Neither can we overestimate their loyalty in all great crises of the nation’s history. It was President Lincoln who pointed out the fact that in all the general defection of the first period of secession not a single common seaman proved false to his flag.
In a prayer-meeting at the Mariners’ Church while the war was in progress a landsman lamented its effect upon the “Jackies.” A man-of-war’s man arose and said: “What is war to me? What is war to my shipmates? It brings no increase of peril--only another kind. We have always faced danger and death and disease. What is it to me whether danger comes from storms or from batteries? I can kneel down between the guns and pray as well as in my room at the Sailors’ Home.”
For patriotism and bravery wherever shown, Mr. Kellogg had the greatest admiration. Besides the large number of landsmen connected with his church who entered the service, over two hundred of the inmates of the Sailors’ Home joined the army and more than six hundred the navy during the war. With many of these, Mr. Kellogg kept in touch through frequent correspondence, and looked after their personal needs. He loved them all. He often sent necessities and delicacies to his“boys” at the front. In one of the early battles,[3] one of the young men of whom mention has been made as receiving arms at his hands in a Sunday evening prayer-meeting was wounded. He at once visited the hospital to which the young man had been taken, secured a furlough for him, provided him liberally with necessities, brought him to Boston, and sent him to his home in Maine for a visit to his father and mother.
[3] Here, again, the reference is to Mr. Kimball.--W. B. M.
The results of Mr. Kellogg’s great work for seamen were often not apparent. His sailor parishioners were scattered throughout the world. In speaking of this, he once said: “If a person on shore is converted, it immediately becomes known to a church of perhaps six hundred members; if he leads a devoted Christian life, his influence is felt by thousands. But these Harlan Pages of the ocean, who pray with messmates, speak good words to shipmates in the middle watch, maintain a Christian life on board frigates which have been compared to floating hells enlivened once in a while by a drowning--who writes their memoirs? What stone records their virtues? What periodical chronicles their death? They slip quietly to heaven unnoticed and unknown. Their bier is a plank across the lee gunwale, their mausoleum the ocean, their epitaph is written in water. And when the report circulates in the forecastles of different vessels, some old sailor, dashing a tear from his eye with his shirt-sleeve, exclaims to his shipmates, ‘Well, he has gone to heaven. He saved my soul, and he would have saved the whole ship’s company if they had listened to him.’”