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THE LAST AMERICAN AWAKENING THE REVIVALS IN THE CONFEDERATE ARMIESAS PART OF THEPRAYER MEETING REVIVAL 1858-1864ByGene Brooks
II. Brief HistoryA. Prayer Meeting Revival 1857-1859B. Revival in the Confederate ArmiesIII. Principles of ExpansionA. Early in the WarB. ANV 1862-63C. 1864D. 1865E. Effects after the War
THE LAST AMERICAN AWAKENING The renewals of 1857-1859 in the United States have been widelystudied and touted by some historians as the Third Great Awakeningbecause it seemed to kick off what has been called the Global Anglo-SaxonLay Prayer Revival 1857-1895. Whatever the case, historians tend largely tooverlook an important part of the story – the revivals that swept theConfederate armies during the War Between the States. This mid-nineteenth century refreshing was also the last of thenationwide American awakenings. Since that time, there has not beenanother national catharsis of sin, confession, and repentance. While therehave been subsequent outpourings of God’s power with such names asAzusa Street, Latter Rain, the Charismatic Renewal, and the JesusMovement, none of them have swept the entire nation like the GreatAwakenings did, affecting all ages, classes, and persuasions, shiftingtectonic plates of social reform at all levels of society.Not only that, but no one seems to be interested in why it petered out. The postwar nation, reeling from social, technological, and spiritualrevolution, turned from the simple grace of the gospel of Christ to the self-righteous, revengeful spirit of Reconstruction. Northerners, in nationalpower like never before, exerted their new politico-military power over theSouth, pitting white Southerners against black Southerners in order to divide
and conquer them politically. Southerners in the vise of corporate defeat,poverty, and rejection turned on the freed slaves in heretofore unheard-of strains of hatred and fear while at the same time creating overwhelmingbitterness toward their old foes of the North. National spiritual awakeningcannot spread when a root of bitterness grows up to defile many (Heb.12:15), and the Third Great Awakening came to an early end.
Purpose of Research
Since there has been much more work done on the Prayer MeetingRevival as it occurred in the North than on understanding the revivals whichswept the Confederate armies in the South, this study will focus attention onthat area as a part of the Third Great Awakening.
The Prayer Meeting Revival 1857-1859
Like all major revivals and awakenings, the stirrings of the Spiritbegan with prayer in a tense situation in 1857. Gold, banks, railroads, andindustrial plants had hearkened the golden age of American prosperity. “Thegreat panic which broke out in Wall Street, October 12, 1857, was thehandwriting on the wall. . . . Banks failed, business houses closed, railroadswent into bankruptcy, and all business was at a standstill.” Out of thischairos situation, the Lord was about to move powerfully on America again.
His move was a spontaneous, multi-denominational, evangelical, andlay-led prayer meeting movement led by an unknown inner city missionaryin New York. Daily prayer meetings swept over New York, Philadelphia,Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and New England. Then the prayer fever swept intothe South and west to Texas. Prayer for the nation, its leaders, and personalconcerns were the rage and immediately reaped a harvest of souls in theNorth, continuing to win people to Christ later in the South. The Prayer Meeting Revival was a setup. The nation was basking in itswealth when suddenly Wall Street collapsed, and businessmen losteverything. By God’s design, He had set up a noonday prayer meeting onFulton Street three weeks earlier under the auspices of an unknown innercity missionary. This chairos situation ignited by a felt need in businessspontaneously combusted into a firestorm of prayer. Within weeks, thephenomenon had spread all over New York in daily multiple prayermeetings. On Fulton Street the intercessors filled three roomssimultaneously multiple times a day. Then the prayer craze spread toBoston, Chicago, Washington, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, Kalamazoo,Louisville, and west through the rural South to Texas. People flocked tochurches and converted. The firstfruits of this revival began in Canada. Walter and PhoebePalmer, revival leaders and holiness preachers, had the first drops of revivalrain among Canadian Methodists in October 1857, in Hamilton, Ontario.
Twenty-one converted the first day, one hundred on a Sunday, and morethan three hundred in all. New York intercessors heard about the Canadianrevival just a week before the Wall Street panic. The decision was thentaken to hold the prayer meeting daily, and the same week news came of anextraordinary revival in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. . . .The week following,there was a great financial crash and an ensuing panic as banks failed,following a year of recession. The atmosphere was ripe for God to move.Spurgeon in a Revival Year Sermon in 1859 asked, “Have you heard of the great 1858 American Revival? An obscure man laid it up in his heart topray that God would bless his country.” That man was Jeremiah Lanphier, anew inner city missionary in New York City.Born in Coxsackie, upper New York in 1809, Lanphier had been converted in1842 in Broadway Tabernacle (which had been built by the great revivalist,Charles Finney, ten years earlier). He was a man of prayer, an effectivespeaker and a man with plenty of energy. Burdened by the need aroundhim, he decided to invite others to join him in a noonday prayer meetingevery Wednesday in Fulton Street. He had some hand-bills printed inviting“merchants, mechanics, clerks, strangers and businessmen generally” to join him in “call upon God.” It was timed to last one hour, with the usualproviso for such mid-day meetings that people were free to come when theycould and go when they must
Lanphier opened the doors for the first meeting on 23rd September,1857, at noon and waited for the people to come in. “Five minutes went by,twenty minutes, twenty-five, thirty, and then at 12:30pm he heard a step onthe stairs and the first person joined him. A few moments later there wasanother, and another until they numbered six and the prayer meetingbegan. On the following Wednesday the six had increased to twenty; on thethird week there were forty intercessors,” says Edwin Orr in his great book The Second Evangelical Awakening.In the Chicago 1858 prayer meetings, an unknown YMCA prayermeeting leader named Dwight L. Moody attended all the meetings and wasdeeply impressed spiritually. His story need not be told.Like so many times before, the lay-led, ecumenical Church had to berediscovered. The awakening which started in 1857 had no great leader andno denominational leanings. It spread affecting city after city anduniversities like Baylor, Wake Forest, Emory, Yale, Amherst, Oberlin, andMichigan without a denominational label or toothy celebrity. In New York laymissionary Jeremiah Lanphier offered a prayer meeting at the North DutchReformed Church. In Philadelphia it was a twenty-one year old businessmanaffiliated with the YMCA. In Boston it was a Charles Finney, one of the oldguard moving off the scene. In countless cities and towns like Savannah,Georgia, an unnamed faithful one began interdenominational prayermeetings. “They were progressive in their theology, catholic in their
sentiments, and thoroughly in tune with the current belief that Americansociety must become the garden of the Lord.”Nearly all these people rose from the periphery of the deep and wideChristian movement in the United States. Jeremiah Lanphier was a lowlyurban missionary sent in to deal with poor that the church members,abandoning the city for the suburbs, were paying him to do for them. The charge by Charles Finney and others that slavery kept revivalaway from the South is mistaken. Edwin Orr quotes Bishop Candler’s officialstatistics showing that in the years 1858-1860, the Methodist EpiscopalChurch, South, grew by over 100,000 as did the Baptists. “That being so, therevival in the South produced almost as many converts proportionately asthe Northern States recorded.”Unfortunately, because of revisionist and Hollywood history and theyears of oppression of Southern African Americans through a racism bred infear during Radical Reconstruction, I must stop here and make a fewstatements concerning why the average Southern soldier went to war.Southerners did not go to war to protect an outdated and evil system of slavery. The popular and revisionist claim that the Confederate soldier foughtto perpetuate slavery is without historical validity. Aside from the small class
of slave owners or radical abolitionists in the North, the assertion that thesemen enlisted and fought to defend the curse of human servitude did notcome from their lips. Even a cursory examination of the period reveals thatthe typical Southern soldier was a simple farmer, and the common ranksalso held laborers, clerks, bankers, college students, and merchants. Thevast majority of soldiers did not own slaves nor ever hope to. The 1860 Census shows that only around 10% of heads of householdsin slave states even owned one slave. Of that 10%, only 3% of slaveholdersowned more than 50 slaves. Would 90% of the population give their lives toprotect the interests of 1 in 10 Southerners? The Hollywood image of theland of wealthy plantations was hardly real. The greatest leaders in thearmy were strongly opposed to slavery. General Robert E. Lee owned noslaves and promptly freed those willed to him through his wife’s estate,publicly stating that: “The best men of the South have long been anxious todo away with this institution.” The fact is, racism and slavery are not just aSouthern problem. They are a national problem – a national sin that needscontinued corporate repentance.So what did Southerners give their lives for? When the political,economic, and social rigmarole boiled down, the answer lies in areas of unshakable belief in three absolute truths which I have space only tomention here: Inalienable rights given by the Creator to1-Individual liberties and self-determination,
2- an abiding love for community and state,3- the solidarity of the family unit.Southerners saw in the growing liberalism and centralization of thefederal government a greater and greater inability for them to protect theseareas by remaining in the Union. “Historians who wish to understandSouthern persistence in character would do well to consider this evidence,and be less concerned with explanations of Southern particularity whichderive from slavery alone.”
Revival in the Confederate Armies
With their trust in God and straining hopes for independence, theSouthern soldiers experienced tremendous revival during the War.Chaplains of the period estimated as much as one quarter of theConfederate armies experienced the rebirth of salvation during the fouryear conflict. The main revival was in the Army of Northern Virginia, but in1863-64 the Army of Tennessee at Dalton, Georgia, experienced a revivalwhich converted thousands. The detachment of Longstreet’s Corps assignedin 1863 from the Army of Northern Virginia to aid the Army of Tennesseeprobably introduced elements of revival to the western army.“Churchmen in the North remained oblivious to the awakening goingon at the same time in the Southern armies. . . . Particularly during theperiod between the battles at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville
Confederate prayer meetings and open-air revivals multiplied.”Denominational papers, newspapers, and government and military officialsreported and extolled the revival among the troops.
Principles of Expansion
Life and death dynamics were important as the revival broke out inthe Confederate camps. Daily prayer meetings precipitated by the juxtaposition of events. “‘Religion in the army’ was a peculiar type or phaseof piety modified in manifestation by the extraordinary circumstances amidwhich it sprang up.” Battles and the threat of death at any time by asharpshooter made the average soldier a willing listener to the proclaimersof the way to heaven. During the fall and winter of 1862-63, 1863-64, and1864-65, Confederate troops attended daily meetings for worship,evangelism, and prayer. Rev. A.E. Dickinson, Superintendent of Colportagefor the General Association of Baptist Churches of Virginia wrote inDecember 1863:Modern history presents no example of armies so nearlyconverted into churches as the armies of Southern defence. Onthe crest of this flood of war, which threatens to engulf ourfreedom, rides a pure Christianity; the Gospel of the grace of God shines through the smoke of battle with the light that leadsto heaven; and the camp becomes a school for Christ.Making this time even more precipitous was the condition of theSoutherners just before these revivals. Up to the First Battle of Manassas,everyone both on the field and at home was praying, but after the fantastic
defeat of the Union forces, everyone figured the war was practically over. Byspring Britain and France would have recognized the Confederacy and theNorth would have been forced to grant independence. As a consequence,the praying stopped and the drunkenness, profanity, and vice took over thearmy. The chaplain of the 23rd North Carolina wrote for the
BiblicalRecorder
: “While Lincoln may slay his thousands, the liquor-maker at homewill slay his tens of thousands.” The Confederate military disasters of early 1862 brought the nationliterally to its knees again in prayer, and in the autumn of 1862 and winterof 1863 over 15,000 conversions inundated Lee’s Army. “There had beenwrought a moral and religious revolution which those who did not witness itcan scarce appreciate.” There was such a change that Rev J.M. Stokes,chaplain of Wright’s Georgia Brigade witnessed: “There is less profanity in aweek now, than there was in a day six months ago. And I am quite surethere are ten who attend religious services now to one who attended sixmonths ago.”
Renewal/Expansion
Conversion growth during this awakening in the Southern armies wasanywhere from 45,000 to 150,000. The Army of Northern Virginia alone saw15,000 to 50,000 profess faith in Jesus Christ. A total estimate of over
100,000 is a fairly accurate figure. Throughout the whole period 1857-65,denominations grew as much as 25%. Jones’s estimates of conversion growth in the Army of NorthernVirginia are as follows:1862-631,500August 1863-January 18645,000 January 1864-May 18642,000May 1864-April 18654,000Hospitals all four years2,500Prisons Unknown (Federal prisons of PointLookout, Fort Delaware, Elmira, Johnson’s Island, etc.) Jones’ Total15,000Bennett, in his
Great Revival in the Southern Armies
, p. 413)estimates 150,000 conversions across all the Southern Armies. Jones,therefore, modifies his number for the Army of Northern Virginia to 50,000. There was still a great deal of wickedness in the army, and no doubt someconversions were spurious, but that has been usual since Iscariot, and newlyconverted leaders filled the seminaries after the war. The revivals continuedthrough the summer and autumn of 1865 in the South, and theseconversions are not included in the total.
Confederate Chaplaincy
Chaplains in the Confederate armies provided spiritual leadership fortheir men. He led worship and prayer services, communion, baptisms,revival meetings, funeral services, consoled the dying and wounded,distributed Christian literature, and corresponded with home churches of thesoldiers.Confederate Congress authorized the President to appoint chaplains inearly May 1861, at a pay grade of $85 a month,
halfway between a firstand second lieutenant, but without a rank. In August chaplains were allowedone ration per day, the same as a private. After bitter debates inConfederate Congress, Mississippi Congressman Wiley P. Harris succeededin reducing chaplains’ pay to $50 a month, arguing that they preach once aweek and have the rest of the week free. Others agreed on the principlethat preachers should not be paid at all. A year later, under pressure fromchurches and ministers, Congress raised the pay to $80 a month.
Appointments were slow, particularly because the administration createdunnecessary problems by appointing chaplains who did not fit thedenominational majority of the regiments. For example, one regiment wasappointed a Roman Catholic priest of whom only six of the 600 in theregiment were Catholic. Two Episcopal priests were appointed to a regiment
1 Charles F. Pitts,
Chaplain in Gray: The Confederate Chaplains’ Story
, (Nashville:Broadman, 1957), 40.2 Honeywell, 131, 133.
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split equally between Baptists and Methodists. Prospective chaplains,therefore, preached several trial sermons, met with officers and enlistedmen, and then were recommended by the commanding colonel forcommission.
Unfortunately, without a set of guidelines or qualifications,anyone could be a chaplain. One brigade chaplain was court-martialed fordesertion to the enemy. Some drank whiskey “for their health.” Mosby’sbrigade chaplain created scandal by often dancing to tunes like “Sugar inthe Gourd” and “All around the Chicken Roost.”
Some chaplains bought upfoodstuffs at low prices and peddled them back to the soldiers at a profit. AVirginia farmer turned down a chaplain’s request for forage because he didnot have a horse. Thereupon, the chaplain appropriated a steed from thefarmer saying Jesus Christ took an ass from his owner to ride to Jerusalem.His commanding officer reprimanded him pointing out, “You are not JesusChrist. This is not an ass, and you are not on your way to Jerusalem. Thesooner you restore that horse to its owner the better it will be for you.”
Bythe middle of the war, denominations began to screen chaplain applicants,and it was the beginning of the current practice of denominationalendorsement as a precursor to military chaplaincy. “The revivalistic,
3 Pamela Robinson-Durso, “Chaplains in the Confederate Army,”
Journal of Church& State
, Autumn 1991, 747-764.4Herman Norton, Rebel Religion:
The Story of Confederate Chaplains
, (St. Louis:Bethany Press, n.d.), 25.5Roy Honeywell,
Struggling for Recognition: The United States Army Chaplaincy,1791-1865
, (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Department of the Army,1977), 2:26, 139.
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missionary Christianity predominant in the South since 1875 owes much tothis wartime awakening.”Most of the nightly meetings were organized by the soldiersthemselves and conducted either by a clergyman or ministers on the front.Soldiers in the Army of Northern Virginia formed the Army ChristianAssociation which held prayer meetings three times a week. One wag saidthat Stonewall Jackson’s command in the Valley was more like a protractedmeeting than a marching army. The Confederate armies operated less like aprofessional force today and more like “a patriarchal Scots clan, anextended family made up of men connected by blood and marriage,common enterprises, and a common foe.
Revival and Log Chapels
One of the first revivals occurred in Trimble’s Brigade, especially the12th and 44th Georgia Regiments, camped at Bunker Hill, Virginia. A.M.Marshall, the chaplain, hosted preaching services every night in the woods.When Generals Jackson and A.P. Hill found out about them, they modifiedthe military rules in order to accommodate the meetings. Sixty to seventycame forward each night for prayer; forty-five professed Christ, and 75-100inquired into salvation. The revival was cut short by the Battle of Fredericksburg.Possibly earlier, however, another awakening began, according toHugh Roy Scott. “During the month of October 1862,” he writes, “it was my
privilege to witness one of the most remarkable spiritual awakenings thathas ever occurred in this country.” On October 4, 1862, the reserve artilleryunder Brigadier General Pendleton camped at Camp Nineveh, twelve milesfrom Winchester, VA, on the Front Royal Road. One month of meetings wereheld at night around a large campfire. On the first night, six came forwardfor baptism. The first was a troublemaker to the officers; the second was themost notorious sinner in the company. The third was the most unpromisingman in his company; the fourth was an amiable and moral young man, andthe fifth and sixth were of the bravest and best men in the army. A light rainbegan to fall in the dark and a hush came over the whole countryside. Thena seventh came forward – a youth. A prophetic night for the first revival:Camp Nineveh, their coming out of the darkness to the light of the campfireto be saved, seven the number of completeness, all seven came fromdifferent ways of living, and the gentle rain of revival in the Holy Spirit wasfalling. The Southerners constructed log chapels for their meetings. In1861-62 a few commands had well constructed chapels, viz., the 17thVirginia Regiment which was first, the 10th Virginia Infantry, and the 13thVirginia Infantry. In the winter of 1862-63, on the Rappahannock River, therewere a larger number, the Stonewall Brigade having the largest. During thewinter of 1863-64, when the revival swept through the camps, there wereforty log chapels on the Rapidan River. The greatest revival swept throughPage
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the camps on the return of the army from Gettysburg and resulted inthousands of conversions. During the winter of 1864-65, there were oversixty log chapels in the Richmond and Petersburg lines, as the men dividedup the cutting, hauling, and building responsibilities.Never since the days of Nehemiah have men had a better ‘mind towork’ on the walls of Zion, and in two to six days the chapel was finished,and the men were worshipping God in a temple dedicated to his name. . . .In many of these chapels there were circulating libraries and daily prayermeeting, Sunday schools, literary societies, YMCA meetings, etc. And someanswered the double purpose of church and school. Though some soldiers could not read, most could. The schools weremainly for the study of Latin, Greek, mathematics, French, German, etc. TheUniversity of Virginia students in 1865-66 were so educated from warschools in the log chapels, that they started university at an advancedcourse.
Tracts and Bibles
Early in the 1857-59 revival, newspapers carried daily news of whatwas going on in the prayer meetings, and vision for revival spread over thewhole country. In the army revival, daily prayer meetings and tracts keptthe revival going. Chaplains wrote regular articles in denominationalnewspapers for the people at home to hear the latest revival news. Oftenthe news sparked revival in Southern churches as well.
This article gives a description of the religious experience of the ordinary Methodist soldier during the American Civil War of 1861-1865. The “holy war” rhetoric that issued from home pulpits, along with the model of the pious Christian warrior provided through Christian officers and generals, enabled him to retain a distinctively Christian character in the midst of the stresses and moral dilemmas of war. From his chaplains he heard preaching that was simple, direct, focused squarely on spiritual concerns, and called for urgent decision. His expression of religious devotion, even given the differences along this line which existed between Northern and Southern revivals, was of a less emotional type than that in evidence in earlier frontier revivals.
The American Civil War (1861-1865) caused many societal effects in North Carolina that are sometimes overlooked. In the absence of extensive scholarship on the war’s overall effects on religiosity in North Carolina, this study attempts to show that the Civil War did have a demonstrable influence on religious practice in the state. In the early nineteenth century, religiosity was steadily growing in the North Carolina. The demands of the war effort drew on North Carolinian manpower, leaving congregations depleted and without ministers. The war also affected North Carolina churchgoers by causing shortages of supplies, interdicting travel through hostile occupation, and bringing the destruction of church locations.
Anonymous
TTM though sons of the South Alan Smith Robert Cox Terry Wiles Peter Vandever
Anonymous
certainly NOT too much knowledge on revival here Terry Wiles Alan Smith
Anonymous
Philip Williams Brett Dobbs Darnell Henson Jr. https://www.youtube.com/@CaptRons18thcentury/videos
Anonymous
Yeah, many of them were getting ready to soon meet Jesus.