Can anyone help answer the following question which came to me from
a northern born Civil War historian.
     In reading the letters and diaries of Union soldiers,  he has noted
that, on crossing the Potomac for the first time, virtually all of them
refer, sardonically or with bemusement, to "the sacred soil of
Virginia."
    He wonders  why so many young men from scattered places throughout
the North, with a variety of educational backgrounds, would have all had
that phrase on their minds.
     Does anyone  know (a) who originated the phrase and (b) why it
would have been so well known in 1861 to unsophisticated chaps.

Thank you,
Vesta Gordon
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Vesta Lee Gordon: The Book Broker, 114 Bollingwood Road,
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