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From Generals to Privates |
Revival in the Confederate Armies |
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Principles of Expansion |
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Confederate Chaplaincy |
Legacy of the Confederate Revivals |
THE LAST AMERICAN
AWAKENING
The renewals of
1857‑1859 in the United States have been widely studied and touted by
some historians as the Third Great Awakening because it seemed to kick off what
has been called the Global Anglo‑Saxon Lay Prayer Revival 1857‑1895.
Whatever the case, historians tend largely to overlook an important part of the
story – the revivals that swept the Confederate armies during the War Between
the States.
This mid‑nineteenth
century refreshing was also the last of the nationwide American awakenings. Since
that time, there has not been another national catharsis of sin, confession,
and repentance. While there have been subsequent outpourings of God’s power
with such names as Azusa Street, Latter
Rain, and the Charismatic Renewal, and the Jesus Movement, none of them have
swept the entire nation like the Great Awakenings did, affecting all ages,
classes, and persuasions, shifting tectonic plates of social reform at all
levels of society.
Not only that,
but no one seems to be interested in why it petered out. The postwar nation,
reeling from social, technological, and spiritual revolution, turned from the
simple grace of the gospel of Christ to the self-righteous revengeful spirit of
Reconstruction. Northerners, in national power like never before, exerted their
new politico military power over the South. Southerners in the vise of
corporate defeat, poverty, and rejection turned on the freed slaves in
heretofore unheard-of strains of hatred and fear while at the same time
creating overwhelming bitterness toward their old foes of the North. National
spiritual awakening cannot spread when a root of bitterness grows up to defile
many, and the Third Great Awakening came to an early end.
Purpose of Research
Since there has
been much more work done on the Prayer Meeting Revival as it occurred in the
North than on understanding the revivals which swept the Confederate armies in
the South, this study will focus attention on that area as a part of the Third
Great Awakening.
The Prayer Meeting Revival 1857‑1859
Like all major
revivals and awakenings, the stirrings of the Spirit began with prayer in a
tense situation in 1857. Gold, banks, railroads, and industrial plants had
hearkened the golden age of American prosperity. "The great panic which
broke out in Wall Street, October 12, 1857, was the handwriting on the wall. .
. . Banks failed, business houses closed, railroads went into bankruptcy, and
all business was at a standstill." Out of this chairos situation, the Lord
was about to move powerfully on America again.
His move was a
spontaneous, ecumenical, lay‑led prayer meeting movement led by an
unknown inner city missionary in New York. Daily prayer meetings swept over New
York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and New England. Then the prayer
fever swept into the South and west to Texas. Prayer for the nation, its
leaders, and personal concerns were the rage and immediately reaped a harvest
of souls in the North, continuing to win people to Christ later in the South.
The Prayer
Meeting Revival was a setup. The nation was basking in its wealth when suddenly
Wall Street collapsed, and businessmen lost everything. By God's design, He had
set up a noonday prayer meeting on Fulton Street three weeks earlier under the
auspices of an unknown inner city missionary. This chairos situation ignited by
a felt need in business spontaneously combusted into a firestorm of prayer.
Within weeks, the phenomenon had spread all over New York in daily multiple
prayer meetings. On Fulton Street the intercessors filled three rooms
simultaneously multiple times a day. Then the prayer craze spread to Boston,
Chicago, Washington, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, Kalamazoo, Louisville, and
west through the rural South to Texas. People flocked to churches and
converted.
The firstfruits
of this revival began in Canada. Walter and Phoebe Palmer, revival leaders and
holiness preachers, had the first drops of revival rain among Canadian
Methodists in October 1857, in Hamilton, Ontario. Twenty-one converted the
first day, one hundred on a Sunday, and more than three hundred in all. New
York intercessors heard about the Canadian revival just a week before the Wall
Street panic. The decision was then taken to hold the prayer meeting daily, and
the same week news came of an extraordinary revival in Hamilton, Ontario,
Canada. . . .The week following, there was a great financial crash and an
ensuing panic as banks failed, following a year of recession. The atmosphere
was ripe for God to move.
Spurgeon in a
Revival Year Sermon in 1859 asked, "Have you heard of the great 1858
American Revival? An obscure man laid it up in his heart to pray that God would
bless his country." That man was Jeremiah Lanphier, a new inner city
missionary in New York City.
Born in Coxsackie, upper New York in 1809, Lanphier had been
converted in 1842 in Broadway Tabernacle (which had been built by the great
revivalist, Charles Finney, ten years earlier). He was a man of prayer, an
effective speaker and a man with plenty of energy. Burdened by the need around
him, he decided to invite others to join him in a noonday prayer meeting every
Wednesday in Fulton Street. He had some hand‑bills printed inviting
"merchants, mechanics, clerks, strangers and businessmen generally"
to join him in "call upon God." It was timed to last one hour, with
the usual proviso for such mid‑day meetings that people were free to come
when they could and go when they must.
Lanphier opened
the doors for the first meeting on 23rd September, 1857, at noon and waited for
the people to come in. "Five minutes went by, twenty minutes, twenty-five,
thirty, and then at 12:30pm he heard a step on the stairs and the first person
joined him. A few moments later there was another, and another until they
numbered six and the prayer meeting began. On the following Wednesday the six
had increased to twenty; on the third week there were forty intercessors,"
says Edwin Orr in his great book The Second Evangelical Awakening.
In the Chicago
1858 prayer meetings, an unknown YMCA prayer meeting leader named Dwight L.
Moody attended all the meetings and was deeply impressed spiritually. His story
need not be told.
Like so many
times before, the lay‑led, ecumenical Church had to be rediscovered. The
awakening which started in 1857 had no great leader and no denominational
leanings. It spread affecting city after city and universities like Baylor,
Wake Forest, Emory, Yale, Amherst, Oberlin, and Michigan without a
denominational label or toothy celebrity. In New York lay missionary Jeremiah
Lanphier offered a prayer meeting at the North Dutch Reformed Church. In Philadelphia
it was a twenty‑one year old businessman affiliated with the YMCA. In
Boston it was a Charles Finney, one of the old guard moving off the scene. In
countless cities and towns like Savannah, Georgia, an unnamed faithful one
began interdenominational prayer meetings. "They were progressive in their
theology, catholic in their sentiments, and thoroughly in tune with the current
belief that American society must become the garden of the Lord."
Nearly all
these people rose from the periphery of the deep and wide Christian movement in
the United States. Jeremiah Lanphier was a lowly urban missionary sent in to
deal with poor that the church members, abandoning the city for the suburbs,
were paying him to do for them.
The charge by
Charles Finney and others that slavery kept revival away from the South is
mistaken. Edwin Orr quotes Bishop Candler's official statistics showing that in
the years 1858‑1860, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, grew by over
100,000 as did the Baptists. "That being so, the revival in the South
produced almost as many converts proportionately as the Northern States
recorded."
Unfortunately,
because of revisionist and Hollywood history and the years of oppression of
Southern African Americans through a racism bred in fear during Radical
Reconstruction, I must stop here and make a few statements concerning why the
average Southern soldier went to war. Southerners did not go to war to protect
an outdated and evil system of slavery.
The popular and
revisionist claim that the Confederate soldier fought to perpetuate slavery is
without historical validity. Outside from the small class of slave owners or
radical abolitionists in the North, the assertion that these men enlisted and
fought to defend the curse of human servitude did not come from their lips.
Even a cursory examination of the period reveals that the typical Southern
soldier was a simple farmer, although the common ranks held laborers, clerks,
bankers, college students, and merchants. The vast majority of soldiers did not
own slaves, nor ever hope to.
The 1860 Census
shows that only around 10% of heads of households in slave states even owned
one slave. Of that 10%, only 3% of slaveholders owned more than 50 slaves.
Would 90% of the population give their lives to protect the interests of 1 in
10 Southerners? The Hollywood image of the land of wealthy plantations was
hardly real. The greatest leaders in the army were strongly opposed to slavery.
General Robert E. Lee owned no slaves and promptly freed those willed to him through
his wife's estate, publicly stating that: "The best men of the South have
long been anxious to do away with this institution." The fact is, racism
and slavery are not just a Southern problem. They are a national problem – a
national sin that needs continued corporate repentance.
So what did
Southerners give their lives for? When the political, economic, and social
rigmarole boiled down, the answer lies in areas of unshakable belief in three
absolute truths which I have space only to mention here: Inalienable rights
given by the Creator to
1‑Individual
liberties/ self-determination,
2‑ an
abiding love for community and state,
3‑ the
solidarity of the family unit.
Southerners saw
in the growing liberalism and centralization of the federal government a
greater and greater inability for them to protect these areas by remaining in
the Union. "Historians who wish to understand Southern persistence in
character would do well to consider this evidence, and be less concerned with
explanations of Southern particularity which derive from slavery alone."
Revival in the Confederate Armies
With their
trust in God and straining hopes for independence, the Southern soldiers
experienced tremendous revival during the War. Chaplains of the period
estimated as much as one quarter of the Confederate armies experienced the
rebirth of salvation during the four year conflict. The main revival seems to
have been in the Army of Northern Virginia, but in 1863‑64 the Army of
Tennessee at Dalton, Georgia, experienced a revival which converted thousands.
The detachment of Longstreet's corps in 1863 from the Army of Northern Virginia
to aid the Army of Tennessee might have introduced elements of revival to the
western army.
"Churchmen
in the North remained oblivious to the awakening going on at the same time in
the Southern armies. . . . Particularly during the period between the battles
at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville Confederate prayer meetings and open‑air
revivals multiplied." Denominational papers, newspapers, and government and
military officials reported and extolled the revival among the troops.
Principles of Expansion
Life and death
dynamics were important as the revival broke out in the Confederate camps. Daily
prayer meetings precipitated by the juxtaposition of events. "'Religion in
the army' was a peculiar type or phase of piety modified in manifestation by
the extraordinary circumstances amid which it sprang up." Battles and the
threat of death at any time by a sharpshooter made the average soldier a
willing listener to the proclamation of the way to heaven. During the fall and
winter of 1862‑63, 1863‑64, and 1864‑65, Confederate troops
attended daily meetings for worship, evangelism, and prayer. Rev. A.E.
Dickinson, Superintendent of Colportage for the General Association of Baptist
Churches of Virginia wrote in December 1863:
Modern history presents no example of armies so nearly converted
into churches as the armies of Southern defence. On the crest of this flood of
war, which threatens to engulf our freedom, rides a pure Christianity; the
Gospel of the grace of God shines through the smoke of battle with the light
that leads to heaven; and the camp becomes a school for Christ.
Making this
time even more precipitous was the condition of the Southerners just before
these revivals. Up to the First Battle of Manassas, everyone both on the field
and at home was praying, but after the fantastic defeat of the Union forces,
everyone figured the war was practically over. By spring Britain and France
would have recognized the Confederacy and the North would have been forced to
grant independence. As a consequence, the praying stopped and the drunkenness,
profanity, and vice took over the army. The chaplain of the 23rd North Carolina
wrote for the North Carolina Baptist newspaper, the Biblical Recorder: "While
Lincoln may slay his thousands, the liquor‑maker at home will slay his
tens of thousands."
Hugh White, a
divinity student at Union Theological Seminary in Richmond, enthusiastically joined
the 4th Virginia Regiment at the beginning of the war, but he wrote
his family that his time in the army had only strengthened his belief in total
human depravity.[1]
The Confederate
military disasters of early 1862 brought the nation literally to its knees
again in prayer, and in the autumn of 1862 and winter of 1863 over 15,000
conversions inundated Lee's Army. "There had been wrought a moral and
religious revolution which those who did not witness it can scarce
appreciate." There was such a change that Rev J.M. Stokes, chaplain of
Wright's Georgia Brigade witnessed: "There is less profanity in a week
now, than there was in a day six months ago. And I am quite sure there are ten
who attend religious services now to one who attended six months ago."
Conversion
growth during this awakening in the Southern armies was anywhere from 45,000 to
150,000. Hard numbers are hard to come by. The Army of Northern Virginia alone
saw between 15,000 and 50,000 profess faith in Jesus Christ. A total estimate
of over 100,000 might be a fairly accurate figure. For perspective , 10 percent
of Lee’s army were reportedly converted by the time of Grant’s attack at the
Wilderness in May 1864. And throughout the whole period 1857‑65 across the
South, denominations grew as much as 25%.
J. William Jones's
estimates of conversion growth in the Army of Northern Virginia are as follows:
1862‑63 1,500
August 1863‑January
1864 5,000
January 1864‑May
1864 2,000
May 1864‑April
1865 4,000
Hospitals all
four years 2,500
Federal Prisons Unknown (Point
Lookout, Fort Delaware, Elmira, Johnson's Island, etc.)
Jones' Original
Total 15,000
William W. Bennett,
head of the Methodist Soldier’s Tract Association, in his 1877 work, The
Great Revival in the Southern Armies, writes “up to January 1865, it was
estimated that nearly one hundred and fifty thousand soldiers had been
converted during the progress of the war, and it was believed that fully
one-third of all the soldiers in the field were praying men and members of some
branch of the Christian Church.”[2]
Jones, therefore, later modified
his number in a second edition of his book for the Army of Northern Virginia to
50,000. Gardiner Shattuck in the periodical Christian History published
by Christianity Today estimates between 100,000 and 200,000 – nearly 10
percent of the military. There was still a great deal of wickedness in the
army, and no doubt some conversions were spurious, but that has been usual
since Iscariot, and newly converted leaders filled the seminaries after the
war. The revivals continued through the summer and autumn of 1865 in the South,
and these conversions are not included in the total.
Confederate
Chaplaincy
Chaplains in
the Confederate armies provided spiritual leadership for their men. He led
worship and prayer services, communion, baptisms, revival meetings, funeral
services, consoled the dying and wounded, distributed Christian literature, and
corresponded with home churches of the soldiers. Worship services focused on
preaching God’s Word. Stonewall Jackson wrote to the Southern Presbyterian
General Assembly pleading for chaplains who preached the gospel:
Every branch of the Christian Church should send into the army some
of its most prominent ministers who are distinguished for their piety, talents,
and zeal; . . . . Denominational distinctions should be kept out of view, and
not touched upon. And, as a general rule, I do not think that a chaplain who
would preach denominational sermons should be in the army. His congregation is
his regiment, and it is composed of various denominations. I would like to see
no question asked in the army of what denomination a chaplain belongs to; but
let the question be, does he preach the gospel?”[3]
Services
regularly lasted up to three hours. Sermon topics most often stressed Christian
virtues, warning of the temptations of alcohol, gambling, and profanity,
proclaiming the transforming power of God’s grace, emphasizing the uncertainty
of life, reminding sinners of eternal punishment without Christ. When Abner
Hopkins, a chaplain of the Stonewall Brigade, held a special service for those
using profanity, so many came that many stood outside in the rain.[4]
Singing was a
great part of the worship services, though as one soldier put it, some “could
not discern the notes of a pipe organ from the sound of a grist mill” or the
sound of a squealing pig from a violin serenade.[5]
Popular hymns were “All Hail the Power,” “Amazing Grace,” “How Firm a
Foundation,” Lee’s favorite, “Jesus, Lover of My Soul,” “Nearer My God to
Thee,” “Rock of Ages,” “There is a Fountain,” and “When I Can Read My Title
Clear.”
Confederate
Congress authorized the President to appoint chaplains in early May 1861, at a
pay grade of $85 a month,[6]
halfway between a first and second lieutenant, but without a rank. In August
chaplains were allowed one ration per day, the same as a private. After bitter
debates in Confederate Congress, Mississippi Congressman Wiley P. Harris
succeeded in reducing chaplains’ pay to $50 a month, arguing that they preach
once a week and have the rest of the week free. Others agreed on the principle
that preachers should not be paid at all. A year later, under pressure from
churches and ministers, Congress raised the pay to $80 a month.[7]
Appointments were slow, particularly because the administration created
unnecessary problems by appointing chaplains who did not fit the denominational
majority of the regiments. For example, one regiment was appointed a Roman
Catholic priest of whom only six of the 600 in the regiment were Catholic. Two
Episcopal priests were appointed to a regiment split equally between Baptists
and Methodists. Prospective chaplains, therefore, preached several trial sermons,
met with officers and enlisted men, and then were recommended by the commanding
colonel for commission.[8]
Unfortunately, without a set of guidelines or qualifications, anyone could be a
chaplain. One brigade chaplain was court-martialed for desertion to the enemy.
Some drank whiskey “for their health.” Mosby’s brigade chaplain created scandal
by often dancing to tunes like “Sugar in the Gourd” and “All around the Chicken
Roost.”[9]
Some chaplains bought up foodstuffs at low prices and peddled them back to the
soldiers at a profit. A Virginia farmer turned down a chaplain’s request for
forage because he did not have a horse. Thereupon, the chaplain appropriated a
steed from the farmer saying Jesus Christ took an ass from his owner to ride to
Jerusalem. His commanding officer reprimanded him pointing out, “You are not
Jesus Christ. This is not an ass, and you are not on your way to Jerusalem. The
sooner you restore that horse to its owner the better it will be for you.”[10]
By the middle of the war, denominations began to screen chaplain applicants,
and it was the beginning of the current practice of denominational endorsement
as a precursor to military chaplaincy. "
From Generals to
Privates
The Great Revival
won many to Christ including top commanders in the field. John Bell Hood, crippled
from multiple battlefield wounds, was baptized in the fall of 1864. Henry Lay, Episcopal
bishop of Arkansas, describes the scene: “Unable to kneel, [General Hood] supported
himself on his crutch and staff, and with bowed head received the benediction.”[11]
Ambrose P. Hill
was led to the Lord on the field of Second Manassas by his commander Stonewall
Jackson.
Although the
Davis administration was not as supportive of organized religion as it could
have been, many of the Confederate military leaders were superb. Of particular
note are generals Robert E. Lee, T. J. "Stonewall" Jackson, and
Leonidas Polk. Lee and Jackson did all within their power to encourage the
spreading of the Gospel in the Army of Northern Virginia. Jackson himself
encouraged the troops to keep the Sabbath holy and attend worship services. He
would usually try to avoid battle on the Sabbath, or, if not possible to do so,
would try to set aside a subsequent day of rest. Jackson was frequently seen in
prayer--both before and during battle. He always acknowledged God as the author
of his military victories.
The
Confederate’s Army of the Tennessee, retreating towards Atlanta, had also
experienced the fires of the Great Revival. During their retreat from Dalton,
Georgia, Rev. C. W. Miller tells of a Confederate brigade called together for
worship in a field. They read the Bible aloud, sang a song of praise, and began
to pray. While one of the soldiers was praying aloud, and his comrades were
kneeling in silence, they all heard the distant report of artillery and were
soon greeted with the burst of a 32-pound cannon shell overhead. More shells
shrieked towards them, and shrapnel fell nearby, but the men continued their
prayers as if there was no danger. Finally the chaplain pronounced the
benediction and everyone calmly sought cover.
One chaplain recounted the sight of changed hearts at Chinbarazo
hospital in Richmond, Virginia: “No sight could be more touching than to stand
near the chapel and see the wounded and the pale convalescents hobbling and
creeping to the place of worship at the sound of the bell.”
A Floridian by the name of Major P. B. Bird, when mortally wounded in
the trenches of Richmond near the end of the war, considered his relationship
with the Lord and said “But for leaving my wife and children, I should not feel
sad at the prospect of dying. There is no cloud between God and me now.”
Soldiers often talked of their mothers. During one prayer meeting, a
young soldier cried aloud “O that my mother were here!” When asked why he
wanted to see his mother, he replied “Because she has so long been praying for
me, and now I have found the Saviour.” Another wounded Christian soldier asked
a friend to “Tell my mother that I read my Testament and put all my trust in the
Lord....I am not afraid to die.”
Most of the
nightly meetings were organized by the soldiers themselves and conducted either
by a clergyman or ministers on the front. Soldiers in the Army of Northern
Virginia formed the Army Christian Association which held prayer meetings three
times a week. One wag said that Stonewall Jackson's command in the Valley was
more like a protracted meeting than a marching army. The Confederate armies
operated less like a professional force today and more like "a patriarchal
Scots clan, an extended family made up of men connected by blood and marriage,
common enterprises, and a common foe.
Revival and Log
Chapels
One of the
first revivals occurred in Trimble's Brigade, especially the 12th and 44th
Georgia Regiments, camped at Bunker Hill, Virginia. A.M. Marshall, the
chaplain, hosted preaching services every night in the woods. When Generals
Jackson and A.P. Hill found out about them, they modified the military rules in
order to accommodate the meetings. Sixty to seventy came forward each night for
prayer; forty-five professed Christ, and 75‑100 inquired into salvation. The
revival was cut short by the Battle of Fredericksburg.
Possibly
earlier, however, another awakening began, according to Hugh Roy Scott.
"During the month of October 1862,” he writes, “it was my privilege to
witness one of the most remarkable spiritual awakenings that has ever occurred
in this country." On October 4, 1862, the reserve artillery under
Brigadier General Pendleton camped at Camp Nineveh, twelve miles from
Winchester, VA, on the Front Royal Road. One month of meetings were held at
night around a large campfire. On the first night, six came forward for
baptism. The first was a troublemaker to the officers; the second was the most
notorious sinner in the company. The third was the most unpromising man in his
company; the fourth was an amiable and moral young man, and the fifth and sixth
were of the bravest and best men in the army. A light rain began to fall in the
dark and a hush came over the whole countryside. Then a seventh came forward – a
youth. A prophetic night for the first revival: Camp Nineveh, their coming out
of the darkness to the light of the campfire to be saved, seven the number of
completeness, all seven came from different ways of living, and the gentle rain
of revival in the Holy Spirit was falling.
The Southerners
constructed log chapels for their meetings. In 1861‑62 a few commands had
well constructed chapels, viz., the 17th Virginia Regiment which was first, the
10th Virginia Infantry, and the 13th Virginia Infantry. In the winter of 1862‑63,
on the Rappahannock River, there were a larger number, the Stonewall Brigade
having the largest. During the winter of 1863‑64, when the revival swept
through the camps, there were forty log chapels on the Rapidan River. The
greatest revival swept through the camps on the return of the army from
Gettysburg and resulted in thousands of conversions. During the winter of 1864‑65,
there were over sixty log chapels in the Richmond and Petersburg lines, as the
men divided up the cutting, hauling, and building responsibilities.
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.
Bennett 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!' '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.'"
J. William Jones's Christ in the Camp described what he had seen while chaplain in the Army of Northern Virginia. "On the bloody campaign from the Rapidan to Cold Harbor in 1864, 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."
“Never since
the days of Nehemiah have men had a better 'mind to work' on the walls of Zion,
and in two to six days the chapel was finished, and the men were worshipping
God in a temple dedicated to his name. . . . In many of these chapels there
were circulating libraries and daily prayer meeting, Sunday schools, literary
societies, YMCA meetings, etc. And some answered the double purpose of church
and school.”
Though some
soldiers could not read, most could. The schools were mainly for the study of
Latin, Greek, mathematics, French, German, etc. The University of Virginia
students in 1865‑66 were so educated from war schools in the log chapels,
that they started university at an advanced course.
Tracts and Bibles
Early in the
1857‑59 revival, newspapers carried daily news of what was going on in
the prayer meetings, and vision for revival spread over the whole country. In
the army revival, daily prayer meetings and tracts kept the revival going. Chaplains
wrote regular articles in denominational newspapers for the people at home to
hear the latest revival news. Often the news sparked revival in Southern
churches as well.
Tracts, Bibles,
and Scripture portions were a major part of the ministry of the military chaplains.
The South before the war had depended on Northern publishers to print tracts or
Bibles, but once the war was on, President Lincoln declared Bibles and
Testaments contraband of war. Without presses themselves in the South, Dr.
William J. Hoge, a Presbyterian scholar and pastor of Second Presbyterian
Church in Richmond, was sent to England to procure Bibles, Testaments, and
portions. He procured at no limit of credit 10,000 Bibles, 50,000 New
Testaments, and 250,000 portions. Most of them, however, were captured in
running the blockade and were scattered through the North as souvenirs.
The demand for
Christian reading among the converts and reawakened Christians in the
Confederate army was phenomenal. Numerous tract societies and denominations
went to work on tracting. Here are only a few examples of the kind of work
these many societies were doing. The Evangelical Tract Society printed 50
million pages of tracts. Private citizen W.J.W. Crowder of Raleigh, NC, had 5
million pages distributed in one year. The Soldiers' Tract Association of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, from March 1862 to midsummer passed out
800,000 pages of tracts. The Army & Navy Herald printed 40,000
copies a month, and at one point the Baptist Board was distributing 200,000
pages weekly plus testaments and hymnbooks. In 1862‑63 alone, the Sunday
School and Publication Board gave away 30,187,000 tracts, 31,000 Bibles and
testaments, 14,000 "Camp Hymns," thousands of donated Christian
literature, and religious papers without number. The Southern Methodist
Episcopal Soldiers' Tract Association, in their 1863 annual report noted the
distribution of 7 million pages of tracts, 45,000 soldiers' hymnbooks, 15,000
soldiers' almanacs, 15,000 Bible readings for soldiers, 15,000 Bibles,
Testaments, and Gospels, 50,000 Soldiers' Paper's and 20,000 copies of the Army
& Navy Herald. Jones estimates that at the height, there were one million
pages of tracts distributed a week. Still, the supply was unequal to the
demand.
Tract titles
included, "Don't Put it Off," "All Sufficiency of Christ,"
"Self dedication to God," "The Act of Faith," "The
Sentinel," "Motives to Early Piety," "Come to Jesus,"
and "A Mother's Parting Words to Her Soldier Boy." Not always were
Bibles used in the conventional way. One soldier from Maryland wrote in the South‑western
Baptist, "I had my Bible in my right breast pocket, and a ball struck
it and bounced back. It would have made a severe wound but for the Bible."
Legacy of the Confederate
Revivals
In the
Confederate army, sectarianism was nonexistent. Chaplains, colporteurs, and
missionaries all worked together from all evangelical denominations. Dr.
William J. Hoge wrote about an incident at Fredericksburg in the spring of 1863
with Barksdale's Mississippi Brigade: "We had a Presbyterian sermon,
introduced by Baptist services, under the direction of a Methodist chaplain, in
an Episcopal church." Rev. Enoch Martin, a bishop in the Methodist
Episcopal Church, South, after the war, organized an Arkansas regiment into the
"Army Church, in which membership was open to men of all evangelical
persuasions. Since both war and spiritual fervor made sectarian lines seem less
important, the idea spread through the whole army."
The Confederate
Revivals in large part created what became the Bible Belt in the South. The
revivalistic, missionary Christianity predominant in the South since 1875 owes
much to this wartime awakening." They encouraged solders to abandon
behaviors like card playing or swearing and adopt habits of prayer, Bible
reading, and strict Sabbath observance. In the North, their military revivals
were at a peak at the end of the war. Their military success encouraged them to
new pursuits – converting huge numbers of new immigrants to their cities and dealing
with oppressive social conditions with a Social Gospel, as liberal theologians
cut away at Christian orthodoxy.
In the South,
nothing was left except faith in God. Southern believers spoke of the benefits of
adversity and the deceit of temporal prosperity. The poverty and hardships of
the post-war South taught patience, hard work, forbearance, and Christian
humility. J. William Jones told about a soldier he had baptized in the army and
met again after the war. Though from an affluent family, the soldier had lost
everything—his money, his property, even his right arm in battle. When Jones
saw him, he was working as a farmer, eking out a meager living. Still, the man
wanted no pity: "'Oh, Brother Jones, that is all right. I thank God that I
have one arm left and an opportunity to use it for the support of those I
love.'"
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Addicott,
Jeffrey F. "Values and Religion in the Confederate Armies." Confederate
Veteran. Hattiesburg, MS: November‑December 1990, pp. 28‑38.
Bacon, Leonard
Woolsey. A History of American Christianity. New York: Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1925.
Bradford, M.E. "The
Theology of Secession." Southern Partisan. Vol. XI. Columbia, SC: Fourth
Quarter 1991, pp. 20‑25.
Cairns, Earle
E. An Endless Line of Splendor: Revivals and Their Leaders from the Great
Awakening to the Present. Wheaton: Tyndale House, 1986.
Jones, J.
William. Christ in the Camp; or Religion in Lee's Army. Richmond: B.F.
Johnson & Co., 1887.
Orr, J. Edwin. The
Second Great Awakening in America. London: Marshall, Morgan, & Scott,
1952.
Timothy L.
Smith. Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid‑Nineteenth Century America.
Nashville: Abingdon, 1962.
Strickland,
Arthur B. The Great American Revival: A Case Study in Historical Evangelism
with Implications for Today. Cincinnati: Standard, 1934.
Whittaker,
Colin. Great Revivals: God's Men and Their Message. Marshalls, 1984.
Copyright 1997-2003 Gene Brooks.
Updated November 13, 2003.