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the Church to be given to the dying, Shroudenback claimed that Catholics “ought to have a chaplain,as the influence of their duly approved-of priest keeps them more moral and content in the camp …”The Catholics ought to have a chaplain, as chiefly the presence of a priest consoles andencourages extremely a fighting soldier. History has shown this fact in all ages. If a Catholicon the eve of battle or at least from time to time has had an opportunity of reconciling himselfwith God thro’ his priest; peculiarly if the priest accompanies him into the midst of the battle:then he goes into the battle with an excelsior courage and confidence in God, yea often witha religious enthusiasm. When he sees his priest at his side, he fears not death, and ratheraccepts it as the death of a martyr to die for his country. Thus frequently he has more presenceof mind and fights through… 45The case of the Father John B. Bannon, immortalized as “the Confederacy’s fighting chaplain”shows the degree to which some rebel battlefield ministers took their temporal commitment to theSouth seriously. Bannon, a chaplain with the First Missouri Confederate Brigade from 1861 to 1863,recruited Irish immigrants to the Stars and Bars and worked as a secret agent for Jefferson Davis’government in Ireland, despite the anti-Catholic prejudices of many Protestants, north and south,at the time. Bannon, writes his biographer Phillip Thomas Tucker, “worked an artillery piece likea seasoned veteran” at Vicksburg, helping to raise fellow rebel morale, while seeking “to save hisgraycoats on earth and in heaven.” 46One historian, Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., is careful to point out that the memoirs and other writingof those who participated in the Civil War “suggest that religious assurance and soldierly efficiencydid not always work in concert, but sometimes were at cross-purposes. … Christian theology …has never been the ideological servant of the secular state, and few American religious leaders,then or now, have ever suggested that patriotism is simply interchangeable with piety. … Despitetheir bravery and numerous expressions of patriotism, the most important aspect of their ministryas clergy—strengthening the faith of their men and preparing them spiritually to accept death—maywell have undercut the military goals of their nation.” 47 Similarly Alan K. Lamm saw the resistanceof some officers to the chaplains’ presence as emanating from two sources, one of which directlyquestioned the political content of the clergyman’s message:The first was the inherent tension between war and religion. War was seen as organized deathand destruction. Chaplains, on the other hand, represented a God who said: “Blessed are thepeacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.” This led many to question whetherclergy should be in uniform at all. War also involved training and preparation. Many lineofficers felt that the soldiers’ time would be put to better use drilling, rather than praying. 48Among the 166 U.S. Colored Troop regiments that served the Union cause during the Civil War,there were 13 that had African-American chaplains, while various state regiments also included blackpreachers as their spiritual guides. 49 According to Lamm, the African American chaplains broughttheir own strategic communications message, that of divine support for a people’s liberation. “Thesmall number of black chaplains was due to several factors, including the high standards set by thearmy after the reform of the chaplaincy,” Lamm wrote.These high qualifications, however, ensured that those African Americans who did participatewere men who established a solid and respectable reputation. … (B)lacks brought anotherperspective to the chaplaincy. They saw the redemptive hand of God using the war to free theAfrican American people and they shared this view with their soldiers. They helped to provide45Rev. Frank Shroudenback to President Abraham Lincoln, August 8, 1862, Box 57, Folder 20, National Catholic Welfare Council GeneralAdministration Series, ACUA.46Tucker, The Confederacy’s Fighting Chaplain: Father John B. Bannon, (Tuscaloosa, Alabama and London: University of Alabama Press, 1992), p.128.47Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr., “Faith, Morale, and the Army Chaplain in the American Civil War,” in Bergen, op. cit, pp. 116, 117, 120.48Lamm, op. cit., p. 63.49Hourihan in Lamm, op. cit., p. i.124Security and Defense Studies Review 2009/Edición 2009/ Edicão 2009/ Volume 9, Issues 1 & 2