Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/186

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172
CONFEDERATE MILITARY HISTORY.


been a consistent member, he asked him to sing

"Rock of Ages, cleft for me:
Let me hide myself in Thee;"

and he himself joined in the song with all the strength he could summon. He joined with fervor in prayer with the minister present, and again said just before he passed away: "I am going fast now; I am resigned. God's will be done." And thus the dashing soldier "fell on sleep," and left behind the record of a noble life, as well as a simple trust in Christ. Col. Lewis Minor Coleman, the accomplished scholar, the great teacher, the chivalric gentleman, the humble Christian, left his chair at the university of Virginia in May, 1861, raised an artillery company, was gradually promoted until he became colonel of artillery and widely known as an accomplished artillery officer, and fell at Fredericksburg on the 13th of December, 1862, by the same shot that cut down Arthur Robinson, a grandson of William Wirt, and Randolph Fairfax, one of the noblest young men laid on the altar of Confederate independence. Colonel Coleman lingered for several months in great suffering but with noble Christian patience, and left behind a wealth of dying words worthy to adorn our Christian literature.

Rev. Dabney Carr Harrison, once chaplain at the university of Virginia, was delightfully located in a quiet pastorate when the war broke out. He did not enter the army at once, though his soul was stirred with patriotic fire. But when at Bull Run, July 18, 1861, he lost his gallant cousin, Maj. Carter H. Harrison, and at Manassas, July 2ist, there fell his noble cousins, Holmes and Tucker Conrad, and his pure and beloved brother, Lieut. Peyton Randolph Harrison, he calmly said: "I must take my brother's place, " raised a company of which he was made captain, and did noble service both as a soldier and as a minister of the Gospel. At Fort Donelson three balls passed through his hat without harming him, a fourth cut his temple, and a fifth passed through his right