An editorial in today’s North Carolina Baptists’ Biblical Recorder speaks of the duty of home front Southern Baptists to their brave Confederate soldiers, tugging at the heart strings of readers.
Those who have visited the army or labored in the hospitals know that there is one object which is ever present to the mind of the soldier. It is the home he has left behind him with the loved ones collected there. On the long and painful march, faint and almost exhausted by hunger and fatigue, a smile lights up his saddened features, and he moves with quicker, firmer, tread as the thought of home with its tender memories and heart-touching associations comes over him. When gathered, with his comrades, around the camp-fire at night, and when he lies down to rest, his repose is sweetened and he forgets his toils and privations, the sufferings of the past and the dangers of the future, as visions of the loved ones far away pass before him. On the battle field, where death is holding his carnival and his messengers are every where busy collecting their victims, the soldier presses boldly onward, for he is cheered and encouraged by the thought that he is fighting not for himself alone, but to save all those who are dear to him from a fate a thousand times worse than death. And if he falls there, as the life-current is ebbing away, the carnage of the battle fades from his sight, he hears not its din and strife; his thoughts in his last expiring moments turn fondly to those for whom he has laid down his life. When the heavy hand of disease is laid upon him and he is borne into the hospital, it is the absence of home comforts, and of the loved ones there, which more than anything else makes his lot seem a hard one. His thoughts are fixed on them; they are before him, and he calls on them in the ravings of delirium, and their names, faintly uttered, are often the last words that escape his lips, as he is sinking into the deep, cold waters of death. All through the vicissitudes and toils and hardships and dangers and sufferings of his eventful life, the thought of home lingers with him, shedding its soft, cheering radiance over the stern realities of his pathway. It is the one star shining above him which never sets, and which no cloud ever darkens or hides from his sight.
How utterly heartless, how dead to every nobler feeling are the speculators and extortioners whose vile practices are wringing from those men their scanty, hard earned pay, and carrying want and suffering into their households. Such men, notwithstanding all their professions of patriotism and religion, are painted hypocrites, and should they escape the odium which is due to their crimes here, they can not escape the vengeance of God in the world to come.
How earnestly then should we who remain at home strive to meet the wants of soldiers? Should we not, so far as we can, provide for their families, during their absence? Should we not contribute freely to supply them with the physical comforts which they need? Should we not pray that they may be sustained and protected under all their hardships and trials and dangers? Should we not give liberally to furnish tracts and religious reading matter for them, to send colporters among them, to throw around them the restraints, and place within their reach the comforts of religion? Let each one answer for himself.
Meanwhile, Baptist newspapers on the Confederate home front struggle to remain solvent. The Biblical Recorder, located some distance from the front lines of battle, is blessed to have greater financial support than most.
The Mississippi Baptist newspaper, however, is not so fortunate. Against the backdrop of a growing push into the southwest by the United States military, the publication is now at the printing presses for the last time during the war. It is not the first, nor will it be the last, Baptist newspaper to be undone by war pressures. Slowly but inextricably, bit by bit, the great conflict over African slavery is shuttering Baptist institutions and breaking down Baptist life in the South. With each setback, white Confederate Baptist leaders nonetheless remain confident that God will yet grant their righteous nation victory over the abolitionist North.
Today, white Baptists of the South eagerly anticipate their next battlefield victory, for with each triumph over the Northern army, their confidence in God and Confederacy is rewarded yet again.
Sources: “Home and Soldier,” Biblical Recorder, December 10, 1862 (link); Zachary Taylor Leavell and Thomas Jefferson Bailey, A Complete History of Mississippi Baptists: From the Earliest Times, Jackson, Miss.: Mississippi Baptist Publishing Co., p. 1394 (link)
