By Amy Geiszler-Jones

It’s been more than a century since the Civil War, and while much has been written about it since, a vital part of that war has barely surfaced in history books — the role of chaplains.

A new book by history professor and president emeritus Warren Armstrong shares the untold stories and the role played by Union chaplains. “For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying: Union Chaplains in the Civil War” was released in October by the University Press of Kansas as part of its highly respected modern war series.

Award-winning author and Civil War historian Steven Woodworth says “For Courageous Fighting and Confident Dying” is “a much needed book on the religious world of Civil War soldiers, perhaps the most under-interpreted area in Civil War history.”

The efforts of those chaplains were significant not only because of the valuable service they provided during the four-year battle between the states, but because they more than likely solidified the role of today’s military chaplains.

Before the Civil War, the role of military chaplains had been challenged on the grounds of separation of church and state.

“Since the Civil War, there has been virtually no suggestion or public discourse that the use of public funds to provide that kind of service for members of the military is inappropriate. I think it’s fair to conclude that the contributions that were made by the men who served were considered meritorious enough that there was no doubt as to the importance of the institution,” says Armstrong, who returned to teaching and research in 1993 after serving 10 years as WSU’s president.

Armstrong started researching the role of Union chaplains as a graduate student at the University of Michigan in the 1960s. It was a way of combining “an unending interest in the Civil War” and his knowledge of the ministry. “My dad was a minister and kind of wanted me to follow in his footsteps. I didn’t feel the same calling,” he says. He also has a personal connection to the war: His maternal great-grandfather served almost three years as a Pennsylvania volunteer, surviving wounds at Gettsyburg and Spotsylvania, Va.

Armstrong’s most valuable source of information for his current book was the National Archives, which holds the written reports chaplains filed with the adjutant general’s office of the war department. Reports by hospital chaplains were filed with the surgeon general’s office.

Those records offered tremendous insights into the war. “Nearly all chaplains who wrote about their service with the army recorded both their personal reactions to the war and their beliefs as to its causes, and many of them also attempted to determine the feelings of the men in the ranks regarding the same issues,” Armstrong says in his book.

The reports also reflected that the chaplains were called upon to do more than offer spiritual counseling or prayers. “They were in a very real sense the morale officers of the army,” Armstrong writes, noting their roles varied from models of moral courage to friends and letterwriters.

“To me, the Civil War was our greatest national calamity,” says Armstrong, who plans to continue reading and researching on the war after his retirement in December. “The fact that a nation that had been founded on the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence would come apart for a time — four bloody years — less than a century after its founding only to come back together and become the greatest nation the world has ever seen is, by any normal measurement, extraordinary.”