Lincoln turned to address the children. He told them what a pleasure it was to be visiting their Sunday school, and then as an admonishment he added, “Govern your lives according to the precepts you learn from your study of the Bible.” With that, the visit was over. Of course, the fact that the president-elect would take the time to visit a Sunday school in a rough area of the city focused more public attention on D.L. and his work.
D.L. felt honored to have Lincoln visit his Sunday school. He was a strong supporter of this first elected Republican president and his notions toward abolishing slavery. But D.L. knew that a steep price—perhaps even a war between the Northern free states and the slave-holding Southern states—would have to be paid for that notion to become a reality. This possibility made D.L. work harder than ever. Who knew how much time he had before some of his boys from the Sunday school might be called upon to fight if there was a war?
D.L. redoubled his efforts to reach the poorest young people with the gospel. He visited his Sunday school students in their homes, where sometimes he was greeted as a friend by parents and at other times was pelted with rotten apples. D.L. took it all in stride. He wrote in a letter to a friend, “Since when was a messenger of God—no matter how humble or insignificant—greeted with open arms by those whose lives are evil? I am trying to save these children from a life of sin and crime. And if, at times, the job is difficult and strenuous, what of it? Satan’s forces work hard—harder than God’s, as it seems to me—and to beat them in a city like Chicago is nothing that can be done by a man sitting in an armchair.”
Since his arrival in Chicago, D.L. had been a member of the YMCA. He attended regular prayer meetings and was a prolific borrower of books from the organization’s library. Now that he had more time, D.L. accepted the nomination to be the volunteer chairman of the YMCA’s Visiting Committee to the sick and strangers. D.L. soon found himself sleeping on the benches in the YMCA prayer room to save money. Sometimes he lived for days on crackers and cheese, trying to conserve his money as much as possible.
On March 4, 1861, Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated as president. The nation of which Lincoln had become president was already deeply divided over the issue of slavery. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina had seceded from the Union, followed shortly afterward by Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. These states had formed themselves into the Confederate States of America and on February 9, 1861, had selected Jefferson Davis as their president. During his inaugural speech, Lincoln spoke directly to these breakaway states:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies…. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
As far as D.L. understood, the new president believed that the Union of states that so many had given their lives to establish during the Revolutionary War could not be so easily dismantled.
Like everyone else in the North, D.L. waited to see how the breakaway Southern states would respond to President Lincoln’s remarks. The answer came on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces under the command of General Pierre Beauregard opened fire on Fort Sumter, the Union fort located in the mouth of the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. War between the Union and the Confederacy had begun.
On April 15, 1861, President Lincoln called on the states to send detachments totaling seventy-five thousand troops to recapture forts, protect the capital, and “preserve the Union.” This request forced the states to choose sides, and Virginia decided also to secede from the Union. The Confederate capital was then moved from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. Following Virginia’s lead, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to secede from the Union. Meanwhile, Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland threatened secession but never did secede, nor did the slave state of Delaware.
In Chicago, D.L. watched as seventy-five young men from his Sunday school answered Abraham Lincoln’s call and volunteered to fight to preserve the Union. Since D.L. himself had strong feelings about the issue of slavery, he seriously considered enlisting as a chaplain in the Union army. Many of his friends begged him not to do so and limit himself to one regiment, but encouraged him to remain free to work with troops on many battlefields. D.L. took their advice.
Chicago soon became a hub of activity for the Union army as Illinois became a major source of troops for the fighting, military supplies, food, and clothing. Because it was situated near major rivers and railroads, Illinois also became a major jumping-off point for the early battles of the war, in which General Ulysses S. Grant and his Union army fought to seize control of the Mississippi and the Tennessee Rivers. At first the army volunteers were housed in buildings in the city, but as the number of recruits grew, the volunteers spilled out into tents on the outskirts of Chicago’s southeast side. They built several makeshift camps that came to be known as Camp Douglas, which served as the main training post for new army volunteers.
Even before the first tents were pitched, D.L. was at Camp Douglas, selecting a spot for a YMCA prayer tent. As chairman of the Visitation Committee for the YMCA, he felt responsibility to the men flowing into the city to join the Union army. D.L. put out a call for clergymen to volunteer to conduct services and meetings among the soldiers, and 150 clergymen stepped forward. Soon eight to ten meetings a night were held among the Union soldiers in various parts of Camp Douglas and in the city, and continuous meetings were held on Sundays. D.L. rounded up supplies of food and bandages for the men and preached at Camp Douglas most evenings.
The news that arrived in Chicago on July 22, 1861, shattered the notion D.L. and many others had that the Civil War was going to be an easy victory for the Union. The day before, the first land battle of the Civil War had been fought along Bull Run Creek outside Washington, D.C., and things had gone badly for the Union army, which had eventually retreated in disarray back to Washington. It had been a bloody and hard-fought battle; the Confederate army had turned out to be a formidable enemy.
As the new soldiers trained for war at Camp Douglas, D.L. continued his visits to the camp. And as the numbers of recruits at the camp grew, so did the problems. D.L. witnessed many drunken brawls, and theft and vandalism were out of control. The violence spilled out into the city, where many citizens were terrorized by the brutish behavior of some of the Union army recruits. Still, D.L. thrived in this environment as he ministered to the soldiers; his work in The Sands had made him a fearless crusader.
By November 1861 Camp Douglas housed about 4,200 soldiers from eleven regiments, and the real work of war was about to begin for many of the soldiers. Several regiments from Camp Douglas were ordered to march south to Kentucky to join General Grant and his Union army as they prepared to push south into Confederate territory and secure Union control over rivers and waterways.
As the troops were preparing to leave Camp Douglas, news reached D.L. of the formation of the U.S. Christian Commission. This group had been formed in a conference in New York by fifteen different YMCA chapters and a number of Protestant ministers. Its purpose was to serve as a central location for all religious work across the Union army. The Christian Commission provided Protestant chaplains and social workers for the soldiers and collaborated with the U.S. Sanitary Commission to provide medical services. Because of his reputation as a fearless advocate for soldiers, D.L., along with John Farwell, was asked to take a leadership role in the Christian Commission and help to oversee the spiritual welfare of Union soldiers. D.L. gladly accepted the leadership role, as did John Farwell.
Not long after the regiments left Camp Douglas to join Grant’s army, word came back that the troops wanted D.L. and other clergymen to join them and hold services and singing meetings to help prop up their flagging spirits. D.L. responded immediately and made arrangements to visit the men in Kentucky, where they were encamped not far from Lincoln’s birthplace. When he caught up with the men, he urged them to consider their souls and to repent before they were killed in battle.
D.L. then returned to Chicago, where he was kept busier than ever. He got up at sunrise and would often not go to bed until after midnight. During the day he kept busy organizing his Sunday school and visiting Camp Douglas to minister to the soldiers.
In early February 1862, word reached Chicago that General Grant and an army of fifteen thousand Union soldiers had attacked and captured Confederate Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Twelve days later Grant’s army scored another victory. It attacked Fort Donelson, a Confederate stronghold along the Cumberland River at Dover, Tennessee. On February 15 the commander of the fort unconditionally surrendered to General Grant. This was a great victory for the Union. Twelve thousand Confederate soldiers were captured, along with a large supply of weapons stored at the fort.
News of the victory at Fort Donelson arrived in Chicago with an urgent plea to send medical relief and supplies to the battle site. D.L. and the Christian Commission sprang into action. He joined a trainload of supplies and people who were headed for Cairo, Illinois, where they were transferred to a river steamer for the rest of the trip to Fort Donelson.
D.L. was shocked by the carnage of the battlefield. Soldiers were still burying the dead, many of them mutilated and bloodied. Wounded soldiers, many awaiting certain death from their injuries, lay in rows. Despite the gruesome scene, D.L. got to work, determined to see that each dying soldier got to hear the gospel and had the chance to receive Jesus Christ before he died. Many of the soldiers did accept Christ before death, but knowing that many more thousands of men would be killed or maimed before the war was over, D.L. returned to Chicago with a heavy heart.
Back in Chicago D.L. was able to spend time with Emma. The couple had been engaged for two and a half years, and despite the interruption of the Civil War, they still planned to marry later in the year.
On April 8, 1862, more war news reached Chicago, this time of a huge battle at Pittsburg Landing in Tennessee. The Battle of Shiloh, as it was being called, had ended in a Union victory, but that victory had come with a large number of casualties. Urgent medical supplies and personnel were needed on the battlefield, and once again D.L. took action. He helped the Christian Commission round up three hundred nurses and seventy doctors and hired a train to get them to the battlefield. At 6:00 pm the next day, D.L. boarded the train with the medical personnel, unsure of what the group would find at journey’s end.
Pittsburg Landing was located along the Tennessee River. When D.L. arrived, a fairly accurate count of the casualties had been taken. In the battle that lasted two days, Union casualties had amounted to 13,047 (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, and 2,885 missing). The Confederate army had suffered similar losses, which D.L. soon learned made the Battle of Shiloh the costliest battle thus far in American history.
At Pittsburg Landing D.L. met General Grant, who took him on a tour of the Shiloh battlefield. As Grant explained the particulars of the brutal battle, D.L. could not help but feel sad at the carnage around him, even if it had occurred in the pursuit of a just cause. As it had been on the battlefield at Fort Donelson two months before, soldiers were struggling to keep up with the task of burying the dead.
