The young wife taught her husband to believe in God, and to trust in prayer. In his simple-hearted way, Morgan tells us that, just before the fierce attack on the fort at Quebec, he knelt in the drifting snow, and felt that God had nerved him to fight.
In riding over the battlefield after his great victory at Cowpens, old soldiers saw with wonder the fierce fighter stop his horse and pray aloud, and, with tears running down his face, thank God for the victory.
His men never scoffed at their leader's prayers, for it was noticed that the harder "old Dan Morgan" prayed, the more certain they were of being soon led into the jaws of death itself.
Meanwhile, he and his young bride were thrifty and prosperous. They were both ignorant of books, but they studied early and late to make up for lost time. For the next nine years, Morgan, with his household treasures,—his good wife, and his two little daughters,—lived in the pure atmosphere of a Christian home.
| Riflemen treating with Indians in the Wilderness of Virginia |
The storm cloud of the Revolution was now gathering thick and fast. Events followed each other with startling rapidity. Morgan watched keenly. He never did anything in a half-hearted way; and we may be sure that he took up the cause of the Revolution with all the fervor of his strong nature.
After the bloodshed at Lexington, the Continental Congress called for ten companies from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Morgan received his commission as captain, five days after Bunker Hill. When he shouted, "Come, boys, who's for the camp before Cambridge?" every man in his section turned out.
In less than ten days, Morgan at the head of ninety-six expert riflemen started for Boston. It was six hundred miles away, but they marched the distance in twenty-one days without the loss of a single man.
One day as Washington was riding out to inspect the redoubts, he met these Virginians.