The Unfinished Baptism: The Civil War Revival of 1863

By 1863, the Civil War had become a slaughter. And in the freezing winter camps, on both sides, something no general ordered began to happen. Young soldiers were wading into icy creeks to be baptized, unwilling to wait for spring. Revival had broken out in the middle of the bloodiest war in American history.

Revival in the Winter Camps

It started quietly. A worn New Testament by the fire. A few men praying before a battle they might not survive. Then dozens, then hundreds. Chaplains who had preached to empty benches could not build chapels fast enough. In winter quarters the soldiers raised rough log churches, and the meetings ran day and night.

One Bible per Regiment

The hunger for Scripture was desperate. Bibles were so scarce that a single one might serve a whole regiment, its pages torn out and passed hand to hand. Men who once filled the camp with cursing now sang hymns under the stars. By the war’s end, an estimated 150,000 Confederate soldiers had come to Christ, and tens of thousands of Union soldiers as well. Many were baptized one week and gone the next. The story is part of a long thread of American revival history in unlikely places.

A Very Present Help in Trouble

We expect revival to come when life is comfortable. It rarely does. “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble,” says Psalm 46:1. Not after the trouble. Right in the middle of it. The bloodiest ground in the nation became a harvest field.

If you are in a hard season, do not assume God is far away. The trouble may be the very place He meets you. The cold water may be where your new life begins. And that, friend, is how God lifts up your day.

Related Devotionals

• The Man Who Prayed Alone: Lessons from the Fulton Street Revival
• The Prayer That Sparked a Revival: Lessons from the Hebrides, 1949
• Horatio Spafford: It Is Well With My Soul
• The Welsh Revival of 1904
• Cane Ridge and the Second Great Awakening
• D.L. Moody: The Shoe Clerk Who Shook the World
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Faith on the Last Ship
• John Newton: Amazing Grace
• William Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival