Most men and women called to war by their country leave behind families and some businesses.

Monday, May 22, 2000

Most men and women called to war by their country leave behind families and some businesses. None can be certain of returning. When a clergy person is called, left behind is the individual family strongly extended into the larger congregational family. During the Civil War, the likelihood of returning was not very great. When the pastor preached his final sermon, it ministers preparation for anticipated death as well as bidding farewell.

So it was for the congregation of the First Baptist Church in Madison, Wis., and its pastor, Dr. William Henry Brisbane (1806-1878), one Sunday in November 1861.

Col. C.C. Washburn (later major general, U.S. senator, Wisconsin governor and a founder of General Mills) had invited Brisbane to become regimental chaplain of his 2nd Wisconsin Volunteer Cavalry Regiment. Brisbane was opposed to war, but he was more opposed to slavery.

Born in South Carolina and having inherited a plantation and a large number of slaves, he prepared for a fitting life by military school in Vermont. He turned from that to become a Baptist pastor and also a medical doctor. He became convinced that slavery was unbiblical and freed his. When he began to preach against slavery, he was driven out of the South and settled in Cincinnati in 1837 and had come to Wisconsin in 1853.

Now the time came to mobilize and begin training at Camp Washburn in Milwaukee. His son, Benjamin Lawton Brisbane (1834-1893), served as adjutant of one of the battalions, and later succeeded his father as regimental chaplain. Another son, William Jr. (1838-1897), was a company first sergeant.

Brisbane’s Cincinnati friend and attorney, Treasury Secretary Salmon Portland Chase (later, chief justice of the United States), called him from the Army and appointed the chaplain as chairman of the U.S. Direct Tax Commission for South Carolina. This was a most uncomfortable position for him, because he was ordered to confiscate plantations from his relatives and former neighbors who refused to pay federal taxes on them. He created farms from them for freed slaves. Several in-laws and cousins were Confederate offices, a few generals.

Brisbane was not unaccustomed to preaching to soldiers inasmuch as Camp Randall was nearby. As regiments had mustered there since spring, they had attended his services across the street from the state Capitol. That Sunday in November 1861, he stood in his blue chaplain uniform before his own congregation.

Interestingly, he chose a sermon he had preached many times at funerals in other locations. The text was Philippians 1:23, "To be with Christ is far better." To this he wrote an application specifically for this critical hour:

"And now dear, dear friends, we part today as pastor and people; whether to meet again in this house of God, God only knows. Before this rebellion ceases, this war closes, these infirm limbs of mine, this weak body of mine, may be laid low where the rebel foe may make my grave. I have always from my early manhood lived in view of death. And now I go, although not as one of your strong warriors to the battle, yet to cast my lot among our brave volunteers, and risk my own life to prepare them for a better world who may shed their blood in their country’s righteous cause. I feel for myself that to die is gain, and I trust in God to make me useful in so leading our brave soldiers under the flag of the cross, the standard of the King Immanuel, that many of them as they fall in battle will be enabled to say ‘Thanks be to God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’

"But dear, dear friends whom I here leave to serve God at home in your respective spheres of action, suffer me to exhort you to give your whole hearts to God, you, too, have to die. O, be prepared for it. Remember that the only way of salvation is through the atoning blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. My brethren and sisters who believe this, show your faith by your works. Like unto Christ and by your devotion to his cause bring others into the fold of Christ.

"And you my unconverted friends, remember that now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation."

Dr. Brisbane moved on from the regiment when it was patrolling railroads in Missouri, and he never himself entered combat. Yet, he was wounded during the war because of his duties in the Port Royal experiment for the benefit of freedmen. The official history reports: "Among the whites, he was the most hated man in the Beaufort District." The emotional wounds inflicted by family and friends are the deepest and take the longest to heal. They never did until in 1878 he experienced the text of his farewell sermon: "To be with Christ is far better."

Wallace Alcorn’s column appears Mondays