Talk:Thomas Wentworth Higginson
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Hi there,
Thou hast no right but to do thy will.
The wiki on the song "Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition" by Frank Loesser
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praise_the_Lord_and_Pass_the_Ammunition
... attributes the title's origin to a WWII chaplain, apparently following the statement on teh Smithsonian site :
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&objkey=81
However, book descriptions of a reprint of the 1870 book "Army Life in a Black Regiment" by Thomas Wentworth Higginson quote "historian Henry Steele Commager" as saying that "Higginson's picture of the battle ... was the origin of 'praise the Lord and pass the ammunition' ...".
See eg:
http://www.powells.com/biblio/0486424820?&PID=30732
I haven't been able to confirm this statement outside of these book descriptions -- but readers of this entry presumably know something about Higginson and his book ;) . Could somene please look into this, anc correct if appropriate (and refute the myth if not)? (It might also be a good nugget to put on Higginson's own page, if true).
Thanks!
Mikalra 19:07, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I have read fairly extensively on Higginson and have never encountered the idea that he had saud "praise the lord and pass the ammunition". I had always thought it was said by a chaplain at Pearl Harbor. It seems improbable that it was Higginson. Although he was a minister, his writings don't seem to have a lot of piety in them. Also "passing the ammunition" doesn't make sense to me in the context of Civil War infantry combat where men had cartridges with three components powder, bullet and firing cap or something like that.
12.159.138.194 12:22, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
