The Connecticut war record, 1863-1865, Part 51

Author: Morris, John M., ed
Publication date: 1863
Publisher: New Haven : Peck, White & Peck
Number of Pages: 886

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The immediate effect of the disaster at Bull Run on the people was chagrin and regret, but the indulgenee in these un- worthy sentiments was very brief. New regiments and batteries were raised at once, armed, equipped, and put into the field. In this movement the members of the three months' regiments engaged with absorbing interest. They enlisted men, drilled squads, and assisted with their experience in the details of the camps. The lists of those alone who have held commissions since, is the best record of their services. Every week adds to these lists, and " when this cruel war is over," and a broad, general view of its entire progress can be obtained, the meu of the three first regiments will ocenpy no secondary position.

DOMINUS.

Sermon Commemorative of Edward A. Doolittle of Cheshire, Ist Lieut. 20th ConD. Vols.

Preached at Stevenson, Ala., Dec. 27th, 1863, by Rev. A. L. FRISBIE, Chaplain of the Regiment.

PUBLISHED AT THE REQUEST OF HIS BROTHER OFFICERS.

" Shall any teach God knowledge, secing Hle judgeth those that are high ?

" One dirth in his full strength, being wholly at ease and quiet. His breasts are full of milk, and his bones are moistened with marrow, And an- other dieth in the bitterness of his soul, and never catethe with pleasure .- Job xxi, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25.

Seven days ago, as the week preceding the last was giving place to the new Sabbath which was to dawn so gloriously upon the world, as the still, dark hours moved on, two men in our midst were living their last of this perishable life. One of them was a stranger to us all. Ilis residence, his circumstances, his destination, were alike unknown. He was cast upon us, crushed and beaten down by a sudden and unexpected casualty, from the full- ness of a strong, robust manhood ; placed in our hands, unconscious of our pity, to receive our kind attentions, to breathe through a few days, and then to die. Ilis was the two-fold claim, imposed by the fact that he was a fellow soldier with us, and the fact that he was a helpless, suffering stranger. The other was our friend-known by us all, and by us all esteemed. He had been with you from the first of your soldier life. He had, with you, battled against all the embarrassments of inexpe- rience. He had overcome the unfitness for the stern duties and exposure of war -- an unfitness which you all shared with him-arising from the necessary conditions of the peaceful file which he, with you. had been permitted to lead. Ile heard and heeded the call for men to take the field against the enemy, accepting the dangers, the de-

shapen cylinder of brass, detailed the dangers of the retreat, each claiming to sounds like the horrible stories of fren- | be almost the sole representative of that nials, the sacrifices, which he must unavoidably

1864.]

THE CONNECTICUT WAR RECORD.

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make, as part of the price which he was willing to interposition to prevent such apparent wasteful pay for his country's deliverance from the danger that threatened it. Ile endured the comfortless months of that first bitter winter; marched and [ minds. Do we say that chance rules us? That our fought, grieved and rejoiced, with you -- patiently. birth, our manner of life, our death, are only so many results of a vast lottery of humanity ? We are left as completely in the dark by such an ex- planation as we were before we attempted to ex- plain at all. It is only a grandiloquent style of saying that we know nothing ; that we are in the presence of a mystery which we cannot reveal. nobly, manfully. And here, removed by additional hundreds of miles from the home of his early years and from the refined and agreeable associa- tions in which he had been permitted to mature his manhood-here, in a land seathed and deso- late, eloquent by contrast of the blessings of peace and the sweetness of home-here the brave sol- Do we, admitting that there is a Supreme Ruler, become bitter in our thoughts of Ilim, and say, as pricions, vindictive, cruel ? Do we say, as we see so mneli all about us that is most manifestly dier, the kind officer, the true patriot, the warm. hearted friend, the noble man, falls before insidi- we look on such untimely deaths, that God is ca- ous and fatal disease. Spared on two red battle fields, he was yet to give his life for the canse which called him forth. With the small hours of that | wrong, that He has created the world, set it in early morning, sickness was hastening the sad completion of its destructive work, and the first sunbeam fell on his countenance cold and move- less, fixed, like that of the other, in the stern rigid- ity of death.

Cut off in the midst of their days, they died in their full strength, when years of hope and pront- ise lay before them, inviting toward an honored and distant future.

We buried the stranger at the going down of the sun, with others who, like him unknown, had gone before. The softened, departing rays, just being lifted and gathered into the west, lingered still about us as we laid him to his rest, and touched lightly on his lowly bed, as if bearing to the fallen soldier an all-merciful benediction.

the constantly on-going miracles of goodness. A building falls upon its inmates; one out of ten thousand falls. A whole community is appalled by All that was left to us of our brother officer and friend-all save his memory-his worn and wasted the disaster, and busy tongues too often blame Ilim who is ever bliuncless. A train of cars is body, was borne away, to rest side by side with | thrown from its track. We shudder as we gather kindred dust, in the place of his nativity.

who, as soldiers, were strenuous to do their whole duty for their country's sake and for the sake of principles just and righteous, in defense of which they assumed the soldier's garb and accepted the soldier's obligation-these are falling continually all along the vast extent of our lines. Not having lived out half their days; not having exhausted, seareely having opened, the wealth of their capa- bilities in the field, or in social stations ; scarcely being allowed to prove how much they were to be worth to the world; thus, all too early, as we think, is the silver cord loosed and the golden bowl broken. We think of the loss to the country, to the cause of liberty, of all these brave hearts, impelled by mo-

the sun, from whose kindly heat nothing is hid. and causes the rain to fall, without distinction, on i fairs : it is unavoidably true while men are linked the just and the unjust. The apparent excess together as they are in families, communities, and tions to a rule of benevolence on the part of the states, that crime involves others besides the per- Supreme Ruler, are noticeable because apparent petrators in suffering. The innocent must feel exceptions. We shrink from them in horror and 'something of the force of the penalty which alarm, overlooking the preserving, sustining, i presses after the guilty. Blameless children feel comforting power, which, with sublime regularity ! the reflection of the blow which strikes out a good of movement, ministers to creatures without minu. man's Hfe, The murderer cannot bear his pun- tives of patriotism to a heroie self- devotion. Of ber, health and food and gladness. We are con. i-Indent alone. Its cruel shadow falls on those these strong arms, ready to strike home when vil- founded when we attempt to conviet God of deal- bonad to him by closest ties, who utterly abhor lainous treason showed its hostile front. We feel | ing with cruelty-of acting the part of a capricious . his crime. And the same law reaches out into the that every arm is needed; that the moral force of tyrant, rather than of a compassionate, thoughtful great matters of States, National guilt will surely every heart filled with love of country, of justice, jeuler. Disasters do indeed, in the coarse of prov. bring national punishment-punishment which of riglit, all is needed. We feel that it was not a fidence, come upon men ; but how often do we will not reach those only who originated and fos- mistaken idea of duty which called thein or us into ; see, in connection with them, the direct and por- tered a system or policy fatally false, but will the field. We feel, we believe, nay, we know, that nicious ageney of a misguided human hand ! And gather into its destructive sweep thousands who however imperfectly we have done onr work, the | in cases of bereavement, such as this which we to-day . had nothing whatever to do with the sin n hose commemorate, there is certainly a reason for consequences clothe a land in mourning. There them, a reason which exonerates God from blame, ; can be no question that our present national suffer- even though we may not beable to bring it within ing is because of guilt incurred. There must be, our grasp.

mission on which we have come ia proper and righteous. We cannot dispossess ourselves of the confidence which inspires ns, that we are arrayed as God would have us, opposed to lawlessness, vio- lenee, and oppression, And if this be really Fo, how is it that so many must render up their lives, victims to accident and disease, accomplishing

er." The sparrow may fall to the ground, but he loss? How is it that there is no such interpost- is not forgotten before God. Assuredly, then, Ile tion ? We cannot make the case elear to our own

I does not forget the interests, nor overlook the I destinies, of men.

We will not presume to attempt to teach the All-wise. We accept the fact that He rules intel- ligently and with benevolence. Clouds now and then obscure the sun, but the sun is not destroyed, is not even dimmed. Only onr sight is hindered. And so, while events grievons and darkly myste- rious are upon us, if their shadow comes for a time between us and the revealed brightness of God's goodness and merey, we may know that that bright- ness is all undimmed. " The Lord is good ; Ilis merey is everlasting."

As a people, we are led in a path of pain. It is a strange thing which has come upen us-this motion, and then left it to itself? that He has withdrawn into the impenetrable depths of His own being, finding delight in Himself, leaving those whom Ile has called into existence to move on withont the constant exertion of His care and thoughtfulness for them? Do we avow it as our waste, and ravage, and wretchedness of war. The insatiate sword feeds on blood-the best blood of the land, Desolation sits by thousands of once happy firesides. Widowhood and orphanage have become sadly common. In almost every hamlet . of the lind, Rachaels, refusing to be comforted, beliet that God has forgotten the world? Atlon- | weep for their children, Sorrowful eyes look into sand providences of merey-yes, a thousand more ! sorrowful eyes, and melt into tears, in the speech- providences of merey than of pain-look us in the ; less syn pathy of a common grief. Untold aeres, face and prove our avowed belief untrne. The | which three years ago were rejoicing in the glory most signal instances of suffering, which seem to a | of abun lant harvests, now break and swell with hasty judgment to be tokens of ernelty and ca- ! rounded graves, where the dead are gathered price, are of little moment when compared with [ home, No such sorrow as has fallen upon both sections of our country has ever visited the earth before ; none so far-reaching, so terribly oppressive. Now, might not this, ali of it, been avoided ? Who says that it was possible to avoid it longer ? Who knows this to be true ? It might have been put by, if men had thought and felt differently, to be sure : but, as circumstances were, they thought 1 and felt that which led them to take up the sword. And that they did so, is a fact in the administra-

up the broken, the dying, the dead; but we think ! These that I have mentioned are but two of un- known hundreds who have thus fallen by the way not then of the scores of miles of trains, full- freighted with life, which at that very hour are ! in the prime of their years, with all the promise of rolling securely along their iron way. And >> it is ; tion of Providenec. Who can show that, with a ripened manhood yet to be fulfilled, investing them with an inestimable worth, Our young meu, from whom parents aud communities reasonably ex- that we pause and hold our breath while the sad, ' the facts of our history as antecedents, we could dark events of providence pass before us, and do | possibly avoid this struggle, with all the cruelty, uot remember that it is God alone who can-es the ; loss, and suffering which it involves? What de- peeted much, of whom the army was prond, and | happy myriads, whom our thoughts then overlook, vier to prevent the breaking out of the contest to dwell in safety. We look pitifully on occa. availed? What plan to secure a peace has had a sional instances of want, and forget that " God ' particle of promise of success? None whatever. giveth the beast his food, and the young ravens How was it possible, then, to escape ? It has come which ery ;" " maketh grass to grow for the eat- ; under Divine rule, and we, unable to escape, must tle, and herbs for the service of man;" sends out . endure. We cannot teach our Ruler.

It has always been true in God's conduct of af-

under the inexorable laws of Providence, some The question with which Job turns upon his atonement rendered. Many, of past days and of friends, who had said that which amounted to an our own, have been instrumental in leading us in impeachment of the wisdom of Deity. this ques. , the path of sin ; but on them, separate and apart, nothing by their fall for the furtherance of a tiou is applicable here. It is the only answer, the as sinners above others, the strokes of chastise- right cause ? It is a question which often arises at i only explanation, which we can find to our ques. home as well. Families are broken ; children who have merely begun to live, seeming to have come

ment cannot fall. As the gases and vapors rising purities and breed the storm and thunder which roll over healthinl fields in their far-reaching rage, ulent theories of mistaken men and bad men.

tionings concerning many of the dark and bitter from rocking pens charge the atmosphere with in- experiences of life. "Shall any teach Gob know- into the world for nought, these are recalled. Men ledge, since he judgeth those that are high ?" in their carly prime, on whom society begins to " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" parifying the air by the jarring tumult, so the pres- depend, born to lead hy a kind, beneficent anthor -! We stop with this. It is as far as we can go. It ity-these, all unspent, just as they are needed the is all that we can know. The mystery is by no swaying public action, have changed the political most, often sicken and die, while, in the expres- means cleared away, but it is left with God. He heavens with storms of disaster and death. Calm will do right. None can teach Him knowledge. sive language of the text, "their breasts are full can only come now after the tempest. The heal- of milk and their joints are moistened with mar. We can confidently feel that these varied and ing of the land, its purification and safety, en row." Who shall explain all this? Is it not so i adverse events do not fall ont suddenly and un only be ut fearful cost. We have proved already inuch waste ? Where is the hand that has the power, or the will that has the disposition, to reg-

| provided for. Our friend is taken away. No more that this is true. The guilty suffer, but the inno. | with us to obey and serve, but he has gone in obe- vent as well. But the path of deliverance is ulate and restrain all this ? Ought there not to be | dience to the " summons of the Great Command- that of pain. Our offerings must be costly, but

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THE CONNECTICUT WAR RECORD.

EMARCH,

they will not-so our faith in God assures us- diligence in guarding the rendezvous, which is, From the Conscript Camp. CONSCHIPT CAMP, FAIR HAVEN, March 2, 1804. S Editor Connecticut War Record : they will not be in vain. The price will be paid. considering the disadvantages under which we! It is being paid by the labors, the lives, of our labor, somewhat remarkable. One characteristic countrymen-of such as was he whom we mourn of the black troops seems to be their comparative ; to-day. By such loss, and by the wisdom which simplicity or honesty. Their fault is in being too we must learn from such loss, are we to make such confiding. " Who come dar ?" " Officer of the Waiting for a little while in a restaurant a few atonement and reparation as are possible for the day." " Advance, officer of the day." "How do | days ago, I overheard a noisy conversation in a wrongs which, as a people, we have cherished and you know I am the officer of the day ?" "'Case ' bar-room adjoining, on the comparative worth of a

perpetuated. The way is rough and dark, but you tells ine so." But they are willing to learn, God appoints it. "Shall any teach Him know- and when once taught their duty. do not neglect ledge ?" Because He rules, there is hope be- it. We hear every few days of black sentinels re. fore us.

" The future's gain

Is certain as God's truth; but nican while, pain Is bitter, and tears are salt; our voices take A sober tone ; our very household songs Are heavy with a nation's griefs and wrongs ;

And innocent mirth is chastened for the sake Of the brave hearts that never more shail beat, The eyes that smile no more, the unreturning feet. " To-night there are two men reported by our sentinels, for offering one hundred dollars cach in the same way. So our conservative neighbors, As an offering, under God's Providence, for las country's deliverance, did our friend Doolittle die : 'added thorns to bis laurels in Florida, could with not as others, on the battle-field, irdeest, but just as truly as they, an offering, self-rendered, for the , cause of liberty, You know with what unsparing energy he gave himself to his duties. You know how,when disease was wasting him, he still stood by his post, unmindful of himself, faithful, at the cost of life, as it has proved, to that which was ex- pected of him. You know how his strong, hope- saw him felt that there was danger which he dhl who blame the Eighth U. S. for a supposed ske. daddle under such a General as he who has just benefit, if not with pleasure, look nearer home. Many are asking, as if anxious to be rid of us, " Why don't the Twenty-ninth leave ?" Because we have no officers. All volunteer regiments have started with a full roster of officers, or of men call- ing themselves such, and afterwards added their men : but we, thanks to General Casey, have to wait in patience, to be at length rewarded always ful spirit kept him up day after day, when we who . by officers who are capable. The condition of the regiment to-day will prove low great was the loss not fear. He died as a brave, faithful, unselfish in the white regiments by not forcing every offi- man. His friends who have watched bis military ; cer to a strict examination.

career with so much interest, will find in that fict . a pleasant thought in their hour of bitterness ; and how bitter must that hour be, which brings

One severe bereavement has fallen upon us. On Sunday, February 21st, very suddenly, after an illness of only thirty-six hours, died Lieutenant back to the father's roof, to the home circle, the Jabez A. Tracy, of company I, aged 19 years. first born son a silent, coffined corpse !

How fond hearts anticipated his coming by and of disposition, so that as one after another of us joined the command, with which the Lieutenant had been almost fiom its beginning, the remark went round. " linw amiable and affectionate a man brother officer, (and none but brother officers know the strong attachment which sneh relation-

by, after victory had blessed us with peace, wait- ing to do him honor and pay him dearer love, be- cause he had done his part so well! Ile is horne to them, the poor mortal worn and marred, the , he was. " It is not often, even at the death of a immortal altogether departed. But yet, his part has been well done. So do we cheerfully unite in saying. His memory shall live, ever green, in the ship creates.) that the mourners shed tears, yet hearts of his fellow soldiers and brother officers of , around the dying body of the friend, there were the Twentieth Regiment. He was a man worthy to be remembered.

It was my province to attend him the day before his death, and to speak with him of the life that is to be. Ile was weak, but calm and rational. Il :- convictions of the worth and necessity of religion, don, which Lieutenant Tracy leaves, must find great consolation.

were as strong as yours or mine. He had in childhood been received into the communion ot the Episcopal Church, but on that faet merely he placed no reliance. He said he did not cham to have been a very consistent member; but as he lay there, so near the verge of eternity, he er. pressed his wish for the help of God, and his de sire to depend wholly upon " Him who is able !0 1 sus Christ."

May the life of our friend, by its fidelity, un. selfishness and energy, be an example to us all And may the faith which he, dying, commended. be riveted and dwelling in the lives of all his com- rades in arma -- so that, whether we die, as did te. with no home ministries of love, we may pass to the better home and the higher ministries ap- pointed for all who have " fought the gond fight.

From the Twenty-ninth Infantry, C. V. IN BARRACKS, U. S. RENDEZVOUS. I

NEW HAVEN, Conn., March Si1. 1564. 7

That while we trust that nur regiment inny not Ingain suffer from such bereavement, we recognize Mr. Editor :- The Twenty-ninth Regiment the inct that it is better for him who is dead, even is a new one in the list of Connecticut troops, in the vigor of his youthfulness, than if he had marked by only one historie peculiarity, the been called to endure longer and more trying evils seeming blackness of its character, and blessed of this life beforo ascending on high. just now with only one sign of promise, the sol- ;dierly brightness of its meu.

As its career is but begna, its record can be ; of mourning.

nothing else than briet. It has fought no battles ; has not the arms wherewith to earn its hrurels. Indeed, all to be chronieled in regurd to us is our

a man on post was offered thirty dollars and a watch to pass a recruit across his beat, but arrest- ed the offender, and seemed quite astonished when he received fifteen dollars and the promise of five days' furiongh.

white skin and a black one. " Well," exclaimed one of the disputants, " I'll tell you what: the meanest white man in the world is more respect- ; porting white bounty-jumpers for bribery. To-day ; able than the best black." This wise doctrine, the spirit of which characterizes a large class now-a- days, was brought to my mind by an occurrence which enlivened our camp one evening of last week,

A vigorous drum-beat, at an unusual hour, at- tracted everybody to see what was the matter. The drum corps of the Thirtieth Regiment, C. V. were taking an evening parade, improvised by our line commanding officer. In front of them was marched a long line of white deserters, hand-euffed together and guarded at either end by a musket in the hand of a trusty looking colored soldier. I wished my bar room friend could have witnessed this guard-house parade, and wondered if he would have held on to his conviction that a white inan was always respectable, a black man never.

One of the deserters referred to, to facilitate an eseape had blackened his face. The black soldiers are not watched every minute as the white ones are. A group of colored soldiers talking of him I heard one of them say with a chuckle, "spees he'd like mighty well to jine de Twenty-ninth." The individual would need considerable reforma- tion before he could hope for admission into such reputable society. I am not connected with either of the colored regiments, but I believe if the peo- ple who are afflicted with such violent prejudice against " niggers" would spend a while in this camp, they would get rid of their delusion, and would admit, if honest, that a white skin is not one of the essentials to a true soldier or a true man.

With regard to the general interests of our camp there is nothing new to communicate. Fresh re- cruits come in at the rate of sixty- five a day, about eighty per cent of whom are white. Large squads leave every week for the field, yet we are always full. Nearly seven hundred were sent away during the week ending March 2d. This morning's roll call showed two thousand two hun- dred and twenty-one men. The camp is still com- manded by Captain W. B. Sears, Second Rhode Island Vols .. and a fitter man for the place it would be difficult to find. To command such a camp and attend faithfully to all its various affairs is by no means an easy job. The rowdy element brought here from the large cities, is of itself enough to require the vigilant 'care nf a full sized man, yet it is well attended to. Our proximity to New Haven presents many facilities for demoraliz- ing indulgence, but Captain Sears is a terror to whisky smugglers, deserters. gamblers, prosti- tutes, and to evil doers generally. Not that we are enjoying, in every partientar, a paradise, quite, but we come about as near it as can:ps average. Every one notices and admires the many improve- ments that have been accomplished here within the past month, and the credit of them is due to faculty which philosophers cannot see into-of be- ing everywhere at the same time ; a faculty which affords him rare advantage in the way of constant personal supervision. With the best of business habits-promptness, energy, method, dispatch- habits acquired by long experience in a first-class mercantile house of New York, and adapted by military work by two years of service in the army of the Potomac, he is peculiarly adapted to the command of a rendezvous like this. New build- ings are being erected within the lines, and vari- ous repairs effected which indicate that it is the purpose of the Government to make this a perma- nent rendezvous while the war lasts.

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The Connecticut war record, 1863-1865, Part 51

Author: Morris, John M., ed Publication date: 1863 Publisher: New Haven : Peck, White & Peck Number of Pages: 886

Author: Morris, John M., ed
Publication date: 1863
Publisher: New Haven : Peck, White & Peck
Number of Pages: 886