CHAPTER XXIII.

CHRISTIAN ACTIVITY IN OUR WAR WITH SPAIN, ARMY AND NAVY CHRISTIAN COMMISSION.

PERSONAL GLIMPSES OF ITS WORK.

BY

MAJ.-GEN. O. O. HOWARD.

N the 3rd of September, 1861, I lost my first brigade command. It was caused by my promotion, passing as I did from a senior colonelcy to the rank of a Brigadier General of Volunteers. While waiting under McClellan for an assignment to a new brigade, I was living with my Adjutant General and some friends in what was called the chain-building. It was in Washington, near the New York Avenue Presbyterian church, where General Scott had once roomed.

Having at the time but little official business on hand, I spent many hours with the members of the Young Men's Christian Association, of which institution I was a member. The Washington branch, which I was helping, had immediately undertaken an active Christian work in the regiments, as soon as they came to be stationed in and around the District of Columbia. These efforts were similar to those before the Spanish War, lately undertaken and carried forward by our young men, particularly in the local branches near State encampments.

About the same time that we in Washington set up our Christian standard and were unfurling it in that part of the United States Army, a central committee in Philadelphia showed itself with a larger outlook. This committee sprang from the Young Men's Christian Association of the United States.

George H. Stuart, an eminent Christian merchant of Philadelphia, became, upon invitation of the committee, the conspicuous President of the new organization, soon christened: "The Army Christian Commission."

I have regarded the Washington enterprise of 1861 as a stepping-stone to the Commission-to that grand body of men and women (for women's organizations were soon multitudinous and auxiliary) who raised millions of dollars and carried by their delegates essential comforts, proper literature and breezes of home-life to our camps and hospitals during the four dreadful years of the Civil War.

The general national association long ago became international, and through institutions of learning, academies, colleges and universities, has taken its Christian enterprises in behalf of young men into every part of every country on the globe where such institutions exist.

When the war with Spain became imminent and State camps for soldiers were located and occupied by the National Guard, at once local associations became active. They planted large-sized tents that are more like old-fashioned pavilions than army tents. Let us take for an example one such pavilion. You find it equipped with a platform at one end, which carries a desk for the secretary and a cabinet organ, with song books of different kinds and sizes heaped around it, with tables long and short usually covering the entire space of the pavilion, excepting the platform and the room occupied by benches and chairs convenient to the tables, and a few stands devoted to harmless games. On the tables are found an abundance of weekly journals, monthlies and dailies, with here and there piles of small books and booklets. But the main thing noticeable is the fine arrangement for writing: ink-wells, headed paper and patriotic envelopes by the million. As soon as one of the pavilions had been erected, there were put up outside of it, under canvas or rough boards in shanty form, a small storehouse and kitchen where the secretarymanager and his three or four assistants ate and slept and kept on hand reserve supplies. Either here or at the end of the pavilion could always be found a large tank of ice water that somehow, like the widow's barrel and cruse, never became

empty. Such was the early equipment intended for about four or five regiments for each pavilion.

To go back for a moment to the impelling force, near the first of May our grand international committee living in New York and vicinity did several things. They first called a public Association meeting of members, in the Collegiate Church (The Dutch Reformed) of the city, which was largely attended, the members coming together from all quarters and from different denominations. They established a Branch, the name of which, as finally settled upon, was "The Army and Navy Christian Commission." They then fixed headquarters at No. 3 West 29th Street, at the same place where for a long time have gathered the secretaries and helpers of the international committee, a place before and after this event full of benevolent activity and Christian interest. Two young men were selected and placed in charge as business managers, Mr. W. E. Lougee and Mr. Wm. B. Millar. The first controlled the large correspondence and the raising from the people of the necessary funds; the other appointed and regulated the field agents for each encampment and the superintendents of the pavilions. Very soon, of course, a treasurer was essential. Frederick B. Schenck, Esq., was wisely chosen, for he had the confidence of the business community.

Such was the arrangement already existing, but naturally not yet perfected, when in the same month of May, Major D. W. Whittle and I met at the Murray Hill Hotel late one evening. Our visits to the Commission made the next morning, to the Christian Herald, to the Secretaries of the Bible Society, to the American Tract Society and to Mr. Sankey's commercial establishment, from which came many thousands of hymns and song books, proved to be remarkably fruitful. Bibles, parts of Bibles, Testaments, books and booklets, song books and religious weeklies were generously given, boxed and sent forward to our order without charge. General Samuel Thomas kindly secured us transportation for ourselves to Chickamauga, Atlanta, Mobile, Tampa and return.

My first sight of a furnished pavilion, such as I have described, was at Camp Coppinger in the thin forest of pines