It's amazing to see how historical events helped shape the Restoration of the gospel.
“We almost lost the U.S. Constitution and this wonderful nation that God prepared during the Civil War,” said LDS author and historian Ron L. Andersen during a session of BYU Campus Education Week.
“Lucifer succeeded [in stopping the gospel] in every prior dispensation, but the Lord said this would be different,” he explained to a classroom of attendees on August 21. “I will submit to you that one thing that is different in this last dispensation without fail is the United States Constitution.”
Andersen, author of Abraham Lincoln and Joseph Smith: How Two Contemporaries Changed the Face of American History, spoke on the topic “Abraham Lincoln and the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” He explained that Nephi's vision of the United States in 1 Nephi chapter 13 shows the development of America, the spread of religious freedom, and the Restoration of the gospel.