Here is wishing all of you a very safe and prosperous New Year.  May the Lord bless and keep you and may the road raise up to meet your feet and the wind be always at your back is our prayer for each of you.

If in this new year of 2012 you happen to run across some good, encouraging, spiritual uplifting Civil War stories that you would like to submit as a possible devotion please feel free to send them to us.  Thank you and God bless.

73th Illinois - The Methodist Preacher Regiment

Matthew 22:21, “They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.”

The call of President Lincoln for 300,000 volunteers on July 6, 1862, was the "bugle-note" that summoned the men and boys of the 73rd Illinois to the field. 

In September of 1862 the following letter appeared in the Cincinnati Commercial and was copied into nearly every paper in the United States.

Mr. Editor - The following is a list of the field officers and captains of the 73rd regiment of Illinois Volunteers, known at home as the "Methodist Preachers Regiment," now stationed at Camp Russell in the suburbs of Covington:
          Colonel - Rev. James F. Jaquess, D.D. - late president of Quincy College
          Lt. Colonel - Rev. Benjamin F. Northcott
          Major - Rev. Wm. A. Presson
          Captain Company B - Rev. W.B. Colt
          Captain Company C - Rev. P. McNutt
          Captain Company F - Rev. Geo. W. Montgomery
          Captain Company H - Rev. James I. Davidson
          Captain Company I - Rev. Peter Wallace
          Captain Company K - Rev R.H. Laughlin

Six or seven of the twenty lieutenants are also licensed Methodist preachers.  Being thus officered, you may rest assured we are a good set of boys.