Former Enemy Present Friend and Pastor

[Pa.Dutchman]

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This comes from our local newspaper. Not only did the former Confederate Solider now Luther Pastor dedicate the monument it is believed his image represents the Confederate Solider on the monument.

As the Allentown Band played the last notes of "Onward Christian Soldiers" the Rev. Repass, now 63 and pastor of the city's St. John's Lutheran Church, came forward on the reviewing stand.
If things had gone differently on those hot July days at Gettysburg, Repass might have been known in Allentown, not as the beloved pastor of St. John's, but as Lt. Stephen Albion Repass of Company I, 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia, C.S.A.
Because he was so widely respected, historians say they believe that a Confederate soldier was added to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to honor Repass. Outside of those at Gettysburg, the statue is believed to be the only memorial to rebel soldiers north of the Mason-Dixon line.


Forty-four years after fighting at Gettysburg as a Confederate soldier, Stephen Albion Repass was back in Pennsylvania.
This time, the former rebel fighter was helping dedicate a monument to honor Union Civil War veterans.
On June 26, 1899, a crowd had gathered at Allentown's Center Square to mark the laying of the cornerstone for the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to Lehigh County's veterans.
As the Allentown Band played the last notes of "Onward Christian Soldiers" the Rev. Repass, now 63 and pastor of the city's St. John's Lutheran Church, came forward on the reviewing stand.
Heads bowed as Repass called for God's blessing and protection for the workers who would build the monument. He asked that the country be kept safe from enemies foreign and domestic, gave thanks for the many blessings Americans enjoyed and appealed to heaven for universal peace.
Repass ended with a fervent "Lord's Prayer" that was joined by the voices of thousands.
If things had gone differently on those hot July days at Gettysburg, Repass might have been known in Allentown, not as the beloved pastor of St. John's, but as Lt. Stephen Albion Repass of Company I, 28th Virginia Infantry Regiment, Army of Northern Virginia, C.S.A.
Because he was so widely respected, historians say they believe that a Confederate soldier was added to the Soldiers and Sailors Monument to honor Repass. Outside of those at Gettysburg, the statue is believed to be the only memorial to rebel soldiers north of the Mason-Dixon line.
On Friday, Lehigh County will kick off three days of events to mark the anniversary of the unveiling of the monument at Seventh and Hamilton streets.
More than 350 Civil War re-enactors will help observe the occasion, which will culminate with a rededication ceremony at 4 p.m. Sunday.
Repass was born in Wythe County, Va., on Nov. 25, 1836, the son of Rufus and Sallie Repass. His devout Lutheran mother wanted him trained for the ministry, so in 1858 he entered Roanoke College at Salem, Va.
According to college archivist Linda Miller, the topics of secession and state's rights were hot ones at the school in the years leading up to the Civil War. During the war, Repass was among the students who joined military units.
In later years, newspapermen, who held Repass in high regard, were driven to distraction by his refusal to discuss his military experience. Thus written accounts often contradict each other.
Allentown's Daily City Item newspaper claimed in 1906 that Repass held the rank of captain; other sources call him simply "a soldier."
Roanoke College records show he entered the service as a private. Lehigh County Civil War historian Richard Matthews has found that by 1863 Repass held the rank of lieutenant.
The Item stated that at the first Battle of Bull Run or Manassas he was shot "in the groin, the bullet passing clear through his body coming out at the back."
A paper done by a Roanoke College student in 1988 records that Repass was indeed seriously wounded, but at the battle of Second Bull Run or Manassas on Aug. 29-30, 1862, where Confederate forces defeated the Army of the Potomac.
All the sources agree about Repass' service on the third day at Gettysburg. He was in Brig. Gen. Robert Garnett's brigade, which was part of Gen. George Pickett's Division. The 28th Virginia Infantry's commander was Col. Robert C. Allen. Repass was with I Company.
Repass' 1906 obituary in the Item contains the only public comment Repass is said to have given about Gettysburg. The newspaper said:
"In speaking of this charge, Rev. Repass said that the most vivid impression he retained of that battle was the emotion which thrilled him as he looked down the line of battle one mile long, that was soon to roll onward, carrying with it the hopes, the prayers, the very edifice of the Confederacy itself, only to sink beneath the crimson tide which swept away the last hope of the South ..."
Matthews' research shows Repass and his company were among the rebels who topped the stone wall that marked the Union position at Gettysburg, carrying themselves and the regiment's colors into the waiting arms of the 1st Minnesota.
There were 333 men in the 28th Virginia Regiment. Forty-four of them were killed, 65 were wounded and 73 ended up missing or were captured at Gettysburg.
Repass and seven other men from Company I became prisoners of war.
He was assigned to the prison camp on Johnson's Island on Lake Erie near Sandusky, Ohio. It was established exclusively for Confederate officers. Here he stayed for the next 21 months.
After his release from prison in 1865, Repass returned to and graduated from Roanoke College. He then went to the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia.
He became pastor of several churches in Virginia and served for 12 years as head of the Theological Seminary of the General Synod of the Lutheran Church, South.
In 1870 he married Frances Emily Hancock of Wythe County, Va. They had four children. Repass was installed at St. John's Lutheran Church in Allentown on July 19, 1885. Why he was called here and accepted a charge outside the South is unknown.
No mention was made of his service with the Confederate Army in the newspaper articles about his arrival.
Repass went on to become a theology professor at Muhlenberg College as well as president of the college's board of trustees.
Those who knew him described Repass as a man of deep spirituality, who thought nothing was more important than his work as a pastor.
Until his death on June 1, 1906, Repass served his adopted community long and well. He was buried in Allentown's Fairview Cemetery.
Perhaps his proudest moment was on Oct. 19, 1899, when Allentown unveiled its monument. On the east side next to the Union soldier was a Confederate, his hand holding an American flag. Underneath were the words "One Flag One Country."

[Jerry D]

Great Story Thanks for shareing it
Jerry

[Pa.Dutchman]

Our community, Allentown PA. Lehigh Valley, was credited and honored as being the "First Defenders" to get to Washington when the call went out. While they were the first to answer Lincoln's call for defending Washingto, they were among the first to put this all behind them and come together once again as "One Nation Under God".

[DMZ-LT]

What Jerry said. Take the Quiz on the home page it's about the Civil War this time. Thanks again for the article

[Jerry D]

Lt I took the quiz and I got 40% correct less then Half ,you'all with 50% are better did good who ever researched that quiz did an awesome job!

[Jerry D]

Here is some more to add to this thread
Two Sergeants by Vernon Dent
http://vernondent.blogspot.com/

My family's history is not where I now live. The family has deep roots in Chester County, Pennsylvania, which used to be a beautiful country place; its dales and hollows grew foxes, then sheep, then milk cows, then, finally, housing developments.

When Memorial Day arrives, my natural place to commemorate it would be the grave of "Cousin" Joe Acker -- he would have been my great-great-grandmother's cousin, but that family seemed to collapse time to an eternal present tense. Joe was a sergeant in the 97th Pennsylvania, which enlisted in the summer of 1861.

One May day in 1864 the 97th was trying to hold the Bermuda Hundred line together in the face of strong probing attacks from Pickett's rebels. A staff officer -- that detested species -- wandered up to the front, and, looking to prove himself worthy of his stripes, told Acker to take a detachment out and see whether there were any rebels in that woods out in front of them.

"I can tell you from here," Cousin Joe said. "It's full of them."

But the staff officer, now having got his authority and ego tangled up in the case, insisted. And with no higher officer in sight to appeal to, Acker took a platoon out and crept toward the woods. When they got to the edge of it, the Confederates shot him dead.

His men dragged the body back, cursing and looking for that staff officer, who had quickly vanished. They never got his name.

That story is known in some detail because the regimental history of the 97th was written by the man who had recruited Acker and a handful of other farm boys from up in the Great Valley near Paoli.

I live now in Lancaster County, only one municipal unit removed from Chester County, but a different world altogether, historically. Chester is Quaker, Lancaster is German; Federalist vs. Democratic; spiritual and otherworldly vs. grubbily commercial. I still tend to see these places in their 19th century garb. That's the effect of doing too much research.

Joe Acker's grave is back in Great Valley Presbyterian cemetery, an hour's drive from here. But some stray branches of the family tree crossed into Lancaster County before me. One is the Passmores. Unlike the Ackers, the Passmores were no sort of gentry, even on the local level. One was a tavern-keeper along the road where the lime wagons dragged their loads to the kilns and the Lancaster farmers took their wheat to Wilmington. His sons sought livings on the Lancaster side of the line in the 1850s, working in stone quarries one year, teaching school the next. A public school teacher could have workman's knuckles back then.

The younger son was Josiah. He was older than the average soldier when the Civil War began, a family man, and he did not go in with the first wave of Northern enlistments. But he seems to have been one of the many men the threat of a draft shook out in 1862. He joined a 9-months regiment from Lancaster County that fought at Antietam and Chancellorsville. When he came home, he enlisted again. He joined the 2nd Pa. Heavy Artillery, which was a cushy "safe" regiment at the time, full of married men with children. Its duty was guarding Fortress Monroe down on the Virginia coast, a place almost immune to rebel attacks.

But when Grant took over the army in the East, he called in all the available manpower, including the "Heavies." Their days of safe duty ended, and they got thrown into the meat grinder of the Petersburg trenches. I have one of his letters home, to his little sister, my great-great-grandmother. He fretted a good deal about how his wife was getting by. Josiah died in the Battle of the Crater, the hideous debacle that was re-enacted at the beginning of the movie "Cold Mountain."

They brought his body back to Lancaster County, and buried it in a hilltop German churchyard outside the little village of New Providence. When I moved out here in 1990, I found the spot. Every year now, we visit his grave on Memorial Day. Sometimes the Boy Scouts have got the flag on it, sometimes they miss it. This year they found it alright. We brought a blossom from our garden.

What can you say about that? You could remind your anti-war friends That he was a not entirely willing participant in a not entirely legal war, in which a lot of basic American rights were overturned by a president elected by a minority of the voters. No, that's wrong. That's turning a dead man into a rhetorical trope. It takes him out of his context and his time, uses him to advance a present-day argument that has nothing to do with him. That's not what Memorial Day means. That's not what honor looks like.

This holiday began as a private affair, among the veterans themselves. In my part of the world, at first, they marched out to the cemeteries together, black and white, a truly remarkable thing in the old segregated North. Then the civilians and the politicians got hold of it and it became about speeches and contemporary matters and the blacks and whites stopped mingling.

Every attempt to use Memorial Day for any purpose but honoring the dead is unseemly. The day belongs to the individual man or boy who went to do a duty, with whatever mix of willingness and fear, and died doing it, as he knew he might. Any thought that goes much beyond that risks desecration.

posted by Callimachus AKA Vernon Dent