The Experiences of Uncle Jack: Being a Biography of Rev. Andrew Jackson Newgent

Chapter Sixteen.

“Lights Out”—A Dirge of the War.

A marked characteristic of Uncle Jack, as these pages have shown, is his peculiar ability to establish and maintain strong ties of personal friendship. This has been evident even from his youth. He has gathered friends from all walks of life, and their name is legion. The list has always been characterized by names that were written large in the annals of Church and State. Conspicuous among these is the late Lieutenant-Colonel James T. Johnson, of Rockville, Indiana, a man distinguished for talent and achievement in various fields. The twain were boys together, and the friendship thus early formed continued until severed by the death of Johnston in 1904. When Newgent was first winning laurels as a boy preacher, Johnston often walked five miles to attend his services. They were young men, mere youths, when the Civil War broke out. Both heard and responded to their country’s call at that dark time when not only the country’s honor, but her very existence was at stake. Both served under General Burnsides, and both held official positions in the army, Newgent as chaplain of his regiment, and Johnston as lieutenant, later lieutenant-colonel. After the war was over, each won honors and served well his generation in his chosen profession, the one as a minister of the gospel, the other as a lawyer and politician. Johnston found room near the top in the legal profession, and at the same time represented his district three successive terms in Congress. He ranked high as an orator, and, like his clerical friend, was much in demand at reunions and other gatherings of the soldiers, the two men frequently dividing time upon such occasions. Had Newgent chosen politics as a career, he would doubtless have become a political leader. Had Johnston turned his attention to the ministry, he would have taken rank in all probability among the leading preachers of his day.

But there was one sad difference between them—Johnston was skeptically inclined. While the two men maintained the highest regard for each other, and frequently were associated together in their work, the subject of religion was one point on which, to the regret, possibly, of both parties, they were not in accord. Johnston’s skepticism however, was not of the positive sort. He represented the honest doubter rather than the avowed disbeliever. His wife was a devout Presbyterian, and while he could not subscribe to the tenets of the church, he never disparaged the church or its work. Every worthy cause found in him a sympathizer and liberal supporter. His honor and integrity were never questioned, and he enjoyed the full confidence and esteem of his fellows. It is a matter of satisfaction that such a life was not permitted to go out in the dark. And Newgent had the joy of finally leading him, just as his sun was sinking below the horizon, to a simple faith in Christ and a blessed assurance of his acceptance with God.

During his last illness, which covered a period of six months, the colonel was visited frequently by local ministers, but owing to his reputed skepticism and his high professional standing, the subject of religion was not pressed upon him. There is a tendency to fear big men in matters of religion not easily explained and not easily overcome, and it is quite probable that many a great life has ended without the consolations of religion that, were it not for this tendency, might have been led into the light as readily as a little child. Oh, how Christians fear the logic of the world, and yet, the sword of the Spirit is a greater weapon than all the world’s artillery!

Newgent visited him almost daily during this time, and on one occasion determined to broach the subject of religion. “Colonel,” he said, in his usual tactful manner, “while you are shut in here, would it not be a fine opportunity for you to read the Bible through?”

“Well,” he answered, “Laura and I tried it; we took it up by books, but we got stalled.” It was, of course, the colonel himself who “got stalled.” Laura, his wife, was a Christian, as has been noted, and her faith was not shaken by Scriptural difficulties.

“What was your trouble?” Newgent questioned, with a view to encouraging conversation along that channel.

“Well,” he said, “we got to the book of Job. I could not reconcile the book of Job with the idea that God is our Heavenly Father, full of love and mercy. If Job was God’s child and a good man, as the Bible says he was, how could a loving father allow a loving, obedient child to be so abused and tempted by the devil? I can’t see through it.”

After he had delivered his speech on the difficulties of the book of Job, and unburdened his mind somewhat, Newgent drew near to him, and speaking very simply but earnestly, said: “Colonel, you are a great lawyer, but you are only a child in the Bible. Your trouble is that you commenced at the wrong place. When, as a little child, you started to school, your teacher did not start you in the advanced studies. She put you in the A, B, C class. Now, don’t be in too big a hurry to get out of your A, B, C’s in the study of the Bible, for there is where you belong. I have been making a study of God’s Word for many years, and I want you to listen to me a while. I think we can get over the rough places after a while. Do you have any trouble with Jesus Christ? He was God’s dear son, yet he had to suffer more than any man, but his suffering was for others. So we learn from Job’s sufferings that he has helped millions to trust God in the dark.”

This was the colonel’s A, B, C lesson in religion. The visits and conversations were continued day after day, until a couple of days before his death, when the truths of the preceding lessons were clinched in the following conversation:

“Colonel,” said the preacher, resuming their lessons, “you had one of the best mothers in the world, did you not?” He admitted that he had.

“She taught you to say your little prayers?”

“Yes,” said the great man, as the tears started from his eyes.

“And you never doubted her word?”

“No—never.”

“That was simple faith in mother. Now, in your mind go back to mother, and though she is dead, look up into her face as when you were a child, and trust her as you did then. That will represent the soul looking up to Jesus and trusting him for salvation. That is all Christ requires of a sinner.”

As the preacher finished this little homily on faith, the colonel was weeping like a child. “Jack,” he sobbed, “is that all there is in coming to Christ to be saved?”

“That is all there is,” and before the preacher could continue the discussion further, the light broke in upon the humble and contrite heart. “I’ve got it,” he interrupted with much emotion, at the same time grasping the preacher’s hand with all the strength his six-months’ illness had left him. Thus, the man who all the years of his eventful career, by his own wisdom and logic and learning knew not God, was at the last critical moment melted and transformed by the light from Calvary, and a great life was snatched as a brand from the eternal burning. The lawyer, the statesman, the scholar, the orator received the kingdom of heaven on the Savior’s easy terms, “as a little child,” and two days later his soul passed into the presence of Jehovah.

Rev. Mr. Newgent delivered the funeral oration. Men of prominence from various parts of the country helped to swell the vast throng that was present at the funeral service. The story of the colonel’s conversion from skepticism to simple, saving faith in Christ was related by the speaker, and produced a profound impression.

The paper with which this chapter is concluded refers to the life-long association of the two men, Johnston, the “young cavalryman of Indiana,” and Newgent, the “boy chaplain.” It was read before a special meeting of the Steele Post G. A. R., and auxiliary orders of Rockville shortly after Johnston’s death by Mrs. White, the wife of Judge A. F. White of that city. Judge White was also a soldier and a life-long friend of Johnston and Newgent. The doctor referred to in the paper had served as a physician in the Confederate army, but afterward took up his residence in Rockville, where he built up a large practice. The three men were present with the wife when Colonel Johnston died, and helped to make up the scene in the death chamber so dramatically described in the paper.

“LIGHTS OUT.”

“It is midwinter in east Tennessee in 1863. The rivers are flooded, the valleys desolate, the mountain gaps gorged with snow. It is the home of mountain patriots; it must be held at all hazards to the last. This is Lincoln’s solemn wish; it is a part of Grant’s giant plan when Mission Ridge is stormed. A young cavalryman of Indiana is one of the ten thousand who keep freedom’s vigils along the Clinch, the Holstein, and the French Broad. He munches his meager rations of parched corn; he rides the wild mountain roads night and day; he obeys to the letter his orders to hold to the last man the ford of a remote mountain stream. A buckshot buries itself in his wrist, making a wound which heals long after the war and a scar which he carries to his grave. The old flag stays in east Tennessee.

“He has a comrade from a neighboring county who shares with him the suffering and sacrifice of that desperate campaign, he is the “boy chaplain” of the brigade.

“It is the same winter along the Rappahannock and the Rappidan. The snow, like a measureless shroud, covers the numberless dead of the debatable land between the Potomac and the James. There is another soldier, a mere boy, a young artilleryman from the Shenandoah, who is one of the thousands who hold Lee’s unbroken lines. His battery long since won its title to glory. It helped to clear the mountain gaps of the Blue Ridge; its red guns helped feed the fires which lighted up the valley of death for Pickett’s dauntless charge. Ill fed, ragged, but inbred with the chivalry of the South, he is in it all. There is victory at Chancellorsville, but defeat at Gettysburg; but St. Andrew’s cross still gleams blood red on the breast of the South, The Stars and Bars still flash defiance from Marye’s Hill.

“The young artilleryman also has a comrade from the valley, a young trooper who rides with Ashby’s cavaliers in all their wild forays.

“Two flags, two oaths of allegiance, the culminating hates of a hundred years, separate these two young soldiers of the North and the South. But they are not alien in blood, they are brothers of the same race, Anglo-Saxon from the first Americans to the last. They speak the same tongue, their mothers read the same Bible, prayed to the same God; their forefathers fought for the same country—Nathaniel Greene at Yorktown, Washington on Cambridge Heights.

“It is midsummer of 1904. The cavalryman of ’63 is dying; not in the weary hospital of pain; not on the perilous edge of battle. More than forty years have passed since the grim midwinter of east Tennessee.

“It is the home he has made for his declining years. The rooms are cool and sweet, a broad porch looks down a quiet street, familiar books are everywhere; his escutcheon over the mantel shows his soldier record from ’62 to ’65—the old, old story of duty and glory. A blue book on the table tells briefly his struggle from the farm to the halls of Congress; the faces of statesmen, kinsmen, and friends look down from their appropriate places on the walls.

“The good right hand of the veteran lies in that of another; grief-stricken she keeps her vows, ’till death do us part.’

“A grey-haired man holds the other. It is the soldier of the Rappahannock. Lee’s battery boy of ’63 is the trusted physician, the medical confidant, and ministrant of the Union soldier. With all the knowledge of a learned and skillful physician, he has fought the common enemy for the life of his dying friend. But the odds are too great. Old pains, old ailments, old wounds of ’63 outmatch the medical arts of 1904. But the doctor has known the grief of defeat before. Once a long time ago he yielded to the inevitable in the orchards of Appomattox. He lays his ear close over the failing heart to catch, if he can, its last lingering drum-beats in the battle of life. He places his fingers on the pulseless wrist, searching for its last faint throb—and they rest motionless for a moment on the old scar of ’63. ‘It is over,’ he says very softly.

“A low word of prayer for the widow and fatherless falls from the lips of the grey-haired minister at the foot of the bed. It is the ‘boy chaplain’ of the dead veteran’s old brigade—youthful to the end. Another man beside him, thin-visaged and bent. It is Ashby’s old trooper, and his eyes are full of tears as he walks slowly out of the room.

“‘Lights out.’ ‘The bands in the pine woods cease. A robin sings close by, as they will in summer evenings; the fragrance of old-fashioned flowers steals in through the white window curtains. The sun sinks behind the church across the street, the shadow of its belfry coming in at the open door. And over all, Lincoln’s worn face looks down from its place among the pictures on the wall. Even now with the hush of death upon us all, we hear his plaintive prophecy of long ago: ‘We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it cannot break the bonds of our affection. The mystic chord of memory, stretching from every patriot grave and battlefield to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when touched again, as they surely will be, by the better angels of our nature.’”

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