Evangelist John Vassar on the Battlefield
JOHN VASSAR came from hard-working, prayerful parents. Though he took after them in respect to the hard work, he was not nearly as inclined to prayer. While still a boy working in his family’s New York brick kiln, Vassar would break into profane rages when angered.
When Vassar married at twenty-five, neither he nor his wife were Christians. Vassar was eager to make money, however, and that desire actually facilitated his salvation when a cousin paid him to attend a revival meeting. Vassar came under deep conviction for his sins. The next evening, he was back in church. He wrestled with guilt and terror for a full week. Seeing his wife get into bed one night, he asked, “How can you rest when your husband is going right down to hell?”
Shortly afterward, however, the now twenty-eight-year-old Vassar received his assurance of heavenly sonship. Immediately he wanted to win others to Christ, but realized he needed knowledge first. He read the Bible every chance he got and posted memory verses at his work station in his cousins’ brewery.
By the time he was thirty-seven, his wife, sons, and father had died. Uneasy about making beer, he resigned and joined the American Tract Society. His preaching, prayers, and witnessing became legendary, for he would approach everyone he met—from the lowliest slave to the President of the United States—with questions about their spiritual state. He abruptly confronted sinners, “My friend, will you kindly permit me to ask, ‘Have you been born again?’” He followed this opening by appeal, warning, argument, entreaty, and a plea for the Holy Spirit to make the words effective. Revival broke out wherever he went.
Co-workers who roomed with him said he was at prayer when they went to bed and at prayer when they awoke. A minister from Ionia, Michigan, said, “I never knew a man who prayed so much.”
For a while he was called upon to act as an agent for suppressing illegal liquor trade in Dutchess County, New York. When rowdies mocked and threatened him, a concerned pastor offered him a cane for protection. Vassar replied, “If my master wants John Vassar tonight, nothing can save him. If he does not, all these men combined can’t hurt him.” He was not harmed.
During the Civil War, he served the Tract Society on the front lines. Going from tent to tent, he assisted any chaplain who seemed dedicated to Christ, regardless of denomination. To the soldiers he would often say, “I hope this loyal blue covers a heart loyal to the Lord Jesus. He is the best friend a soldier can have. Tell me, is he your friend?”
After the Battle of Gettysburg, Confederate general J. E. B. Stuart’s cavalry captured Vassar and threatened to execute him as a spy. Unfazed, he pressed his concern for their souls until the men urged Stuart to free him, warning, “or we’ll have a prayer-meeting from here to Richmond.”
On this evening, Saturday, 1 April 1865, when news of Union general Sheridan’s complete victory at Five Forks came in, Union general Ulysses S. Grant saw an opportunity to crush Lee’s weakened army at Petersburg. Hours before dawn he ordered his forces to advance. Vassar wrote, “Sunday morning dawned on a field of strife and blood and death. Such a Sabbath I had not in all my army experience seen. For three miles I passed along the lines amid roaring cannon and bursting shells, where the ‘gray’ and ‘blue’ often lay close together, mingling their life-blood and dying groans. We little realized in the confusion and horror of that day that the God of our fathers was using our men to strike the blows which should bring the long conflict to an end.”
After the war, he worked among southerners and freed blacks and traveled all the way to San Francisco, persuading men and women to follow Christ. He kept his work up until about six months before his death. In great pain, he once murmured under his breath, “Dear Lord, how much better this than sin!” He died in December 1878. His last whisper was “Hallelujah!”
—Dan Graves
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[Christianity in the Civil War looks at many more examples of faith during America’s costly conflict.]