drew near, he enlisted as

a Confederate soldier in the 63rd Tennessee Infantry and was assigned

to C Company. At his age he certainly wasn't a kid and I doubt that he

had any illusions about the glories of war. I don't know why he migrated

to this little patch of ground in Tennessee from North Carolina but there

he was and the war was coming to his part of the woods.

On December

13, 1863, the farmer turned soldier was with his company when they encountered

Yankee soldiers and, when the fighting was over, he found himself captured

from his farm and family. Eventually, he was transferred to the Louisville

Military Prison in Kentucky. It was at this point that he made a decision

that had long-lasting effects.

The Federals

offered him a deal. If he agreed to cease fighting, sign an "oath

of loyalty" to the United States government, and agree to remain

north of the Ohio River until after the cessation of hostilities, he could

go free. If he agreed, he would be free but the Confederates would consider

him a traitor to the Southern cause. If the South won the war, he would

lose his farm and likely have to remain in the North for the rest of his

life.

If he refused

to sign the oath he might join the tens of thousands who died in the prison

camps. If the North won the war, he might be able to return to his family

and might even get to stay on the farm. But only if he signed the oath.

If he refused to sign and survived the war, he could be deported from

his home and lose the farm.

At war's end,

as history records, the victorious Union would, indeed, relocate thousands

of Confederates hundreds of miles from their ancestral homes. He must

have thought about his wife and children languishing in Hawkins County.

He must have wondered if he would ever see them again.

So Alexander

signed the oath, was set free, and remained north of the Ohio until the

war ended. He returned home to Hawkins County, Tennessee and had more

children and worked his farm. He never applied to receive a Confederate

pension and lived out his life as a farmer.

One of his

sons was named Calvin. Calvin had, among his children, a son named William.

William married Mary and had a slew of kids, the second of whom was my

father, William, Jr. My father, known as "Junior" to his family

and "Bill" to his friends, was born in 1927 in the same Hawkins

County that Alexander returned to in 1865.

After World

War II and a stint in the Navy, my father moved one county to the east

and married Kathleen and had two sons. I was the first-born, Wayne came

eight years later. I grew up in east Tennessee, instead of in Georgia

or Mississippi or some other state because, in 1863, Alexander Epps signed

an oath of loyalty to the United States of America. I met my wife in Sullivan

County, Tennessee and had three sons, two of whom were born in east Tennessee,

because of a decision made a century and a half ago. A few years ago,

my brother married and moved to Hawkins County.

Choices are

important, a truth I learned from Alexander, whose photograph hangs in

my home. The choices we make, even the minor ones, may affect our own

lives and the lives of our children and even our descendants for a hundred

years or more.

Deuteronomy

30:19 speaks of the necessity of making wise choices: "I call heaven

and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life

and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you

and your descendants may live" (NKJV).

So, it not

just "our life" or "my body" or "my future."

Our choices have a reach far beyond the present circumstances. May we

choose wisely.

[The Reverend

Canon David Epps is rector of Christ the King Charismatic Episcopal Church

in Peachtree City. He may be contacted at [email protected]

or at www.christthekingcec.com .]