Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/96

 principles fixed, to comfort and sustain the old ages of those who gave them to their country, expecting not to receive them again. Men learned that life was passable and enjoyable without a roof or even a tent, to shelter from the storm—that cheerfulness was compatible with cold and hunger, and that a man without money, food or shelter, need not feel utterly hopeless, but might, by employing his wits, find something to eat where he never found it before; and feel that, like a terrapin, he might make himself at home wherever he might be. Men did actually become as independent of the imaginary "necessities" as the very wild beasts. And can a man learn all this and not know better than another how to economize what he has and how to appreciate the numberless superfluities of life? Is he not made, by the knowledge he has of how little he really needs, more independent and less liable to dishonest exertions to procure a competency?

If there were any true men in the South, any brave, any noble, they were in the army. If there are good and true men in the South now, they would go into the army for similar cause. And to prove that the army demoralized, you must prove that the men who came out of it are the worst in the country to-day. Who will try it?

Strange as it may seem, religion flourished in the army. So great was the work of the chaplains, that whole volumes have been written to describe the religious history of the four years of war. Officers who were ungodly men found themselves restrained alike by the grandeur of the piety of the great chiefs and the earnestness of the humble privates around them. Thousands embraced the Gospel, and died triumphing over death! Instead of the degradation so dreaded, was the strange ennobling and purifying which made men despise all the things for which they ordinarily strive, and glory in the sternest hardships, the most bitter self-denials and cruel suffering and death. Love for home, kindred and friends intensified, was denied the gratification of its yearnings, and made the motive for more complete surrender to the stern demands of duty. Discipline, the cold master of our enemies, never caught up with the gallant devotion of our Christian soldiers, and the science of war quailed before the majesty of an army singing hymns.

Hypocrisy went home to dwell with the able-bodied skulkers, being too closely watched in the army and too thoroughly known to thrive. And so the camp fire often lighted the pages of the best Book, while the soldier read the orders of the Captain of his