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For Americans, the first half of April should bring to mind a host of events. It was in this month in 1865 the Civil War was largely ended, and the long painful task of rebuilding the nation began.
It was on April 9, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses Grant. On April 14, President Abraham Lincoln was killed and Vice President Andrew Johnson was sworn in. On April 26, Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnston and his 90,000 troops surrendered to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, the largest surrender of the war.
The religious faith of these men was varied like the American population today. On the Union side, Grant was raised in a nominally Methodist family, but never attended church. He was known to pray from time to time, but one of his sons described him as an agnostic. As he lay dying, he agreed to be baptized by a Methodist minister, but it was as much to please his devout wife as anything else.
Sherman was raised in a Catholic home and was even baptized but decided that religion was not for him. He agreed to let the children be raised Catholic. His religious views he described as deist and he acknowledged a Supreme Being but that was as far as it went. He also joined the Masons, which the Catholic church forbade. But when his son Thomas Sherman decided to become a priest he was appalled. He wrote to John McCloskey, the Archbishop of New York and insisted he persuade the lad to choose another vocation. The Archbishop was delighted with the younger Sherman and encouraged him. In reply, the General Sherman wrote a blistering letter to the Archbishop. He did agree to accept the last rites on his deathbed.
Gen. Oliver Otis Howard was more public about his faith and would preach about love of the Savior, so often that his troops called him “Old Prayer Book.” He publicly blamed the Union’s catastrophic defeat at Bull Run on the fact the Union chose to fight on the Sabbath. After the war, he founded a college to assist freed Black men, which still bears his name.
Sabbath observance was particularly important to Gen. George McClellan, so much so he ordered Sunday to be observed as a day of rest throughout the Army, unless they were attacked. He was a devout man and popular with the troops but this did not save him from being relieved of command for incompetence.
Gen. William Rosecrans was a Catholic known for his deep faith. He spent long hours into the night with his staff discussing Christian teachings. He went to Mass every day, but his faith did not prevent his army troop from being effectively destroyed at Chickamauga in 1863. Over 35,000 men died on both sides. They call the battle “the river of death.”
On the Confederate side of the war, faith remained important too.
Lee was a lifelong Episcopalian and was later a warden in his parish. Unlike his rival Grant, Lee refused to touch whiskey or tobacco. Lee frequently consulted chaplains and attended the services they offered. Any victory he won, he attributed to the will of God. He was frequently called on to deliver eulogies amidst the catastrophic losses the Southern army faced. He prayed for the men of both armies every single day till his death.
Lee’s own pastor in Virginia was the Episcopal priest William Pendleton, who had been in the United States Army before going to seminary. He enlisted in the Confederate Army in the Civil War, and became Lee’s chief of artillery. He named his largest four cannons Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and on giving the order to fire, he often said “While we kill their mortal bodies, may the Lord have mercy on their sinful souls, and Fire!” After the war, he returned to his parish, where he publicly compared the Union occupation of the South to being like the persecution of the Christians in Roman times.
Gen. Leonidas Polk followed a similar path, going from West Point to seminary and eventually was made the Episcopal Bishop of Louisiana. He took a leave of absence to enlist in the Confederate cause. Union newspapers criticized him for being a clergyman in combat. In reply, a Southern paper compared him to Gideon and David, saying he was there to “fight the battle of the Lord.” While defending Atlanta from Sherman, Confederate Gen. John Bell Hood asked to be baptized and they accomplished the ceremony secretly. Polk fell in battle in 1864.
More flamboyant in his faith was Lee’s right-hand man, Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. Jackson was baptized as an Episcopalian but did not take religion very seriously until his experience fighting in the Mexican-American War. He was moved to study Christianity. He was baptized as a Presbyterian, led family prayers every day and tithed to the church. Jackson took the Calvinist doctrine of predestination very seriously, believing that every man’s day of death was appointed by the Almighty. This led to him being ferocious in battle. His officers said of him that in peace, he was a true gentleman guided by the New Testament in his gentle manner. But in battle he fought like the Old Testament. Union officers suggested he was more like a demon than anything else. Jackson fell at Chancellorsville in 1863 when a Confederate sentry mistook him for the enemy.
The ordinary enlisted men held many of the same views as their commanders. The Civil War killed almost 700,000 American lives with many more being wounded, making it the most terrible war in our country’s history. Let us hope that the soldier’s faith, great or small, was a comfort to them in both life and death.
Gregory Elder, a Redlands resident, is a professor emeritus of history and humanities at Moreno Valley College and a Roman Catholic priest.
Write to him at Professing Faith, P.O. Box 8102, Redlands, CA 92375-1302, email him at gnyssa@verizon.net or follow him on Twitter @Fatherelder.
