First it was the minister to the Nazi war criminals, and today it was a Civil War setting. Both were stories of good men swimming against the tide of popular opinion and the Biblical admonition of "Do Unto Others" applied to both.
Col. Henry (or Howard in one account) A.M. Henderson, a Kentucky Confederate, was the commander of the Cahaba Federal Prison in Alabama from 1863 until near the end of the war in 1865. He became known for his attitude toward his inmates that was the complete opposite of what happened at the infamous Rebel prison at Andersonville in Georgia.
Although the prisoners suffered under the same overall conditions as all POWs did in this war, Henderson made it his business to look for ways to overcome the natural deprivations common to these camps, and it showed in the mortality rate in his facility. Whereas Andersonville had a nearly 33% mortality rate, Cahaba's was only about 3%.
Toward the end of that conflict, the South was having trouble feeding its own troops and civilians and the prisoners also suffered from a lack of food, but Henderson did what he could to make sure that poor water and sanitary conditions did not add to the misery. In short, he treated the men in his camp as human beings and not just enemies to be persecuted.
Two stories, Nuremberg and Cahaba, two men put into situations that blessed rather than cursed the men under their care, and two great examples of the Biblical injunction to treat others rightly.
Herry Gerecke, Lutheran pastor at Nuremberg and Henry Henderson, Methodist pastor at Cahaba, two men little known, but two who made a difference in the lives of the men they served, regardless of what the world around them thought about their charges.
Oh that all of us might take their example to heart and listen to God's instructions to care.
The other blog on Nuremberg is here:
http://walkinganewpath-pilgrim.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-life-worth-imitating.html
The Prison at Cahaba
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