Chaplain Chronicles

STORIES OF PATRIOTISM

“Go With Me Into This Great Fight for the Dear Life of the Nation”

Chaplain Andrew Leete Stone cared for wounded soldiers of his 45th Massachusetts Infantry while the Battle of Kinston, N.C., raged around him. Fear gripped him in the midst of shot and shell. During this awful moment, he recalled the words of Christ to Pontius Pilate in Chapter 19 of the Book of John: “Thou coulds’t do nothing at all except it were given to thee from above.”

The passage soothed his soul. “If death comes while doing my duty it is all right for I would fall at my post,” he thought.

Stone shared this personal anecdote in a sermon to the survivors of the regiment days after the Dec. 14, 1862, battle. The courage to tell his story added to the admiration and respect he already enjoyed.

Courage had always been part of Stone’s character. A native of Connecticut who graduated from Yale in 1837 and studied at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, he was an ardent abolitionist. He railed on the subject from the pulpit of Park Street Congregational Church in Boston, Mass. “Dr. Stone early took in this city a bold stand as a Reformer in the days when it cost something to attack slavery and public wrong,” stated one of the church members.

This writer and 79 other churchmen enlisted in the Union army in the summer of 1862. They composed the majority of Company A of the newly formed 45th. They signed up at Rev. Stone’s request: “Go with me into this great fight for the dear life of the nation.”

The 45th spent the majority of its 9-month enlistment in eastern North Carolina fighting to secure the region for the Union. Chaplain Stone’s gifts of communication inspired the men. “He was always brief, never wearisome, rarely occupying more than twenty minutes in the delivery of his sermon. He had a fine presence, a wonderful voice, and a great ease in his delivery,” noted the congregant who went off with him to war. The Battle of Kinston proved the regiment’s costliest fight, with 58 killed and wounded.

The 45th spent two months on provost duty in nearby New Bern. Stone’s wife, Matilda, joined him and opened a school for 500 children of color. He established a school for freedmen.

The regiment returned to Boston at the end of its tour of duty and Stone rejoined his congregation. In 1866, he left for a new post in San Francisco. In an emotional farewell speech, he thanked his flock for its war service: “Oh, had you been recreant in that great crisis of our Nation, and of humanity’s long struggle, you and I would have parted long ere this! But I thank God, the record of this church for loyalty, patriotism and valor, at home and in the high places in the fields is without blot or stain.”

Stone died in San Francisco in 1892 at age 76. Matilda survived him and lived until 1904.