Soldiers of the Cross, The Authoritative Text: The Heroism of Catholic Chaplains and Sisters in the American Civil War by David Power Conyngham

Abstract

Reviewed by: Soldiers of the Cross, The Authoritative Text: The Heroism of Catholic Chaplains and Sisters in the American Civil War by David Power Conyngham William John Shepherd Soldiers of the Cross, The Authoritative Text: The Heroism of Catholic Chaplains and Sisters in the American Civil War. By David Power Conyngham. Notre Dame, IN.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. 535 pp. $35.00. Having been preserved for over a century in the University of Notre Dame Archives, Soldiers of the Cross is the long-delayed publication of a remarkable unfinished manuscript. The author, David Power Conyngham, was an Irish Catholic immigrant, journalist, and Union Civil War veteran who served in the celebrated Irish Brigade. The wartime service of priest chaplains and sister nurses was widely [End Page 84] considered the most important Catholic contribution to nineteenth-century American society. In Conyngham's words: "true Christian charity knows no sectarianism, religious or political, and that the Catholic chaplain was the soldier of the cross, and not of the sword" (15). After the war, Conyngham interviewed these priests and nuns, or those who had information about them, in order to compile a record of their selfless deeds. Thankfully, Notre Dame preserved his unfinished work after Conyngham's untimely death in 1883. Recognizing that it combines both history and hagiography, editors David Endres and William Kurtz consider it the most comprehensive record of Catholic participation in the Civil War written in the nineteenth century. There have been several excellent studies of Catholics in the Civil War. One of the best and most recent is editor Kurtz's Excommunicated from the Union (2015). This, along with the classic George Barton's Angels of the Battlefield (1897) and Ellen Ryan Jolly's Nuns of the Battlefield (1927), should be read in conjunction with Soldiers of the Cross. Commonly known as "Holy Joes," there were nearly 4,000 wartime chaplains from all denominations on both sides during the war. Of these, Catholic priests, usually Irish or French immigrants, contributed approximately 50 commissioned chaplains to the Union army and 30 on the Confederate side. Additionally, with numbers reaching nearly 700 from 20 religious communities, Roman Catholic sisters or nuns made up about 20 percent of all nurses. As arranged by the editors, Conyngham's work was transcribed with grammatical corrections made as needed. They also wrote short introductory and concluding paragraphs for each chapter, as well as explanatory endnotes. There are 18 chapters on 12 Union chaplains, including the famous William Corby, who was one of seven Holy Cross priests from the University of Notre Dame, and the only chaplain at the Battle of Gettysburg. He notably gave absolution to soldiers on the second day of the battle, an act later commemorated with an iconic statue. Another Union chaplain of note, at least to me personally, was R. C. Cristy of the 78th Pennsylvania Volunteers, a protégé of Prince Gallitzin, who was the renowned Apostle of the Alleghenies. Cristy almost certainly ministered to my relative, William McCombs, a soldier [End Page 85] of the 78th who died in late 1861 along the Green River in Kentucky. A testament to Cristy's quality is the fact that he was elected chaplain in a regiment where only 50 of its nearly 1,000 men were Catholic (125). While Soldiers of the Cross has seven chapters devoted to three Confederate chaplains, this section focuses mostly on the well-known diary of Redemptorist priest James Sheerin, who was present in several major battles throughout the war. Finally, there are nine chapters on the various orders of nuns, including the Sisters of the Holy Cross and the Sisters of Mercy. Strangely, though, the Daughters of Charity, who contributed by far the most nurses with some three hundred serving, were not included. The most famous of these nuns was probably Mother Angela Gillespie, a Holy Cross sister and kin to William Tecumsah Sherman. The editors are to be congratulated for rescuing Conyngham's research from relative obscurity. Even though the overall quality of the chapters is uneven, it was a true labor of love. Some interesting chapters are comprised of Conyngham's recycled articles, excerpts from diaries, and testimonial letters from...