Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/201

Rh received the benediction. Next Sunday I am to administer the communion at headquarters. Tonight ten or twelve are to be confirmed in Clayton's division. The enemy there are within 250 yards of our line, and the firing is very constant." Dr. McFerrin writes from the Georgia army: "Meetings have been frequently held when the soldiers were in line of battle. The religious interest, I think, has not at all abated since our great revival in the winter and spring. Hundreds in many parts of the army are seeking the fellowship of Christians by uniting with the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ." Asa Hartz, a gallant and gifted Confederate officer, thus writes from the Federal prison on Johnson's island: "We vary our monotony with an occasional exchange. May I tell you what I mean by that? Well, it is a simple ceremony. God help us! The 'exchange* is placed on a small wagon drawn by one horse, his friends form a line in the rear, and the procession moves ; then passing through the gate, it winds its way slowly round the prison walls to a little grove north of the enclosure. The 'exchange' is taken out of the wagon and lowered into the earth; a prayer, an exhortation, a spade, a headboard, a mound of fresh sod, and the friends return to prison again and that's all of it. Our friend is 'exchanged;' a grave attests the fact to mortal eyes, and one of God's angels has recorded the 'exchange' in the book above. Time and the elements will soon smooth down the little hillock which marks his lonely bed, but invisible friends will hover around it till the dawn of that great day when all the armies shall be marshaled into line again, when the wars of time shall cease and the great eternity of peace shall commence."

Let us add to these impressive incidents the rare story of the heroic sacrifice of Samuel Davis, of Tennessee, which cannot be better told than with the words of Dr. Barbee in a memorial address published in the Confederate Veteran: