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 40
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During those exciting times in Stephenson County I was absent with my Company and Regiment at Bird's Point, Missouri, and I did not meet him again until on the battlefield of Fort Donelson while hastening with
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my Company and Regiment to the right of the line investing that fort, I passed the 46th Illinois Volunteers that had just reached the field and was waiting for a proper assignment in the line of battle, but had time only for a hasty hand-shake with my old friend. My Company and Reg- iment were in the Brigade commanded by Col. William H. L. Wallace, of Illinois, and the 46th Regiment was in the command of Lew Wallace of Indiana. That battle was the first baptism of fire of the 46th Illinois, and the gallant Colonel and his gallant Regiment did splendid service in helping to gain the first great victory under Grant in the Western Army.
After the battle of Fort Donelson I was assigned to duty as the Act- ing Assistant Adjutant General of the 4th Division of the Army of the Tennessee, Brigadier General Stephen A. Hurlbut, Commander, and Col. Davis, with his regiment was attached to a Brigade of that Division, and I had an opportunity to renew my association with him. In the battle of Shiloh, in April, 1862, while gallantly leading his Regiment, Col. Davis received a terrible wound, a minie ball striking him on the right breast, passing through his lung. and out through his shoulder blade. That was an awful battle and Col. Davis bore well his part in it. My old Colonel, William H. L. Wallace, of the 11th Illinois Volunteers, who was pro- moted to Brigadier General after the battle of Fort Donelson, and who commanded a Division in the battle of Shiloh, was killed, and so was my friend, Capt. Silas Wright Field, who was promoted to Captain of my old Company when I was promoted to Major. After the battle of Shiloh while Col. Davis was on a steamer at the landing preparatory to going to the hospital at Mound City, he sent for me, and I hastened quickly to him, finding him in the texas of the steamboat, and at his request and dic- tation I wrote for him his official report of that battle. Often I climbed upon the berth he occupied and lifted him up so the blood could gush out of his wound. When I finished writing his report and bid him good-bye, I never expected to see him alive again, for I thought his wound mortal.
Months passed away. Owing to ill health I left the front and in the Summer of 1862, when our good President "Father Abraham" called for "Six hundred thousand more" volunteers. I acted as recruiting officer in the Congressional District in Northern Illinois at that time represented in Congress by Hon. Elihu B. Washburne, and put into camp at Rockford, Illinois, forty-four companies of volunteers, and in that camp I was a can- didate for Colonel. Col. John A. Davis was still suffering from his ter- rible wound that he received at the battle of Shiloh, confined to his bed on his farm twenty miles northwest of Rockford, when he heard a rumor that I was to be defeated as a candidate for colonel, and ordering feather beds put into the old family carriage he hastened to Rockford. Word came to me that Col. Davis was at the Holland House, and wanted to see
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me, and I hastened to the city and hotel, and found him lying on the bed in my room, and he told me that when he heard they were trying to beat me for Colonel he could not stand it, and resolved to come at once to Rockford if it cost him his life. That is the kind of friendship Col. Da- vis had for me. I showed liim the telegram from Governor Yates nam- ing the Companies that were to be mustered into service under me as Col- onel, showing that I could not be defeated, and Col. Davis was carried out of the hotel, and placed on the feather beds in his family carriage. and returned to his farm.
I never saw him again. With my regiment, the 92nd Illinois, I went into the Army of the Cumberland, while his regiment remained in the Army of the Tennessee.
The terrible wound he had received at the battle of Shiloh made his good right arm useless, but he learned to write with his left hand, and as soon as he was able to sit on his horse. he returned to his regiment at the front, and while leading his men in a charge at the battle of Matamora, Tennessee, October 5, 1862, he was again wounded, and five days later, at Bolivar, Tennessee, his noble spirit fled from its tenement of clay, and one of the noblest men, one of the most gallant soldiers who followed the flag in those awful days, lay dead.
All who knew him will cherish his memory tenderly, and his country for which he gave his life, ought to build him a monument of gold. But, after all, he was only one among the many who died that liberty and coun- try might live. The sweetest of Irish poets wrote:
"Blood like this For Liberty shed, so holy is
It would not stain the purest rill
That sparkles 'mid the bowers of bliss.
O, if there be on this earthly sphere
A boon -- an offering -- heaven holds dear,
'Tis the last libation Liberty draws
From the heart that bleeds and breaks in her 'cause."
War is terrbile. Said General Sherman in his correspondence with the Mayor of Atlanta, in 1864, "War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." "Peace with honor" should be the watchword with every civilized nation. "Let us have peace," said General Grant. He was the greatest soldier of the century in which he lived, and like all great soldiers, he loved peace. It was said by a great soldier : "The only valid excuse for any war is to conquer an honorable peace." Peace is always the object. the aim, of every just war.
Will wars ever end in the world? Yes, if the time ever comes in this world when right and justice are supreme, when there is no wrong in the world to be righted, then wars will end, and there will be no longer any wars in the world. But that time is not yet. "We tread the paths our
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fathers trod," the same ceaseless round. the never ending circle of human ambition, "the everlasting to be which hath been" : always it has been true. always it will be true, that "rainbows of glory bending above battle fields are reflected from the sad tears of widows and orphans."
At one time I thought that wars were at an end in the world. That was more than half a century ago. I was a boy then. At that time there was being held in Europe a great World's Peace Convention, as there will soon be held one at The Hague, participated in by representatives of al- most all civilized nations, the leading thinkers and philanthropists of the world, then as now, for peace in the world was then. as now, the object of the learned and educated. and the thoughtful and humane of all nations. To avoid war, with all its horrors, has for many years been the hopeful dream of the wisest statesmen in the world. I was then a student at Rock River Seminary, in Mt. Morris, in Ogle county. One day I picked up on the street a little torn and crumbled piece of newspaper, and all that I found printed on it was,
"When the drums shall cease their beating. And the war-flag shall be furled, In the parliament of nations, The federation of the World."
All was profound peace at that time, and I believed that the age of reason had arrived. and that brain, not brawn. was to rule in the counsels of nations. But the drums do not cease their beating, and the warflags are not furled, or, if they are, they do not remain furled for any very great length of time. Within my recollection some of the greatest wars that ever rocked the nations have taken place ; the Crimean War between Rus- sia and Turkey ; the Civil War in America; the Franco-Prussian War : the Spanish-American War, light if measured by the actual loss of life, but tremendous in its results, taking from Spain all of her colonial posses- sions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and transferring to America a vast empire in the Pacific eight thousand miles from our western coast. peopled by a strange race, different in color and language from our own people. throwing upon us the "White Man's Burden" as Kipling wrote. one to be long borne, and the final ending of which no man is wise enough to foretell; and the tremendous war between Russia and Japan, so re cently ended by the rough rider who is now the President of the great Republic, resulting surely in making a world-power of Japan, a new de- velopment among the Oriental nations, that many predict will within the lifetime of those now living measure strength with the people of this nation. At this very hour on the Continent of Europe more than a million of armed men stand ready at the clicking of a telegraphic instrument to spring at each other's throats. How would it be possible for me, in view of what has happened within my own memory, to predict that wars are
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1st LIEUT. T. B. JONES age 66 years, Historian 46th Regiment.
GEN. SMITH D. ATKINS
FRED. C. HELD Private Co. C, Sec'y of the Reunion Association, 1882 --- 1905.
PLATE XXXII
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at an end in the world? We may hope for peace in the world, but he would be a bold man indeed who would confidently predict it. In my opinion the safe way. and the only way, for the United States to maintain peace, is to be at all times ready for instant war, never demanding any- thing but simple justice, and never submitting to anything different from that.
Nations dealing with each other are, in some respects, like individuals dealing with each other. If 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 'or a greater number of individuals have difficulties that they cannot settle, they may agree to a peaceful arbi- tration, and meet together. and may possible come to an agreement among themselves. That is what The Hague Tribunal is for. Nations meet to- gether at The Hague and try to settle their difficulties without an appeal to the awful arbitrament of the sword. But, suppose that individuals so meeting together to settle their difficulties can come to no agreement among themselves, then they appeal to the courts to settle for them the difficulties they cannot themselves settle. The courts will call juries, take testimony as to the questions of fact, and apply the law to the facts as found by juries, and issue its judgment or decree. The courts have power to enforce their decrees or judgments, and individuals must submit. But there is no court among nations with power to enforce its decrees. If the nations meet at The Hague and fail to settle their difficulties there is no court to which they can appeal to settle their difficulties for them. They must appeal to the sword. "Might makes right," among nations. It has been so in all the world's history, and it is so now.
Andrew Carnegie proposes that the most powerful nations, the United States, England, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, Japan, and all powerful nations, enter into an agreement to execute the judgments of The Hague against any nation that refuses to submit-say that England refuses to submit, then all the world shall be banded together to compel England to submit, all the world being powerful enough to compel submission by the power of the sword. War is to be avoided by war. No such agree- ment has ever been entered into, and no man can now say that such an agreement ever will be entered into.
As enormous as was the cost of the Civil War in America in life and treasure it was well worth it all, and inore. This nation is now at peace, a united nation in every part, more just, more prosperous, more happy, with a brighter future because of that war. That peace will be ours in all the future I dare hope, but I dare not predict. Justice and right is worth more than peace to any nation.
True faith and allegiance are due from every citizen in every country. Individual judgment must always give way to the judgment of all. The citizen who opposes his country in time of war is a traitor. Patriotism demands and enforces obedience upon all citizens of every country in war
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as in peace. Many years ago, at a public dinner at Norfolk. Virginia, Commodore Stephen Decatur, after replying to the regulation toast, "The President of the United States," ended his speech by giving a sentiment himself, as was then the custom, in which Commodore Decatur said : "My Country, may she always be right-but right or wrong, my Country." That sentiment embodies true American patriotism. No individual Amer- ican, who is a.true patriot, will hesitate or inquire into the particulars of a war in which his country is engaged, but so long as the flag of his coun- try floats, the most beautiful thing there is upon the earth or in the sky, he will be for his country, in war and in peace.
Such a soldier was Colonel John A. Davis, to whose memory this guest chamber is this day dedicated. We will not now argue the rightfulness of either side in the great Civil War in America. It was manfully fought out on both sides. We know that Liberty always rides forward on a powder cart, and in that war liberty rode forward on the red wave of battle, and by that war this nation was lifted over more than a thousand years of peaceful conquest.
At the close of the General's remarks the bugle sounded Retreat. Tat- too and Taps. And Mr. Jones said :
If my gray hairs should ever entitle me to an associate pastor, Jane Addams is already such an one by divine appointment. She is always wel- come to this platform in her own right, but today she is here in her re- presentative capacity. The bugle has just sounded Tattoo and Taps: this is the touching ritual of the army when gathered around a comrade's grave. The organizer of the "Addams Guard" was a neighbor of John Davis, co-worker with him in all the civic and martial strain of their pioneer life. Mr. Addams has long since joined his neighbor on the other side. Today he speaks to us through his daughter, Jane.
Miss Addams spoke as follows:
One of my childish recollections, almost all of them, are connected more or less with the name of Colonel Davis, and when Mr. Jones asked ine to come here this morning in his name it was quite impossible for me to refuse.
I suppose all of the children who were born about the time of the Civil War have recollections quite unlike those of children who are living now. The first thing I distinctly remember was one day I found on our gateposts, the two white gateposts, two flags-one black and one red. Upon my eager inquiry as to what had happened, my father told me quite simply that the greatest man in the world had died, meaning. of course, Abraham Lincoln. I had never before seen my father cry; I had assumed, as all little children do, that men never cry, that only babies cry. The sight of the flags and the impressive statement stand out to me as my bap- tism, as it were, outside of the interest within that yard guarded by the white gate-posts.
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I remember hanging in the hallway a roster of names headed by the words "Addams Guard," and we used to go over them again and again when we were children and could pile up enough dictionaries to reach the names, picking out those who had died in the war and those who had re- turned ; those whose children were known, and those whose brothers and sisters still lived in the county. And when drives were planned we would say, drive this way or that, so that we might pass the farm where such and such a one lived or where his mother was still living. If there were any flowers to be taken we would always go to the mother of those names whom we knew from the Addams Guard.
I could go on with a dozen reminiscences that center about these early names and the Civil War.
I remember on the occasion when we were allowed to take the family album (you know how it was always given to the children after their hands were washed and they were properly seated on a footstool) we would always open the first page of the album to the picture of Colonel Davis. The ceremony seemed to us very solemn, and we would tell each other about the great man, who stood to us for the heroic type, the local hero, the man who at the head of his regiment had suffered wounds unto death.
I remember again the little picture on the wall, the picture of Colonel Davis; and when a guest would come who was interested in the roster in the hallway. he was always led by the eager children to this picture, that he might see the Colonel of that regiment.
These may seem very simple and feeble reminiscences, and yet at a time like this it seems impossible to do more than to stand up as a type of the children of that generation who cared so much for the things that were happening then-things which they did not understand, although they did understand the heroic side. They understood, perhaps better than their elders, in that simplicity which is given to the understanding of a child, the underlying heroism which was there.
General Atkins, I am sure, will pardon me for speaking of it-how his coming to the house in those days, and that of "Uncle" Dick Oglesby, were always days when we were stirred into the same feeling; we were touch- ing the heroic of the world, touching the great, touching the people who were outside of the village life which surrounded us through all the other days.
If this room, which is dedicated to the name of this brave man, may suggest to little children, to the growing youth who is ever so eager to make the world a theater for heroic things and deeds, if it may stir in some of the older people who are beginning to doubt that the world is such a place and to consider it only the place for ordinary things; if this room and this name shall accomplish on a larger and a more enduring
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scale that which the simple photographs, the simple types produced in the memory of a little group of children so long ago, I want to congratulate this building for embodying in itself one more noble memory, for standing out as it does in its public name for men who were great because they were good, and who followed their convictions whither they led them.
Following Miss Addams' speech, Mr. Jones said :
The children of our Sunday-school have a little song, written for them, which they love to sing and which I love to hear. It carries a fit- ting message to us at this memorial hour and is representative of the new patriotism and the rising generations which have their Shilohs and their Corinths yet to face.
The members of the Sunday school rose and sang the following, the congregation joining in the chorus :
LINCOLN SOLDIERS.
Lincoln soldiers were our fathers, in the name of Liberty,
As Christ died to make men holy, so they died to make men free; We would live to make men noble, and would dwell in 'unity,
As we go marching on. Glory, glory, hallelujah, etc.
Lincoln soldiers were our fathers, Lincoln soldiers would we be, We would live for Right and Justice as they died for Liberty.
We would rim with white the banner that they flung above the free, As youth goes marching on.
Chorus.
We would learn today's new duties from each fresh occasion's plea, We would lift our weaker brother with our love, where'er he be; We would hush the mouths of cannons in all lands and on the sea, As peace goes marching on.
Chorus.
Lincoln soldiers marching onward in the noontide's golden glow, We would pluck the wayside thistle and would lay its proud head low; We would plant a flower wherever there is soil for flower to grow, As love goes marching on.
Chorus.
Mr. Jones said :
I find myself in the same frame of mind as George Eliot, "hating war but admiring the discipline connected therewith." When the human heart ceases to admire heroism and to love a hero, it will cease to be human. Alas for the nation that forgets its annals of bravery.
It will be forty-five years come the tenth day of October next, since John Davis breathed his last in a field hospital at Bolivar, Tenn. More than a generation of life, as measured by averages, has come and gone. Children have been born, nurtured at home firesides, trained in school rooms, have played on village greens, have loved, wooed, wedded, reared homes and consecrated firesides with joys and sorrows, punctuated the
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journey of life with kisses and tears, and closed their eyes in death since John A. Davis passed away. And still, we are here today to speak his name with tenderness and reverence and to permanently associate it with this temple, devoted to peace, to civic righteousness, to the study and practice of the weapons of love and reason.
Why do , we do this? . With what spell did John Davis touch the generation into gratitude? With what high strategy did he defy time, flank oblivion itself, and secure for himself a place among the immortals, a memory that will be kept perpetually green, even in this great, rushing, wild, mad, metropolis of business.
During these forty-five years captains of industry have won their high success, amassed their fortunes, and have gone down into forgetful- ness. During these forty-five years men honored in the schools, eminent in the professions, successful at political hustings, have lived and died and their names, if found at all, by the living, must be sought on the cold marble in the city of the dead. And still, the name of John Davis, a plain farmer of Stephenson county, pioneer of Rock Run, is spoken here this morning with tender affection and is to be forever associated with the hos- pitalities of this home of free thought, open fellowship and applied re- ligion, which bears the name of his great compatriot, neighbor and col- league, the greatest of Americans, the noblest child of the nineteenth cen- tury-Abraham Lincoln.
Why is this? This question is not adequately answered by saying that he was a brave soldier, for the sword of itself hath no power to defeat mortality. Forgetfulness has buried the unburied victims of a thousand battle fields.
John Davis received his commission as Colonel of the 46th Illinois In- fantry on the 12th day of September, 1861; he died on October 10, 1862. The brief thirteen months' career is but a short parapraph, however en- kindling, in the thirty-eight years of his life, and the story of his last thirteen months was only such as might have been expected under the circumstances. His record was no surprise to his old neighbors. The mothers of Stephenson county turned to him in the great emergency and said. "If you go you may have our sons." His name headed the list of those who enlisted as privates in the rally at the town house. The boys made him "Captain"; the governor made him "Colonel"; the generals knew where he belonged and gave him the post of danger.
Said the historian of the regiment. Lieutenant Thomas B. Jones :
At Fort Donelson General Grant in person gave orders to Colonel Davis in a modest and unassuming way. I give his words as I now re- member hearing them: "Colonel Davis, will you support that battery over there? The other regiments appear to hesitate." Colonel Davis' reply was: "Attention, 46th !"
And the regiment took the position under deadly fire.
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When his grateful and solicitous neighbors begged the crippled man to forego the further toils and dangers of the tented field that he might carry their confidence and commission into the United States Congress and take his place as a helper of his old friend, Abraham Lincoln, he replied :
As long as the war lasts I must share in the toils of the brave men who followed me into the smoke of Donelson and Shiloh. Where my boys go, there I shall go.
Five months hence, still a suffering invalid, the 40th was with Rosen- crans at Corinth, Col. Davis in command. Guiding his horse with his left arm, standing in his stirrups, his last word of command was "Charge!" and this time death was not to miss its shining mark. The wound was fatal. .
Lieutenant Jones, already quoted, gives John Davis' last speech, his dress parade address to the regiment., delivered a short week before the fatal bullet, prefacing the speech with the words,
Spite of all remonstrance-for it was felt that he was unable to do duty and ought not to, in justice to himself, return to the front. having the use of only one arm, being by no means strong-he returned to his regi- ment, by whom he was warmly welcomed-welcomed as one loved and long absent is always welcomed by those to whom he is dear. At dress parade he said :
"Officers and Soldiers of the 46th Regiment of Illinois Volunteers : It is now more than five months since I was carried helpless and bleeding from your rear, while you were engaged in the fierce and desperate strug- gle that decided the fate of the day on the then bloody, now historic, field of Shiloh. They have been months that brought pain, anguish. suffering and death to many. Alas! how many of your brave comrades! To you they have been months of danger, toil, fatigue, hardship and exposure, and now by what almost seems an intervention of divine Providence, I am with you again, with health and strength sufficiently restored to again as- sume command over you. The unholy and wicked rebellion against your government still exists, and six hundred thousand loyal men of the North are arming themselves to assist you in making short work in crushing out these traitors to our country and to human kind. The most magnificent army the world ever saw will soon be moving down like an avalanch upon our enemies, and you who again and again have met your foes in battle always to conquer and triumph will have the proud honor of marching in the front of this grand army, of being the forlorn hope that shall lead them over every obstacle, until the work of crushing out this rebellion shall have been accomplished and our proud banner and old ensign shall float in triumph and in peace over every square yard of the republic's soil. As God lives, as truth is mighty, as the right must prevail, so shall that day come. And a proud day for you and your Colonel, when, our work ac- complished, we shall turn our faces and commence the march for our homes. From the land of your homes I now come. and proud am I of the reputation and good name you have already won for yourselves among your kindred and friends. Throughout our grand prairie state, among all the people. from our noble governor down to the very humblest. you are spoken of only in terms of the most exalted praise.
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