By DAVID EPPS
Pastor

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 by Union troops at the Battle of Bean Station, which was fought not far 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 FatherDavidEpps@aol.com or at www.christthekingcec.com.]

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