James D. Porter, Confederate Military History, a library of Confederate States Military History: Volume 7.1, Tennessee
Clement Anselm Evans, Ed.

[274] admitted and much admired, but they had no such happy influence on men and communities as the tender and refining power of the faith of the Confederate soldiers had on them and this country. The religious devotion of Havelock, John and Henry Lawrence, ‘Chinese’ Gordon, and other great English heroes, was circumscribed too greatly by conditions to produce anything like a national result in India and elsewhere. Even our own revolutionary fathers, while led by the wisdom, the patience, the faith and constancy of George Washington, to whom the world is indebted for American freedom and institutions, left us no such general record of religious fervor and faith in God as had their grand illustration in the armies of the Confederate States. From the inception of the war between the States of the Union, chaplains were provided for by civil authority and by the action of regiments, brigades and other portions of troops, and were enlisted with the men in all sections of the Confederacy. Missionaries to the soldiers were commissioned by all the great Christian denominations, among whom were many of the ablest and most consecrated preachers in the South. It would simply be invidious to mention names, because of the number and influence of the men who were representative of the pulpit and people of all the churches. Many of these men worked right through the war from first to last, and while some dropped out, others died, and some were recalled, the vacancies were rapidly filled, additions were made from time to time, and the ministry of the gospel in one way or another was effectively continued until the surrender. The fact is, that the army was permeated with the power of the Christian religion by preaching, by distribution of Bibles and religious literature, by systematic evangelization, by special services of all kinds, by correspondence of friends at home, and in other ways not essential to mention. Great and general earnestness among the people was exhibited to promote and maintain religious life and