Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/209

 Pegram Battalion Association. 203

mine ears, from this side, comes the noise of revelry, the music of the dance, the merriment of men who linger long with the cup; from that side there steals upon the night air the low chant of devotion, and I hear the murmur of a multitude in worship of the Lord God of Hosts. Do I need one to tell me how the battle will go on the morrow? Ring down the curtain. Spill no human blood. The destiny is forecast and fixed. The devotee will conquer the reveler as surely as the trumpets shall sound the onset of battle.

Oh, Religion, what deeds of valor hast thou inspired! What names of glory, unsurpassed, unequalled, hast thou dictated to fame that their deeds should be blown upon the four winds and heralded to the ages !

The long catalogue runs synchronously with the centuries. The record is not closed, the record is never closed. Our own times, our own century, adds its resplendent quota ; heroes worthy to be cata- logued with the patriots of Thermopylae and the chivalry of the Crusades. We nominate a Havelock, we nominate a Gordon, we nominate a Lee, we nominate a Jackson, we nominate a Pegram, as names worthy to be inscribed on the immortal scroll which bears the record of the lives whose sacred fires were kindled at the altar of a religious faith.

The historian, when he formulates for posterity the estimate of the Southern soldier, is liable to overlook the religious element as one of the factors of strength in the almost invincible armies of the South.

He will not understand that the training which should fit him to do deeds of glory was not in the manual of arms, nor in the evolu- tions of tactics, but in the inculcation of the principles of a religious faith.

A mother's knee seems a strange place to train a soldier, but I tell you that there is the school of the heroes of all the ages ; wanting that, the schools of war and camps of instruction will never suffice to train a race of patriots or develop a nation of warriors. Thanks be to God, the people of the South are still in the main a religious people. Festering and pestilent scepticism has made no considerable inroad among us, destroying faith, corrupting morals and tainting virtue. Still for us there is a God in the heavens reigning over all; still a right and a wrong; still a commanding respect for all that is noble and true and good. And when mothers sent their sons to battle, they sent youths whose souls had been made stalwart by the strengthening principles of a religious faith.

This is not the estimate of a prejudiced and partial judge. After