Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/170

156 we started on that famous flank march of "Jackson's foot cavalry," which culminated in the battle of Second Manassas, and many of our poor fellows heard their last sermon that day on the Rappahannock. I went back that afternoon to the spot where we held our service, and found that after we moved, at least twenty shells had fallen and exploded in the space occupied by that congregation.

The banks of the historic Antietam were once lined with an immense crowd of Confederate soldiers. But they came not in "battle array," no opposing host confronted them, no cannon belched its hoarse thunder, and the shriek of shell and the whistle of the minie were unheard. Instead of these, sweet strains of the songs of Zion were wafted on the breeze, and the deepest solemnity pervaded the gathered host as one of the chaplains led down into the historic stream fourteen veterans who a few months before had fought at Sharpsburg, and were now enlisting under the banner of the Cross. Several times during the revival in Gordon's Georgia brigade in the autumn of 1863, Rev. T. H. Pritchard, of North Carolina, or Rev. Andrew Broadus, of Kentucky, administered the ordinance of baptism in the Rapidan in full view and easy range of the pickets on the opposing side.

Maj. Robert Stiles, of Richmond, in an address delivered in 1869 before the male orphan asylum of Richmond, related an incident which I give in his own eloquent words:

One of the batteries of our own battalion was composed chiefly of Irishmen from a Southern city gallant fellows, but wild and reckless. The captaincy becoming vacant, a backwoods Georgia preacher, named C——, was sent to command them. The men, at first half amused, half insulted, soon learned to idolize as well as fear their preacher captain, who proved to be, all in all, such a man as one seldom sees, a combination of Praise-God Barebones and Sir Philip Sidney, with a