The Soldiers' journal. (Rendezvous of Distribution, Va.) 1864-1865, 1864-04-06
Morality in the Army.

the army he lays aside all those restraints by
which the moral equilibrium of our social COM
munities is maintained, and becomes little better
than outlaw-that the military service only
tends to immortality, and nothing good can come
out of the army. They seem to think that it is
impossible for to conduct himself with
the same probity among soldiers that he could
among his citizen friends at home, and that
consequence he naturally falls into the habits of
immortality and excess for which armies are said
to be proverbial. The parent seems more 10th to
give his son to the service of the country because
of the danger of his moral dissipation than any
fear of the causualites which attend battle
the prostration which results from exposure and
fatigue and when the son leaves the parental
roof the admonition, next in Importance to that
of being brave soldier is to preserve himself
from the snares by which his moral life will be
endangered. Our friends seem to forget that the
same boys who made and controlled, in mea-
sure public morality at home, the same that
compose the army and that the same personal
virtues which gives tone to the religious element
in civil life are possessed in even more positive
vigor among soldiers. There is nothing that will
try mans religious stamina so effectually
military service, but at the same time there is
place where the virtues of the good man
be brought out more prominently; and those who
preserve their religious integrity untarnished
will be much stronger by reason of their
having been tested in the extraordinary manner
peculiar to military service, than if they had
been subjected to the trials common to civil life
We have no hesitancy in declaring, although the
weight of testimony on this subject may seem to
be against u.s. that there never has been as large
number of men collected in any country, civil
lians where there was less immortality than now
prevails in the armies of the United States This
will seem to many to be a strong statement, but
we nevertheless feel justified in making the as
sertion that, although the refined, conventional
morality which generally prevails in our large
cities may be obsolete in the army, the same
genuine, self-sacrifcing, high toned religious
sentiment which is the corner stone of public
| sobriety at home is preserved in we'll tried ves-
sells, in the persons of soldiers, and disseminated
in unostentatious ministrations by those whose
daily walk and conversation is a living epistle
known and read of all men," Great injustice
has been done the army in attributing to it ex-
cesses for which, as mass it is not responsible.
1t is notorious fact that ten bad men in regi-
ment of one thousand will bring the entire body
into disrepute, and create the belief that all are
equally guilty. This principle might with equal
propriety be applied to a community but it
| would be considered shocking if to de-
nounce as murderers and thieves an entire city
because some individual citizen might have killed
his neighbor, some burglar had committed
robbery, but the principles involved are so den-
| tical that unable to the practical diff
ference. Viewed in this light we think the army
is entitled to little charity than is gener-
ally conceded to it by the religious element at
home, and while we do not wish to be understood
palliator of the evils that do exist simple JUS
|