USA > Illinois > Complete history of the 46th regiment, Illinois volunteer infantry, a full and authentic account of the participation of the regiment in the battles, sieges, skirmishes and expeditions in which it was engaged > Part 35
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41
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great pleasure to extend a welcome to the veterans and that the city of Freeport always likes to entertain the boys who wore the blue, but she takes a special pride in extending her hospitality to the veterans of the 46th, which was made up largely of Freeport and Stephenson County's gallant sons. Most loyally did they uphold the honor of this county in that awful struggle. During that period our people watched your move- ments with anxious hearts, and although thirty years or more have passed since the close of the war, that solicitude for your welfare has not abated.
As you marched through our streets this afternoon you perhaps re- called the little city in which you signed the roll almost half a century ago, and to-day you find that city more than doubled in population, and signs of peace and prosperity are visible on all sides, and this is largely due to your valor and bravery on the field of battle, in preserving the Union and bringing peace and prosperity to the homes of our people. It is little wonder, then, that we take great pleasure in welcoming you to our city. In that struggle you builded more wisely than you knew, for you have dedicated to posterity a united country. As a tribute to your loy- alty and pure patriotism in the nation's darkest hour, I but voice the unanimous sentiment of the people of Freeport in bidding you a cordial welcome. The city raises its gates to you and the key is in your possess- ion, and our hearts go out to you in welcome.
The chairman then introduced
CAPT. W. W. KRAPE,
a member of the 46th, who responded to the address of welcome on be- half of his comrades. He paid a high tribute to the worth of the private soldier, and said that while he had been introduced as Capt. Krape, it was with pride that he enlisted as a private and came out with the same rank, and the title of captain had been conferred upon him by the governor for his services in the state militia. We always feel at home in Freeport, for her citizens are ever kind to the old veterans, and we feel at home in all parts of the United States or wherever that flag we all love so well waves. We accept the welcome so heartily given and appreciate it, and we hope to so conduct ourselves in the future as to continue to deserve the good opinion in which we are held by the people of Freeport and Stephenson county.
AN ELOQUENT ADDRESS.
Capt. Reitzell then in a few well chosen words introduced Gen. John C. Black, of Chicago, who was greeted with great applause. The general was in good voice and spirits and delivered an address which greatly pleased the old soldiers and in fact all within the sound of his voice. It
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was an eloquent speech and one that will add to Gen. Black's fanie as an orator. A synopsis of his masterly effort is given below :
Like those who have preceded me, I am somewhat at a loss how to begin my address to those assembled. It would be infinitely pleasanter to sit still as I have been doing, listening to the words of the young orator who has given us such a royal welcome; and now to the strains of music which recall those other and greater days, pleasanter to sit still on this sunny September afternoon, when every voice but that of peace and com- fort is hushed, and when the golden wealth of this delightful Union seems poured around us. Pleasant to dream of the past and live in the fair realizations of the future. But in the presence of men who have bid me speak for them, and to the younger generation that stand and sit around me here in this leafy grove, and who want to know, and who have the right to know why these veteran soldiers, whose bared and gray heads are grouped around this platform, thirty-five years ago torn from all that makes the world dear to men, putting all hopes aside, that they might offer themselves to their country. Why this constantly diminishing assembly of former soldiers of the Republic, who in the flush of young manhood went forth to battle for liberty, I may say without misrepresent- ing one of the thousands of them, that they were not stirred by a feeling of rebellion ; they were not actuated by any motive of avarice; they assumed arms for their country in order that the country might live. and for the men of that time I speak and truthfully testify that patriotism as high and noble as ever animated the human breast or guided human actions was the mainspring of the army of the Republic; none of them too human to allow one life to pass unpunished. They went to war not at their own uttering, but my countrymen, it was a war inevitable as the conflict between any contending forces of the universe. It was a war which had been in preparation throughi all the course of history. through 6,000 years of recorded time. It was a war between two great systems of civilization which until that time had never met face to face in any great army. The Roman when he was a citizen of that ancient republic had been a universal task master. The Greek, while Greece was new, had a heliot chained to every door post, and this was only a few years preceding, a few years of our outbreak. It was a wronged humanity that had borne this curse of slavery in the bosoni of all its laws. Men had been at war with it and states had upheld it. At last in the closing years of the last century the formula of the declaration of independence had been made. You can't replace in the course of this world. one system for another without a conflict. Hence I say that religion and patriotism are not beginning to decline. Before the conflict of '65 was inaugurated intervened a conflict of humanity. In all the states the war that followed the firing of Fort Sumpter was the greatest war that history has recorded. I know very well that tradition has filled the rank of tradition with 500,- 000 of men. But this to the sober historian has begun to read as a mere fable. The war of '65 was the greatest in the history of the world, and the greatest which the world to this time has ever seen. It was a war as great on sea as on land.
At the beginning of the war there was no preparation for the fight: a few patched hulks were all that they had at this time; at the close of the contest 800 battle ships had been brought into action to protect the union, adorned by the flag of our union, that flag which has since commanded the respect of all the nations of the world. Then there was established
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a naval warfare which marked the greatest of all previous engagements. When the Cumberland had gone to her moorings, fast to the bottom of the Chespeake, the flag floated at the fore, her supports bared. The next morning as the Merrimac came from the mouth of the James to complete her destruction, where they had seen her when the sun went down, thence there appeared a little floating speck with its lifted plume of smoke and steam, sailed in. Who can forget the contest of that day? The names of Worden and the Monitor live as long as nien remember heroism. At the close of the hostilities the spirits of Jones, Decatur and Howe were found to be still the boasts of the American navy. On land similar exhibitions occurred of the marvelous power of the great free people. While, gentle- men, this old man had helped to chase Blackhawk over the Mississippi, Stephenson county had never seen a squad of armed men. The whole of this great empire of ours lay at peace. The few soldiers we had were some stationed at Mackinaw, some at Fort Warren and at Boston Harbor. From '45 to '61 we had a series of foreign wars that had occupied the attention of a few of our people, but we had devoted ourselves to growth and peace. Patriotism was the road of communication, except a few minimum railroads which bound these commodities side by side, and the men of Illinois, the men of Virginia, the men of Indiana and the men of Georgia were as strange to each other as you are to the men of the farthest parts of Mexico. What good did we accomplish ? What good
did we do? We did not even know our brothers. Men turned from all the vocations of life to become soldiers. Not in the address of the day but in the address of the fullness of time. You and I know that it took a long time for the best of us to know which was the left foot and which was the right foot and which to put out first. (Applause) You and I know that it took a long time for the best of us to know whether we should march on Sunday and whether we should go to sleep when we pleased. One million of men were in arms and during the course of the four years there were two and a quarter millions of the sons of the Republic answered the call. I would like to stop and talk to you in a quiet way about the men who have been the noblest figures in this particular neighborhood. "the mold of fashion and a glass of foreign." who had been the figure of the neighborhood. and think what happened to him when he fell into the hands of the regimental tailor. His pantaloons were a size too large and his coat was a size too small, and he was loaded down with knapsack and bundles while we wondered whether he was a man or a mule: and some still think he is a mule. (Applause.)
3,000 battles were fought on land and sea. There were perhaps from 50 toti0) engagements, during this great contest between the north and south, and some of them were the greatest ever recorded by historians. In every great procession there will come a crisis, and such a crisis and su- prome moment came in the war of '61 and '65; that was in July, '63. There are a great many who were not living at that time. The young gentleman who welcomed you here. I expect, was not living at that time : if so he was too tender to remember it. That great eventful morning of the third of July found the country uncertain as to whether there would be an American republic. Oh. do not mistake or over- value the import- ance of that time. The powers of Europe were awaiting the results of this battle, to determine whether they should acknowledge the southern states as belligerents. On the morning of the third of July the cabinet of every king and queen of Europe was awaiting with anxious suspense the events of the weck. When the sun went down on the fourth of July.
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the world knew that the flag that floated over the field of Gettysburg, floated over the "land of the free and the home of the brave." And at that same hour a listening world heard thundering through the valley of the Mississippi the echoing from the wasted places of desolation. We need not worry any longer about meeting the same opposition that was extended to us those days. Every man that stood face to face with us then has long ago preceived the error of their folly. No man who stood with the flag at the front, that flag which has inspired the hearts of the Americans in the gloomy days of Bunker Hill and Yorktown, which had been upheld before them at the siege of Sherubusco, no man can find it in his heart on the 4th day of July to humiliate the flag. And I believe, gentlemen, that the regular armies of that time ceased their struggles with each other. You men from that time knew that the cause of the Union army, however troubled, however hesitating, however op- pressed, was a victory of which we were absolutely assured. There was no man who knew hostility but that he thought the Union must be and should be preserved. They have buried their wrongs and our children look upon us as reconciled. You and I know that we shall never revive the feeling of thirty years ago. What did we fight for? Liberty. What did we fight for? Peace. It has come to every mother, to every widow, every father, every child in this broad land of liberty. What foolish and unfortunate men we would be to revive that feeling and sever those re- lations ! As I listened today to the mingled strains of music of the north and south. to the tunes of "Auld Lang Syne," "Maryland, My Maryland," "Star Spangled Banner," and "We are Coming Father Abraham," all blown from the same lips, and making sweetest music, it made me think of the war and of the men of our union who sang those same songs. When we left our homes all over this land we sang "The Star Spangled Banner," and when we got a little further away it was "The Girl I Left Behind Me." (Laughter.) And they thought just as much of the girl as ever when they got on to the bloody battle field, and when they got home from the war "there was a union of hearts, a union of hands, a union that time cannot sever ; a union of hopes, a union of joys and American Union forever." ( Applause). And so from the beginning there has never been a great event in the history of our country that has not been marked with some appropriate song. And who was there, except an American woman, wife and mother that could have given utter- ance to such a soul inspiring song as that which marked the establishment of peace, "Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming of the Lord."
This is a republican continent, Republics in North and South America and the islands around, Republics to the very core, excepting the country north of us, I mean the Dominion of Canada, and that is trying to decide for itself whether it shall be a Republic or not.
We are an educated, free people. that have one of the greatest powers of the world; and do you believe that under any circumstances the American people will give up their independence? Is there a mother here who has raised a boy that is willing that he should give up the rights of an American freeman? I have known old soldiers to grumble and say. "What is the use for us to fight, what is the use for us to conquer, if the anarchists. the Republicans, Democrats and Catholics are all trying to rule the republic." I beg to remind you of what our American poet says in speaking of our flag. "Lift up your eyes desponding freemen, the glad day so long foretold has come." Yes, I believe today the republic is one hundred fold stronger than it was at the beginning of the war. I believe
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I could occupy a great part of my time in telling about the natural results that spread all over the land, but I am not going to take time, fellow cit- izens, to explain every result of this great war. It would take too long. Today all civilization notices our flag. You cannot wave it over the waves of the sea but what it is instantly regarded with respect. Yes, it is honor- ed and respected. Even in Asiatic islands there will be some savage found to say "Is that the American flag?" Today it is the loveliest and floats the highest in our eyes, over the flags of all other nations.
We need not expect to look for many more contests, that flag is to float undisturbed for a long time to come, gentlemen. The day is almost past for great physical contests. Now when I tell you that all our match- lock guns and buck cartridges would be unable to cope with one of the modern guns; when I tell you that they have new rapid firing guns that in a single discharge would strike every tree in this grove, move so rapidly that in a single minute they would strike every tree here, I know that none of you want to enlist and to go to the war. (Applause) We will leave that to the other fellow and that means what? That we are just finding out that men will cultivate the fields at home and wont go to war. That in this modern warfare all the other fellow has to do is to hide behind a sandbank and turn a crank which lets loose a thousand bullets. No, I don't think we want to go to war. In my way of thinking it is ridiculous to think of any future war of men. I look for a time not far distant when men will not go to war at all. New machines will take their place. You men are the last of the grand old fighters of the last century in which the annals of the world will record. And what a world it will be when all the members of the army are turned loose. Don't you all know that you had rather stay at home with wife and mother than to go to war against our neighbors?
I thank you my fellow citizens for the attention which you have given me. and I thank the 46th regiment for their kindness in allowing me to address them, and, let me in parting make a single statement, that so long as the American people are united, so long will liberty, law and love thrive, and the Republic will endure free and independent.
REV. FR. HORAN
was an interested spectator at the exercises and was called upon for a speech, and responded briefly, stating that he felt it an honor to be invited to address the old veterans, whom he held in high esteem, as all true Americans should esteem the preservers of the union. Their deeds of valor would live forever in the hearts of the loyal people of this country. He referred to a recent trip to the battlefield of Gettysburg on which some of his near relatives had fought on the side of the union, and closed with an eloquent tribute to the old soldiers.
ELDER WM. CATON,
who wears a Grand Army button, and who enlisted in a Pennsylvania regiment when a boy, was called upon and made a brief speech. His father was killed at Fredricksburg and he took that father's place in the ranks, and he was proud to say that he took at least a small part in put-
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ting down the rebellion. He referred to the heroism of the soldiers on the field of battle, and closed with the hope that they were through with war forever.
Letters of regret from H. L. Wagner, of Davenport, Iowa, and other members of the regiment were read, and also resolutions on the death of Adjutant Woodbury, which were adopted on motion of Capt. Barnes, after which the meeting adjourned.
THE BANQUET.
At 8 o'clock the members of the regiment and their families and in- vited guests assembled at the Brewster house, where a sumptuous banquet was prepared for them. The banquet hall was prettily decorated with flags and bunting, and the long tables were loaded with a feast of good things. The banquet hall was not large enough to accommodate all and tables were spread in the main parlor where many were accommodated. The banquet was a well prepared feast and was greatly enjoyed by all.
After the guests had partaken freely of the good things set before them it was decided to have the speaking in the Knights of the Globe hall so that all might be comfortably seated.
Dr. W. W. Krape acted as toastmaster and introduced the speakers. The program was opened with prayer by Rev. Wm. Caton, after which the audience sang "America." and then toastmaster Krape introduced Gen. Black, taking occasion to pay a deserved tribute to the service that gentle- man had rendered his country and also spoke of the high esteem in which he is held by the people of this county. Gen. Black responded to the sentiment, "Illinois." He first referred to the handsome treatment he had always received at the hands of the people of Freeport and Stephenson county, and felt that he was a citizen by adoption. Stephenson county doors were always open to him and he was always sure of a glad and generous welcome. He said that he had not heard as much of the 16th as he had of other regiments, for the 46th boys wore modest faces and you had to glean their record from history. But he knew of their deeds of daring and bravery at Donelson, Shiloh, Vicksburg and other battle- fields. The speaker then referred at some length to the part Illinois had taken in the war and spoke eloquently of the deeds of valor of Illinois' brave sons.
At the conclusion of Gen. Black's speech, there were loud calls for Gen. J. H. Stibbs. of Chicago, who has no equal as an elocutionist. He has a style peculiarly his own and it takes with the people. It is getting to be quite the fad to have Stibbsrecite at gatherings of old soldiers, and no reunion is considered quite complete without a few selections from this jolly and deservedly popular gentleman. He is the best natured man on earth and would be willing to speak pieces all night if he saw that his
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audience enjoyed them. After referring to his first acquaintance with the 46th in the war he recited one of his most captivating poems, entitled "The Man with the Musket," which was followed with two of James Whitcomb Riley's best poems, "Old John Henry," and "Good by, Jim, Take Care of Yourself." Stibbs can recite Riley's poems better than Riley can himself, and the people never tire of hearing him.
After Gen. Stibbs had rendered several selections. Toastmaster Krape introduced Gen. Atkins, who took occasion to compliment the boys of the 46th on their splendid war record. He knew something of their gallantry at Donelson, Shiloh and other places, also spoke feelingly of their brave colonel, John A. Davis, who was killed while leading his regiment in battle.
Judge Crabtree, who is beloved by all the old soldiers, and who enjoys gatherings of old army comrades better than he does anything else on earth, was next introduced and spoke eloquently of the heroism, self- denial and devotion of the women of the north during the days of the war. He said that four years ago the 46th had elected him an honorary member and it was an honor which he greatly appreciated, for it was in- deed an honor to be even an honorary member of such a gallant regiment as the 46th.
Gen. Stibbs was again called for and he rendered the German ver- sion of Barbara Fritchie and the Irish version of the story of David and Goliah and a lot more interesting selections, which kept the audience in good humor throughout the evening.
Peter Wurtz, of Rock Run township, was called upon for a song and rendered "Old Shady," as he used to sing it around the camp fire during the war, after which Judge Crabtree and General Black were prevailed upon to sing "Illinois," which they rendered in good style.
On motion of Dr. Krape, General Black was elected an honorary member of the 16th by a rising and unanimous vote of the members of that regiment, and the general returned his thanks for the honor confer- red.
The reunion then closed with the singing of "America" by the audience.
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REUNION OF COMPANY F 46th ILL. INFANTRY, JULY 28, 1900.
This Reunion was held in the village of Ingraham, Clay county, Ills., in connection with the Union Veteran Association and was attended by members of the 48th, 63d Ill., and other organizations living in the vicinity.
Members of Company F present: F. M. Lollar, John C. Carter, Eli Crouse, Calvin Crouse, A. J. Shores, Milton Wakefield, Samuel McGune. Johnson W. Brant, Joshua B. Craig, Thomas Carter, Hugh L. Foreman. P. H. Mavin. W. P. Pruett, John C. Stanley, A. J. Shore. General Benj. Dornblaser was present and rendered the following fine address to the old soldiers :-
COMRADES .- The coming together of the survivors of a military organi- zation formed in 1861, and honorably mustered out in 1866, is a very in- teresting event. Ordinarily the meeting of friends and acquaintances, after a long separation. brings pleasure ; but on this occasion the chief cause for joyous congratulations are that you contributed a part of the great Union Army which saved the Nation, and that you have lived to see and enjoy the glorious results of your gallant and loyal service. Your camp fires can be kept bright and your social gatherings aflow with reminiscences of army life and the relation of experience incident thereto; but your many friends -and their number seems to be legion-who have assembled here to give you welcome, may want something more substantial than camp fire talk. The question which naturally presents itself to the mind of the younger class at least, is, what was the occasion which called Company F, 46th Illi- nois Volunteer Infantry into service, as well as the survivors of other or- ganizations present here today? Why was it that immense armies were organized in separate sections of our own country, and set in battle array against each other in deadly conflict, a conflict which could no longer be repressed ?
Human slavery existed in half the States of our Union January 1st, 1861. The slave States had threatened disunion for many years, but the overt act of treason was not committed until February, 1861. Fort Sumpter in Charleston Harbor was fired upon, and at noon on the 13th day of that month, for the first time since the organization of our government, our national ensign was struck to traitors.
The event found the government and the loyal States unprepared for war. Although secession ordinances had before been passed by southern states; although public property had been seized in violation of law, and strange colors displayed over our southern forts; although food and re- inforcements for a beleaguered garrison had been driven back to sea in January-yet our people could not easily realize that we were indeed in a state of civil war.
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FIRST CALL.
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