The Confederate Soldier’s Pocket Manual of Devotions: Including Balm for the Weary and the Wounded
In the 1980s, Army Chaplain Corps adopted the credo “Nurture the living. / Care for the wounded. / Honor the dead.” It summarizes more than 200 years of chaplain ministry with soldiers during war and peace. C. T. Quintard’s Soldier’s Pocket Manual of Devotions was one Civil War chaplain’s expression of the hope and faith on which the credo is built.
In 1861, Chaplain Quintard of the 1st Tennessee Regiment marched off to care for his soldiers as they joined the Army of Virginia. His Soldier’s Pocket Manual of Devotions was a very popular and widely distributed devotional manual used by many Confederate soldiers.
In his booklet Balm for the Weary and Wounded (1864), Quintard reached back often to the writers of the “Oxford Movement,” which was his theological underpinning. In addition to familiar prayers, collects, and hymns from the Book of Common Prayer, he adds poems, sermons, and religious texts of this movement. Quintard believes God’s spirit provides that balm through the teachings and sacraments of the church that enables the human spirit to prevail.
Including both long-unavailable texts, this book is representative of what Civil War soldiers actually read in order to help keep their faith during a time of war.
Students of the Civil War, re-enactors, collectors, historians, and theologians will find these volumes of immeasurable value.