The 'saved' soldier
In an effort to maintain the momentum that I barely started this weekend (read post below), I have decided to dive headfirst into the draft for my upcoming talk on ‘The Great Revival’ for Manassas Museum. I will be heading down to North Carolina’s Atlantic Beach to once again fish the shipwrecks off the coast of Fort Macon next week. (Read last year’s recap here.) Therefore I need to get a good start on this 40-min. presentation. While going through some secondary source materials that I have collected online, I came upon a fascinating series of excerpts taken from “A narrative of the great revival which prevailed in the Southern armies during the late Civil War” by William W. Bennett. The book quotes some interesting (and obviously biased) tributes to the Christian character of the average Confederate soldier. Here is one example:
The Rev. James A. Duncan, D. D., draws this striking picture of the private soldier in the Confederate army: If the private soldier be a true man, there is something of moral sublimity in his conduct that attracts our highest admiration. And yet how apt some people are to forget him. There is no star on his collar, no glittering ornament on his arm; but his plain gray jacket may enclose as noble a heart as ever throbbed in a human breast, or thrilled with patriotic devotion on the day of battle. In sleepless vigilance he paces his sentinel watch during the long hours and gloom of night, while the quiet stars shed their soft light on his musket, or the storm and rain beat pitilessly down on his shivering body and weary head. Look at him in battle at his gun, begrimed with powder, weary, hungry, almost exhausted; yet the fire gleams in his fearless eye as he rams home the charge, or sights his piece at the foe. “Forward” is the command along the line, and you can see him as he brings his musket to a charge and dashes on to the very muzzles of the death-dealing guns to win the day or die in the attempt.
Kneel down by him, when, wounded and dying, he lies there on the field of victory while the life-blood flows from his heart. He speaks to you-but not a murmur, not a complaint escapes his lips — taking the locket from his neck and the Bible from his bosom, he tells you to give them to some dear one at home, and say that he died bravely for his country. Or, if he be not mortally wounded, accompany him to the hospital, and watch his fortitude and patience while in the hands of the surgeon. See how he suffers, and yet a General could not bear it better. The private soldier! His is the coarse fare, hard march, weary fight — the drudgery and the hardships are his!
There is something as inspiriting in his cheerfulness in the camp as there is grand in his heroism on the field. Now he is a house carpenter building him a shanty, then a dirt-dauber constructing a mud chimney. Now he is a cook frying “middling” on the coals and baking bread on a piece of bark set up before the fire. Now he is washer-man, and has stripped off his only shirt to have it done up, that he may enjoy a clean garment. In a word, he is a wonderful creature, that private soldier --he is cook, washer-woman, (?) carpenter, tent-maker, wagoner, pedestrian, clerk, butcher, baker, market huckster, groom, stable-boy, blacksmith, scout, anything and everything a man can or must be in camp, and then he wins a battle and gives the glory to his officer. We like him. His rich, ringing shout, and his merry, loud laugh, make music of a manly, stirring sort. His wit is as original as it is amusing. It is amusing to hear him, as his regiment passes through a town where hundreds of well-grown exempts stand on the side-walk, “Fall in, boys! now is your time-ain't going to fight soon?” Or to hear the mock sympathy with which he exclaims, “ Boys, ain't you almost big enough yet? Never mind, if you ain't but twenty-five years old, come along with big brother, he will take care of you.” On seeing a fellow dressed up in fine clothes, he cries out, “ Come out of them clothes; I see you, conscript; tain't worth while ahiding in them clothes.” Another will exclaim, “Here's your musket; I brought it ” specially “ for you; beautiful thing to tote; just fit your shoulder!”
He moves our sympathies perhaps yet more while we look at him alone in his tent, or by the camp-fire, holding in his hand the letter from home. We cannot decipher the sacred contents, but we are at no loss to know its effect upon the soldier as he folds up the precious letter which the hand of affection has traced with words of love, fond remembrance, and anxious hopes, and brushes away the tear that has unbidden come in testimony of the memories that have been awakened.
My talk will be dealing more with actual revival in terms of the scope and magnitude of the event, but I will include a short section on how the memory of the rise of religion carried on into the recollections of the war. Perhaps by focusing on the positive aspects of spiritual growth and renewal, the painful memories of the conflict were dulled? In a strange way, the Civil War actually resulted in a mixed-blessing as it brought a lot of people closer to faith who would not of otherwise felt a call to discover religion.
This afternoon I experienced one of the proudest and most promising interviews of my entire career. The meeting took place at the Civil War Soldier’s Life Museum here in Fredericksburg and was in reference to a budding project called the ‘National Civil War Life Museum and Research Center,’ which is slated to be constructed as a three-story, period-appropriate brick building near the Spotsylvania Courthouse Battlefield.