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Another exclaimed just before he died:
Oh, what joy!
What boundless bliss!
How my soul exults in the prospect of being so soon released from the sorrows of earth and initiated into the joys of heaven.
Tell all my friends to meet me in heaven.
A noble young Virginian said to a comrade, as he lay mortally wounded on the bloody field:
It is sweet to die for one's country — I would not have it otherwise.
As a captain stood by one of his men who was dying, the soldier said to him:
Captain, I am going to die-death has no terrors for me — I do not fear to die — there is a beauty in death.
Give my love to all at home, and tell them I die in a good cause-fighting for my country, and in Christian faith.
Captain, you have been kind to me. Captain, quit swearing and try to meet me in heaven.
Then, pressing the hand of his officer, he fell asleep in Jesus.
An officer, passing over the bloody battle-field of Frazier's Farm, saw a soldier kneeling with eyes and hands upraised to heaven; on approaching and touching him, he found him dead.
Among the many Christian soldiers who fell in the seven days fighting around
Richmond, no man has a brighter record for virtue, religion, and patriotism, than
Colonel Robert A. Smith, of the 44th Georgia regiment.
He was a resident of
Macon, Ga., and greatly beloved and honored by his townsmen.
In a brief tribute to his memory, they said of him:
As a lawyer, he attained a high degree of proficiency in his profession, to which he devoted himself with prayerful energy, and in his practice he never swerved from the teachings of his conscience.
Day after day he became more and more spiritual, drifting farther and farther from the world and “nearer, nearer home;” and, turning a deaf ear to the syren tones of ambition, heard but the divine assurance, “Blessed are the pure in heart, ”
