Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/203

 Pegram Battalion Association. 197

For instance, have you ever seriously asked upon what grounds the world-wide fame of Julius Caesar rests ?

Mainly upon the conquest of Gaul and Germany, does it not? And while no sane man will deny the military skill and strategy and resource of the Roman commander, yet, after all, it was the conquest of an undisciplined rabble of badly armed and half naked savages by the superbly equipped, mail-clad, and disciplined legions of Rome. And I would venture to put over against the campaigns of a Caesar, the achievements of a Joshua, who, at the head of an army composed of the escaped slaves of Egypt, with no weapons except such as they were able to forge in the desert or wrest from the hands of their ene- mies, undertook the conquest of the powerful nations of Moab and Ammon and Philistia and Canaan.

I understand very well that one may say that the Jewish commander had divine assistance, which the Roman had not. I do not deny that ; but I distinctly affirm that the student of military history, con- sidering the human elements alone, will find in the great captain of the Hebrews, whose soul was on fire with zeal for Jehovah's cause and whose dauntless faith was fixed on the Lord his God, the peer of any captain of any age.

And I will ask you to suppose for a moment that the heroic action of Gideon had occurred on Grecian soil, and had been preserved in classic in place of sacred literature? Who does not know that it would have passed into history as one of the world's exemplars of heroism, and occupied a place beside Thermopylae of ancient and Balaklava of modern times? But, alas, being recorded in sacred history, its fate has been to degenerate into a joke, and the name of that gallant border chieftain can scarce be mentioned without exciting a smile.

In the hill country of Benjamin, where the mountainous region falls away to the valley of the Jordan, there is a deep gorge or fissure, caused by some convulsion of nature, called the Valley of Michmash.

Over against each other, across this yawning and precipitous chasm, stand opposing cliffs. On yonder side of the chasm an army of the Philistines, numbering many thousands, has pitched its tents; on this side a little band of Hebrews, numbering about six hundred, occupy a strongly entrenched and fortified camp. It seems only a question of time when this gallant band must succumb to an overpowering force. Jonathan, that noble prince and superb soldier, is in command of the little army of the Israelites. He gazes across the intervening chasm upon the outstretched camp of the Philistines, and meditates