[129] shall ever disturb. Thus he died, as he was born, on the Sabbath. Thus was his life bounded on either hand by the Day of God. Care and conflict came between, but a Sabbath blessing was on it all, and then he entered on the higher “Sabbath of the Lord his God, eternal in the heavens.”
As an appropriate appendix to this sketch, and to show that neither of the brothers concerned in its preparation held Captain Harrison in higher regard than any others who knew him well, I append the following eloquent tribute to his memory, from the pen of the Rev. Joseph M. Atkinson, of Raleigh, North Carolina. It is taken from a Southern periodical, in which it was published in 1863:
‘While our church or our country shall survive; while freedom, or religion, or learning, the noblest gifts of nature, or the brightest instincts of personal or hereditary worth, shall be treasured among men, never will the name and the memory of the Rev. Dabney Carr Harrison be forgotten; a gentleman, a scholar, a Christian, a minister, a martyr to his conscientious conviction of public duty and his uncalculating devotion to his country. Among the illustrious worthies of ancient story, among the deified heroes of ancient song, in the golden records of Grecian fame, in the glowing chronicles of medieval knighthood, in the ranks of war, in the halls of learning, in the temple of religion, a nobler name is not registered than his, nor a nobler spirit mourned.’
Captain Hugh A. White, who graduated at Washington College, and was a student at Union Theological Seminary when the war broke out, was a specimen of the Christian officer well worthy of a full sketch in this chapter; but space can be found for only brief extracts from the memoir of him written in 1864 by his venerable father, Rev. Dr. W. S. White, then pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Lexington, Virginia.
The sketch of his leaving home for the army is given in full, as it well illustrates the spirit not only of this noble young man, but of thousands of others of our ‘Boys in Gray:’
He remained at the seminary until his second session closed. He stood his examinations, attended the marriage of a friend, and reached home about the middle of May, 1861. He was then twenty years and eight months of age. His appearance, though not indicative of serious disease, was such as to awaken some uneasiness in the minds of his friends. The professors
