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

Such was the work of sin during one of the holy wars of the world.

In some sections of the South during the late war the state of morals was almost as bad-nay, we might say, fully as bad. “Many churches,” writes one, “are vacant, their ministers having gone to the war. Most of our Sunday-schools are disorganized, and but few, I fear, will be revived until the war closes. Intemperance and profanity abound, and are fearfully on the increase. Religion is at the lowest ebb. Such a thing as the conversion of souls seems scarcely to enter into the mind of either clergy or laity.”

Some may think this picture overdrawn, but there are thousands of living witnesses who can attest its correctness.

Among the soldiers the great, overshadowing evils were lewdness, profanity, and drunkenness; among the people at home, the “greed of gain” was the “accursed thing.”

It was a melancholy fact that many men entered the army the avowed enemies of all intoxicating drinks who alas! very soon fell victims to the demon of the bottle. With many there seemed to be a conviction that the fatigue and exposure of their new mode of life could not be endured without the artificial stimulant of ardent spirits. This was a great and fatal error. The soldier does not need, even in the worst climates, and in the hardest service, his rations of rum.

Carefully collected and arranged statistics, prepared by the sanitary officers of the British Army, through a space of thirty years, establish the following facts:

1. That the total abstinence regiments can endure more labor, more cold, more heat, more exposure, and more privations, than those who have their regular grog rations.

2. That they are less liable to fevers, fluxes, pleurisies, colds, chills, rheumatisms, jaundice, and cholera, than other regiments.