This past Saturday morning, I was digging around at my local library, and I found a book entitled A Baptist Looks Back by James Oliver Young. It is a history of sorts of the Baptist Associations in the Toe River Valley area, i.e., Yancey, Mitchell, and Avery Counties, with a little McDowell and Buncombe thrown in. In my search I found that in 1863, Elder S. M. Collis "was asked to furnish a list of names of..." the soldiers who had died since the beginning of the war so that the Association might enter them into the minutes. Collis does this, then adds:

The above Brethren were members of the Baptist church and had been ornaments to the denomination to which they belong and when they came up under a sense of duty to their country they turned their backs upon their families and their breast to the cannon, bidding adieu to wives and children, fathers and mothers, the most of them having little families to mourn their loss. Some of their bodies lie in around Richmond, Va., and some around Gettysburg, Pa., while others of them fell in Mississippi. Peace to their silent dust and honors to their memories. The Association tenders her heartfelt sympathies to the bereaved fathers and mothers, wives and children, yet would not sorrow as those without hope, believing that the are resting in heaven where war will disturb them no more.
How many thousand widows
Bereft of husband brave
How many thousand orphans
With fathers in the grave
The Father’s seat is empty
‘Twas never so before
The brother’s voice is silent
And shall be heard no more.

I don’t think that I can add anything else....