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Early in 1862, chaplain James Marks pondered how to help the soldiers of the 63rd Pennsylvania Regiment. Bitterness after the defeat at Bull Run gripped the army. Homesickness and boredom were rife, and cold, wet weather depressed generals and privates alike. Marks made up his mind to lift the soldiers out of their unhappiness and bring their thoughts to a higher, religious plane. Purchasing a tent to hold worshipers, he began a revival season that lasted until the spring. Hundreds of men soon were “born again.”

In the early stages of the war, revivals like the one Marks led were not the rule but the exception. Religion did not seem to have left home with the soldiers.

Day-to-day army life was so boring that men were often tempted to “make some foolishness,” as one soldier typified it. Profanity, gambling, drunkenness, sexual licentiousness, and petty thievery confronted those who wanted to practice their faith. Christians complained that no Sabbath was observed; despite the efforts of a few generals like George McClellan and Oliver O. Howard, ordinary routines went on as if Sunday meant nothing at all. General Robert McAllister, an officer who was working closely with the United States Christian Commission, complained that a “tide of irreligion” had rolled over his army “like a mighty wave.”

The situation changed, however, as the war became more serious and prolonged. After the decisive campaigns at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga in 1863, revivals became a regular feature of Union army life. By that time, tested northern veterans saw the gravity of the military task confronting them. Many sought support in religion.

For instance, in winter quarters at Ringgold, Georgia, before Sherman’s attack on Atlanta, scores of Union soldiers were baptized in the Chickamauga Creek, near the site of a recent battle. An army missionary from the American Tract Society remarked that the soldiers were being united in “one baptism of blood.” They had drunk together from the “cup of suffering,” and some going off to fight would soon gain entrance into “the church invisible.”

In the Army of the Potomac, a great religious excitement appeared during the winter of 1863–64. Numerous brigades erected churches and chapel tents for prayer meetings. General McAllister said he had never witnessed a better religious feeling among the men. And a reporter for a religious magazine thought the piety of the Union army would win the whole nation to Christ!

Revivals in the Confederate armies may have been even more intense than among the northern troops. Like their northern counterparts, southerners became noticeably more religious as the war progressed.

Beginning in the fall of 1863, an event later called the “Great Revival” was in full progress throughout the Army of Northern Virginia. Before the revival was interrupted by Grant’s attack in May 1864, approximately seven thousand soldiers—10 percent of Lee’s force—were reportedly converted.

Among the troops defending Georgia that same winter, protracted prayer meetings and numerous conversions took place. Private Sam Watkins of the 1st Tennessee Regiment told about ten soldiers who died while they knelt at the mourners’ bench. An old tree, which had caught fire from the sparks of a campfire, suddenly came crashing down and crushed the men. Watkins professed no concern at their deaths but was glad their souls had joined “the army of the hosts of heaven.”

Even Confederate commanders came forward in this period to accept the Christian faith. General John Bell Hood, crippled by multiple battlefield wounds, was baptized in the fall of 1864. Henry Lay, Episcopal bishop of Arkansas, described the scene: Hood, “unable to kneel … supported himself on his crutch and staff, and with bowed head received the benediction.” With precious little left, southern soldiers sought spiritual strength from their religious experience.

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