Jim Martin
An interesting article.
Thu Jul 5 15:33:33 2001


This article is from Christianitytoday.com at
http://www.christianitytoday.com/holidays/memorial/features/33h028.html

Some of you might want to communicate with the author and/or invite him to visit the ALCWMB and join in this discussion.

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Revivals in the Camp
At first, most Civil War soldiers cared little for religion. But as the bloody war dragged on, hundreds of thousands converted to Christ.
by Gardiner H. Shattuck, JR.


Early in 1862, chaplain James Marks pondered how to help the soldiers of the 63rd Pennsylvania Regiment. Bitterness after the defeat at Bull Run gripped the army. Homesickness and boredom were rife, and cold, wet weather depressed generals and privates alike. Marks made up his mind to lift the soldiers out of their unhappiness and bring their thoughts to a higher, religious plane. Purchasing a tent to hold worshipers, he began a revival season that lasted until the spring. Hundreds of men soon were "born again."

A "tide of irreligion"
In the early stages of the war, revivals like one Marks led were not the rule but the exception. Religion did not seem to have left home with the soldiers.

Day-to-day army life was so boring that men were often tempted to "make some foolishness," as one soldier typified it. Profanity, gambling, drunkenness, sexual licentiousness, and petty thievery confronted those who wanted to practice their faith. Christians complained that no Sabbath was observed; despite the efforts of a few generals like George McClellan and Oliver O. Howard, ordinary routines went on as if Sunday meant nothing at all. General Robert McAllister, an officer who was working closely with the United States Christian Commission, complained that a "tide of irreligion" had rolled over his army "like a mighty wave."

The situation changed, however, as the war became more serious and prolonged. After the decisive campaigns at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga in 1863, revivals became a regular feature of Union army life. By that time, tested northern veterans saw the gravity of the military task confronting them. Many sought support in religion.

For instance, in winter quarters at Ringgold, Georgia, before Sherman's attack on Atlanta, scores of Union soldiers were baptized in the Chickamauga Creek, near the site of a recent battle. An army missionary from the American Tract Society remarked that the soldiers were being united in "one baptism of blood." They had drunk together from the "cup of suffering," and some going off to fight would soon gain entrance into "the church invisible."

In the Army of the Potomac, a great religious excitement appeared during the winter of 1863-64. Numerous brigades erected churches and chapel tents for prayer meetings. General McAllister said he had never witnessed a better religious feeling among the men. And a reporter for a religious magazine thought the piety of the Union army would win the whole nation to Christ!

The "Great Revival"
Revivals in the Confederate armies may have been even more intense than among the northern troops. Like their northern counterparts, southerners became noticeably more religious as the war progressed.

Beginning in the fall of 1863, an event later called the "Great Revival" was in full progress throughout the Army of Northern Virginia. Before the revival was interrupted by Grant's attack in May 1864, approximately seven thousand soldiers10 percent of Lee's forcewere reportedly converted.

Among the troops defending Georgia that same winter, protracted prayer meetings and numerous conversions took place. Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee Regiment told about ten soldiers who died while they knelt at the mourners' bench. An old tree, which had caught fire from the sparks of the campfire, suddenly came crashing down and crushed the men. Wat Christian Commission representative compared the final revivals in the Union army camp to the passage of Israel into the Promised Land: "That pillar of fire which had ever gone before us, guiding in a way that we knew not, a way encompassed by difficulties and dangers, but made glorious by the favor of God, seemed now to rest upon every tabernacle and to shine upon every heart. Only a few short weeks did these scenes continue, the order came, the regiments passed away, each to its parent State& . And with it closed that work, &which had, in the name of Christ, brought healing to many a fainting body, and life to many a perishing soul."

How many soldiers were converted during the Civil War? The best estimates of conversions in the Union forces place the figure between 100,000 and 200,000 menabout 5-10 percent of all individuals engaged in the conflict. In the smaller Confederate armies, at least 100,000 were converted. Since these numbers include only conversions and do not represent the number of soldiers actually swept up in the revivalsa yet more substantial figurethe impact of revivals during the Civil War surely was tremendous.

Onward Christian soldiers
The soldiers involved in the revivals felt a personal and intensely spiritual experience. Yet the revivals had a social dimension. They encouraged soldiers to abandon such behaviors as card playing or swearing and to adopt the habits of strict Sabbath observance, prayer, and Bible reading.

A disciplined religious life, moreover, was considered useful for a soldier. Since the assurance of eternal salvation removed the fear of death, religious soldiers were presumed to exhibit more heroism than their unconverted comrades. As anonymous black soldier of the 1st South Carolina (U.S.) Regiment said, "Let me lib wid de musket in one hand an' de Bible in de oder, dat& I may know I hab de bressed Jesus in my hand, an' hab no fear."

The battlefield was "the valley of the shadow of death" to everyone who crossed it, but Christians felt they gained some mastery over its dangers by surrendering their claims to being in control. Stray bullets and cannonballs often struck down even the most wary, convincing pious men that God's inscrutable providence alone protected their bodies and souls. William Russell of the 26th Virginia Regiment recorded this prayer in his diary: "Oh Lord, if we should go into battle, be thou our shield & hiding place. If it is consistent with thy will, that nay of us should be killed, may we have a happy admittance into thy Kingdom above."

After the Civil War
The army revivals probably made a more lasting effect on Christianity in the South than in the North.

At the close of the war, the North's religious aspirations for America rose to a peak. The very success the Union enjoyed encouraged northerners to new labors: converting immigrants entering their cities, alleviating oppressive social conditions through a Social Gospel, and bringing the gospel to "benighted heathen" overseas.

At this time, however, traditional doctrines seemed to be under attack. Liberal Theologians were thought to be cutting away at Christian orthodoxy and rejecting the idea of a changeless faith. Amid the materialism and secularism of the Gilded Age, many ordinary Christians in the North fitfully sought reassurance that their beliefs were still true.

Christ in the camp
In the South, on the other hand, little seemed to be left except for religion. For many years after Appomattox, southern Christians spoke of the spiritual benefits they had gained through adversity. Temporal prosperity made men and women arrogant and seduced them into believing they did not need God. The South's hardship, on the other hand, taught forbearance and Christian humility.

A passage in William Faulkner's novel The Unvanquished poignantly captures the mood of southern churches following the war. Faulkner describes Brother Fortinbride, a lay preacher and former solder. "Victory without God is mockery and delusion," Faulkner's character sa Diocese of Rhode Island. He is author of A Shield and Hiding Place: The Religious Life of the Civil War Armies (Mercer University Press, 1987).


Reports of the Revival
The Confederate camp became "a school of Christ."
Two southern clergymen who had been active in the army revivals wrote books detailing the religious live of the Confederate forces.

In 1877, William W. Bennett, a minister who had headed the Methodist Soldiers' Tract Association, published A Narrative of the Great Revival Which Prevailed in the Southern Armies. Bennett believed the southern army camp had truly been "a school of Christ," where pious generals like Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee led their men both in battles and in prayer meetings. The "moral miracles" that had taken place among Confederate soldiers were the most magnificent of all time; they truly became the "'silver lining' to the dark and heavy cloud" of the South's defeat.

Bennet wrote: "In the army of General Lee, while it lay on the upper Rappahannock, the revival flame swept through every corps, division, brigade, and regiment. [One chaplain explained]: 'The whole army is a vast field, ready and ripe to the harvest…. The susceptibility of the soldiery to the gospel is wonderful, and, doubtful as the remark may appear, the military camp is most favorable to the work of revival. The soldiers, with the simplicity of little children, listen to and embrace the truth. Already over two thousand have professed conversion, and two thousand more are penitent…. Oh, it is affecting to see the soldiers crowd and press about the preacher for what of tracts, etc., he has to distribute, and it is sad to see hundreds retiring without being supplied!'

"[Another minister wrote]: 'The cold, mud, and rain, have produced great suffering and sickness among the troops; for we have been entirely without shelter in very exposed positions…. In our field hospital we have over 350 sick….

"'I never saw men who were better prepared to receive religious instruction and advice…. The dying begged for our prayers and our songs. Every evening we would gather around the wounded and sing and pray with them. Many wounded, who had hitherto led wicked lives, became entirely changed…. One young Tennessean, James Scott, of the 32d Tennessee, …continually begged us to sing for him and to pray with him. He earnestly desired to see his mother before he died, which was not permitted, as she was in the enemy's lines, and he died rejoicing in the grace of God.'"

Published a decade after Bennett's work, J. William Jones's Christ in the Camp described what Jones had seen while chaplain to the Army of Northern Virginia.

"On the bloody campaign from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in 1864," he reported, when the army was constantly in the trenches or on the march, and fought almost daily, Bryan's Georgia Brigade had a season of comparative repose, while held in reserve, when they had from three to five [religious] meetings a day, which resulted in about fifty professions of conversion, most of whom… [were] baptized in a pond which was exposed to the enemy's fire, and where several men were wounded while the ordinance was being administered."

—Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr.