William W. Bennett, A narrative of the great revival which prevailed in the Southern armies during the late Civil War

Religious reading is highly appreciated by the soldiers; and what few tracts we can get are carefully read, and many tears have been seen to run down the soldier's face while reading these friendly visitors. They do not wait for me to go out to distribute them, but come to my tent inquiring, ‘Have you any more tracts to spare?’ There have been two conversions in the regiment. The soldiers were sick at the time, and one of them ‘has since ’ gone to his long home, ‘ but felt before he died it was much the best for him to go, that he would be in a better world,’ where wars and rumors of wars would no more mar his peace.

The evacuation of the Peninsula, and the falling back of our army from Yorktown to the vicinity of Richmond, crowded the hospitals with thousands of sick and wounded men. No person who was in Richmond in the spring of 1862 can forget the painful scenes as the long trains of sick and wounded moved into the city day and night, and emptied out their loads of human wretchedness. The hospitals were poorly supplied with beds, medicines, provisions, physicians, and nurses, and but for the supplies of all kinds carried to them by the citizens, who also gladly volunteered to nurse the helpless sufferers, the mortality would have been a hundred fold greater than it was. This state of things, however, was but temporary; as soon as the hospital accommodations were enlarged, and the corps of surgeons and nurses increased, the condition of the wounded and sick was much improved. But still, with all that the government could do, assisted by the people, who cheerfully opened their houses to their suffering countrymen, the amount of misery was appalling.

The writer almost shudders now at the bare recollection of what he witnessed in the hospitals, and especially in the sick camps in the open country. Within and without the