Patriotic letter from an Alabama Clergy-man.
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The Rev. O. R. Blue, of
Tuscaloosa, writes a private letter to one of his relatives at
Montgomery, Alabama, which we find in the
Advertiser. He announces his patriotic determination to leave the pulpit and take the field.
He breathes the spirit of his State in the following extract:
I have done all that in one was to help the country ever since the war began, but now that the cloud grows dark, and the perils increase, I feel that I must give myself to the holy cause.
Had we continued to gain ground and met with no reverses, I could have gone on in the usual course and given encouragement, money, and prayers, as heretofore; but now I feel that personal sacrifices and peril must be added.
I am not acting under a hasty impulse, but calmly and in the fear of God, and I trust life and all in His hands, who has never ceased to be gracious to me. A calm survey of all my connections in this revolution brings up nothing of regret, nothing that I would not do again; and I determined from the first that it should cost me something, and, if needs be, everything; and that resolve I mean to keep I find, too, every day since it has been known here that I am going, that others are influenced to go with me.
I have a first-rate
Sharpe's rifle, one hundred ball cartridges, and the same number of rifle- shell, none of which, I hope, shall be wasted I shall take a good supply of testaments, also, and hope never to forget my ministerial calling, though not going as a chaplain.
How long I shall be gone I am not able now to say, but I hope until our land is free from the trend of the invader, and our eternal separation from the infamous Yankee nation a fixed fact.
And if in the providence of God I shall not come back, I trust I shall not die in vain.
I am better pleased with the spirit of the people here for the last few days than ever before.
Our reverses have brought out a more lofty patriotism, and kindled a sterner determination to fight it out to the end than has ever been shown since the beginning of the war.
