Civil War Lesson #2 Christian Tracts By David P. Bridges Breathed Bridges Best, LLC Evangelical Faith One Southern clergyman stated forthrightly: To patriotism must be added the mightier principle of faith. Let love of country be joined to love of God let the love of our suffering brother be associated with the love of our crucified Savior let the temporal interests be connected with the eternal. It was believed the best soldier was a Christian soldier. There was a thin line between fighting for the Confederacy and fighting for salvation through Jesus Christ. As the war progressed this patriotic fervor for God and country was united as one in the Southland. Although there were many soldiers oriented to denominational doctrinal faith, the camps and armies of the South were ripe fields for Evangelical faith. This faith meant an active belief that Christ could and would save the individual in question from sin and its penalty. Christ s sacrifice and man s faith fit into a basic view of the world that was held by the Southern Civil War soldier. The relationship between faith and military service should be examined if the religion of the Civil War soldier is to be understood. Repentance was closely related to faith. A great emphasis was placed on keeping the Sabbath day holy, refraining from profanity, drunkenness and card playing. The soldier was to seek repentance for these sins which is to say he needed to turn away from sin. The Evangelical preacher was continuously making his way around army camps and he proclaimed that through Christ all the soldier s sins would be forgiven. Chaplains of the Army of Northern Virginia estimated that approximately 500 conversions were taking place every week. They had a captive audience and the fear of death in battle was one of the cards played by chaplains. Religious leaders knew that the largest congregations addressed were on the eve of some great battle, when men would throw away their cards, cease their profanity, and be in a vulnerable frame of mind, open to the Gospel preached. Most of the units in the Southern army had chaplains assigned to them. These chaplains became comforters to the soldier before and after the battles. They witnessed to the power of belief and they promised eternal life to those who would have Christ as their Savior. This harkened the soldier back to the bliss of their home churches in many cases and brought hope to the unbeliever as they went into battle. In my research I happened to come across a soldier s thought who served in my great great uncle s fighting unit of horse artillery. Major James Breathed, who started the Stuart Horse Artillery with John Pelham, was raised as a strict Episcopalian. His denominational doctrinal faith would likely not have made him open to the Evangelical 1
faith that was so predominate in the Confederate army. One of his artillerymen stated There is a good degree of religious interest felt in Beckham s battalion of Artillery, of which I am a member. We have no chaplain, but the brethren of the different denominations keep up a prayer-meeting and Sabbath school. There have been some twenty-five who have professed conversion in the battalion this fall. These conversions were due to effective preaching and religious tracts. Tracts The circulation of the South s denominational newspapers and religious tracts underwent a phenomenal expansion during the war. Religious tracts were conceived during the Civil War and distributed in mass throughout the course of the war. Some estimates go as high as two hundred million tracts having been circulated during the war. Even the smallest of the Religious Military Presses, The Soldier s Visitor, published by the Presbyterian Church, issued 8,000 copies per month of their denominational publication. The Evangelical Tract Society based in Petersburg, Virginia, published more than 100 different tracts during the course of the war. Religious tracts, which we will examine today, were the tool that the Evangelical preacher used to convert soldiers. Presbyterian minister Moses Hoge of Richmond, Virginia, procured religious reading matter for the soldiers. He procured 10,000 Bibles, 50,000 New Testaments, and 250,000 portions of the Scriptures, mainly for distribution among the soldiers of the Confederate army.100,000 Bibles and Testaments, were granted by the American Bible Society, of New York. As the colporteurs, who were those that delivered tracts to soldiers, visited camps they were sometimes overwhelmed by the soldiers. One colporteur reports of his work when he stated Yonder comes the Bible and tract man, and such crowds would rush out to meet me, that frequently I would sit on my horse and distribute my supply before I could even get into the camp. Historians discovered through reading soldiers diaries that it was at times difficult to get the soldier to attend regular church services, however they would read a tract. In the tedium of camp life nothing was more comforting than to read a Christian tract. Tracts such as A Voice from Heaven, Don t Put it Off, All sufficiency of Christ, Selfdedication to God, Private Devotion, The Act of Faith, Motives to Early Piety and the one we will look at today The Sentinel were the more popular tracts of the Civil War. Historians believe that the Civil War was a war not just for political independence but also for religious freedom. It was thought by faithful Southerners that Christianity embodied the same values that would bring southern victory. When the war continued longer than expected into 1863 churches began to refocus their efforts. Church denominations began to publish Christian newspapers and tracts that were distributed to all the troops. The New York based American Tract Society was the largest publisher of religious materials during the war to both North and South. Robert E. Lee, one of the first to respond to the call for money, contributed $100 to the Evangelical Tract Society for distribution of the Messenger which was the paper of the Evangelical Tract Society of Shreveport, Louisiana. 2
By 1864 the Messenger reported It was estimated that no less than 140,000 soldiers in the Confederate army were converted during the progress of the war, and it is further estimated that fully one-third of the soldiers in the field were praying men and members of some one of the different religious denominations. Whether the soldiers were from solid denominational churches or from more Evangelical backgrounds the effectiveness of chaplains and religious leaders can not be underestimated. The iconic Southern generals were also a part of the Evangelical phenomenon during the war. One soldier from Jackson s brigade reported During my stay among the forces under General Jackson I heard little profanity. There are many pious, Christian men in this division of the army, and among others the general himself. I am told that he keeps on hand a supply of tracts, and occasionally goes among his men as a tract distributor. The Christian witness of both Jackson and Lee became mythological during the war. With Jackson praying before each battle, for hours at a time, and Lee s faith in a providential God -- Southern armies were full of leaders that exemplified Southern piety. The Religious Military Press took advantage of the psychological trauma experienced by soldiers daily encounters with death to proclaim a gospel message of peace, happiness, and hope. The experience of combat actually tended to incline most soldiers toward religion rather than away from it. The Civil War battlefield was chaos and hell on earth at its pitch. The minnie balls whizzed like bees all around the heads of the soldiers, while cannon shell and shot rained in upon their positions. There was smoke as thick as fog waffling all around them with the enemy appearing at random any moment through the thick soup of the smoke. In the chaos soldiers knew they could die at any moment and the Grim Reaper would be the last vision they would have on this earth. Battle was terrifying and the only thing that kept a soldier going was pure adrenaline and courage. It was believed by the soldier that all the Christians in the regiment should be united, and contend side by side and shoulder to shoulder in the cause of Christ and for the cause to defeat the Yankee. Many soldier s souls were being born again in the trenches out of the fear that the battlefield brought all around them. One soldier stated What cause for gratitude to God that I was not cut down when my comrades fell at my side. But for God I would have been slain. I do not see how I escaped, I know that I am under renewed obligations to love Him, and am resolved to serve Him. God preached to us as that which all the preachers on earth could not do. After the battle at Malvern Hill, I was enabled to give my soul to Christ this war has made me a believer in religion. The Southern piety was a gateway to what became known as the Great Revivals of the Southern army. Military Revivals When the war broke out, nearly all of the great publishing houses were located in the North. Chaplains generally did their Bible and tract work in connection with societies whose headquarters were in the Northern cities. However, this did not keep the religious leaders of the South from mass meetings in the name of Christ. Reverend Jones, a secretary of the Southern Historical Society and the author of Christ in the Camp 3
believed it was after the Sharpsburg campaign that revivalism truly caught hold of the Confederate army, never to let go. Military revivals became a major cultural event. By the fall of 1862 historians mark the beginning of large revivals, which would characterize much of the Confederate military experience for the remainder of the war. One Presbyterian writer reported The fact that God has been pleased to bless our armies with a wide-spread revival of religion, is a most cheering one. Not only in regard to the precious spiritual fruits which are gathered, but as to the assurance it inspires of the ultimate triumph of our cause. When reports of Southern victories were diminishing in the newspapers, religious and secular papers shifted from battles to revivals. One clergyman stated there is a mighty work of the Spirit going on now in the camps of this regiment and brigade. Like crusaders of old, Confederate soldiers found an antidote to fear of death through a saving faith. They began to believe in the triumph over sins through faith which military victories were not providing. In Richmond, colporteurs worked feverishly with the armies and in the hospitals to urge the soldiers on to revival. Throughout the winter and spring of 1864, it was the rare newspaper that did not feature revivals in the Confederate army. Revivals depended chiefly on evangelical sermons delivered by chaplains or local clergy. The implication was clear: the army must step into the moral and spiritual void to save the South and, in the process, win the battle with Satan. This cosmic spiritual battle between Satan and the Yankee might even be over come so as to bring victories on the battlefield. One Southern clergyman believed If we are zealous for His cause, He will be zealous for our cause. If we make his ordinances effective for spiritual victories, he will make our muskets and cannon effective for temporal victories. A typical revival meeting might begin with a chaplain or missionary and a number of soldiers gathered in some promising place near camp a grove of trees or a specially prepared natural setting with views of the God given Creation. They would begin to sing hymns, and rapidly a large crowd of soldiers would gather. Sometimes a horn or a drum would call interested soldiers to worship. Singing followed and once the singing was concluded, the preacher addressed the assembly, taking a text from the Bible and endeavoring to convey its meaning to the listeners. Texts varied widely. A preacher once described his message to the soldiers, stating I pointed them to the blood of Jesus as the only atonement for sin, and to this righteousness as our only ground of acceptance with God the Father. At the close of the sermon, the chaplain might well give some sort of Evangelical invitation to those soldiers who wished to seek salvation and to declare themselves for Christ. The soldiers usually came forward to pray, often in a designed area known as the altar. Besides chapel services, chaplains would have regular Bible-classes and prayer meetings in nearly every company of a brigade. They would provide classes in spelling, reading, writing, English grammar, geography, astronomy, mathematics, Latin and Greek. There were a large number of soldiers who did not even know their alphabet. Revivals offered 4
substance to Southerners who militantly believed to Make our army a holy instrument in thy hands, to punish insolent tyrants who are now endeavoring to subjugate our people and to take from us all that in thy goodness, thou hast given us. Revivals, it was thought, confirmed divine favor. They stressed practical rather than doctrinal preaching. Most Confederates believed that the Great Revivals, culminating in the winter of 1863-1864, were a pledge of God s intent to save the Confederacy. Yankee Faith Having said all this about Southern Evangelical faith it is only fair to speak of Northern faith. It is unclear as to whether Lincoln ever actually accepted Christianity. Lincoln commented in view of the Order and harmony of all nature which we behold, it would have been more miraculous to have Come about by chance than to have been created and arranged by some great thinking power. Southerners frequently used the term unholy to describe Lincoln, the North, or the Union armies, indicating that Northerners were not just wrong in their desire to preserve the Union and end slavery but downright evil. This tended to make the Southern soldier righteous in comparison to the Lincolnite Union soldier. While the Union army may not have witnessed revivals as extensive as those of the Army of Tennessee and the Army of Northern Virginia, revivalism was hardly unknown at the company and regimental level in the Union army. It would be wrong to think that all the Yankee soldiers had no faith. As far as our perception of the Southern soldier goes Confederate revivals had better postwar publicists. With at least two popular post war books written on the revivals in the Southern armies there is virtually nothing written on the Northern soldier s faith during the war. Bell Irvin Wiley, author of The Life of Billy Yank, to this day the preeminent early scholar of the Civil War soldier, contended that Confederate soldiers were more religious than Yankee. Modern historians echo Wiley in that his studies after the war deduced that southern soldiers were generally more pious than their northern counterparts. A lot of this perception was due to revivalism. Revivalism was equated with piety or religion. It is widely accepted by historians that religion played a greater role in the Confederate army than in the Union. Yankees, it was thought by Southerners, trusted and put their faith in their military strength. It was believed by Southerners that the Yankee murdered, raped, and robbed indiscriminately throughout the South. Their failure to trust God explained such vile behavior. This may have been a generalization, but it was the perception of the Southern soldier during the war. It was believed that the Northern church, more than any other institution, stood responsible for the evil character of the Yankee army invaders. According to Southerners Yankee Christianity was politicized Christianity. There were Northern Christian soldiers, a preponderance of Jews and Catholics who were also religious soldiers of faith. The Southern soldier preferred to demonize their enemy and they believed what they wanted to in order to justify the killing of their Yankee enemies. The Southern soldier lifted up, not the Bars and Stars, but the cross, and prophetically proclaimed, Who among you are on the Lord s side? I am more anxious than I can 5
express that my men should be not only good soldiers of their county, but also good soldiers of the Cross. 6