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, 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 salvation. And often did the songs of Zion ring out loud and clear on the cold night air, while the muskets rattled and the guns boomed in the distance, each intensifying the significance of the other, testing the sincerity of the Christian while trying the courage of the soldier. Stripped of all sensual allurements, and offering only self-denial, patience, and endurance, the Gospel took hold of the deepest and purest motives of the soldiers, won them thoroughly, and made the army as famous for its forbearance, temperance, respect for women and children, sobriety, honesty, and morality as it was for endurance and invincible courage.