USA > New Hampshire > A history of the Second regiment, New Hampshire volunteer infantry, in the war of the rebellion > Part 21
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On the night of the 2d every band in the two opposing lines was run at full blast until midnight. News had been received of Grant's great successes on the left, and before morning it was more than suspected that Richmond was being evacuated. Heavy explo- sions were heard, at times, in the direction of the rebel capital, and a great and unusual light was observed and reported by officers in
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the signal tower. Deserters also brought in information that the enemy were evacuating their positions. Grant having broken Lee's lines and forced him from Petersburg, the fall of Richmond was inevitable. The rebel government had already fled, and at mid- night the defences north of the James were evacuated, the troops joining in the retreat which ended, six days later, in the memorable surrender at Appomattox Court House.
With the very earliest morning light Weitzel's alert pickets pushed forward over the abandoned rebel works, and by seven o'clock were on the outskirts of the city. The main column was not far behind. The scene was wild beyond description. The destruction of government property by the retreating troops-the gunboats, arsenals, and stores they could not carry off-had not ended there; the fires had extended until hundreds of dwellings and business blocks were in flames. It was a chaos of smoke and flame and flying cinders that faced the men of the Second. But it was Richmond, the goal of four years' desires, which lay before them, a blazing brand. "On to Rich- mond !" had been accomplished, and it had been permitted the Second New Hampshire to be among the first to see the rebel capital sitting in the sackcloth and ashes of defeat.
The Second encamped outside the city for a few days, when it moved to a more desirable loca- William Summers, Co. I. tion in one of the forts overlooking Fiery, impulsive, big hearted "Bill." Summers. His pump shop, under Granite Block, in Manchester, was one of the land- marks along in the 'sos. He came out as a recruit immediately after the first Bull Run, and after serving three years enlisted in the Veteran Reserve Corps. He died Dec. 31, 1878, at Manchester. the city. April 25th, the brigade was ordered to cross the river to Manchester, and encamped some two miles from Richmond, on the road leading to the Cumberland coal mines. After a few days spent in laying out camps and building quarters, drill and the other duties of the soldier were resumed.
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The ink was hardly dry upon the terms of surrender at Appo- mattox before orders were issued to suspend recruiting, and the work of dismissing to their homes the great army of volunteers commenced soon after. On the 21st of June the Tenth, Twelfth and Thirteenth New Hampshire regiments were mustered out of the United States service, their recruits whose term of service would not expire before Septem- ber 30 being transferred to the Second: from the Tenth, 118; from the Twelfth, 87; from the Thirteenth, 58. These additions raised the strength of the Second to about nine hundred men, per- mitting the muster of a colonel. Lieutenant-Colonel Patterson was at once mustered as colonel, Major Cooper as lieutenant-colo- nel, and Captain Converse as major.
In the meantime about one- Lieut .- Col. Levi N. Converse. half of the regiments in the Third Enlisted from Marlborough, and mustered as a sergeant in Company A. He rose, step by step, until at Gettysburg he commanded the company, lost an arm, and was promoted to captain. He went out with the old men. but was re-commissioned three days later; appointed major May 18, 1865; lieutenant- colonel Nov. 1, 1865, upon the death of Cooper, but was not mustered. Division had been mustered out of service, and the remainder were formed into two independent brigades, and Colonel Patterson was assigned to the command of the Second Brigade. This organization existed until July 10th, when the brigades were broken up and the regiments assigned to the several districts into which Virginia had been divided.
The Second Regiment left Richmond July 10, for Fredericks- burg, District of North Eastern Virginia, commanded by General Devens. This district was divided into four sub-districts, called the sub-districts of Fauquier, Rappahannock, Essex, and Northern Neck. Colonel Patterson was assigned to the command of the Northern Neck, which embraced the counties of King George,
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Westmoreland, Richmond, Northumberland, and Lancaster. On the 14th, leaving Companies A, F and H as provost guard at Fred- ericksburg, the remaining seven companies started for Warsaw, Richmond county, where the headquarters of the sub-district were established; and to each of the counties in the sub-district one company was sent, the commanding officer of the company acting as provost marshal of the county and assistant agent of the Freedmen's Bureau.
August 22, the Fifth Maryland, stationed in the sub-district of Es- sex, was ordered to be mustered out, and the sub-districts of Essex and Northern Neck to be consoli- dated and called the sub-district of Essex, under command of Colonel Patterson. Company B was imme- diately sent to Stevensville, King and Queen county, and Companies Lieut .- Col. John D. Cooper. C and G went to Tappahannock. Enlisted from Concord, and was mus- tered as a corporal in Company B. At the second Bull Run he was shot through the lungs, supposed mortally, and again wounded at Gettysburg. His promotions came along regularly, until he became lieutenant-colonel. On the morning of October 30, 1865, while on his way home on leave of absence, he was found in an insensible condition in his room at the Maltby House, in Baltimore, and died soon after. The headquarters of the district were still at Warsaw, although they would have been removed to Tap- pahannock but for the great amount of sickness prevailing among the command at Warsaw, where a post hospital had to be established, under Surgeon Stone. Late in October the regiment lost one of its most valued officers by the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Cooper. He was one of the original members, enlisting as a private in Company B, and rose by merit alone to his rank at death.
Early in November the headquarters were removed to Tappa- hannock, leaving Company E, with Lieutenant Wood in command, at Warsaw ; Company I, Captain Marshall, at Westmoreland, and Company K, Captain Locke, at Heathsville.
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On Sunday, November 24th, the long-expected order for muster out reached regimental headquarters, and orders were immediately forwarded to the commanding officers of the different counties to proceed at once with their commands to Tappahannock. On the Ist of December a detachment of the Eleventh Maine arrived, under Colonel Maxfield, who relieved Colonel Patterson of the command of the sub-district. The next day the Second em- barked for Fredericksburg, en route to City Point to be mus- tered out. On the 4th, having picked up the three companies on duty at Fredericksburg, the regiment took cars for Rich- mond, where it arrived in the evening and was quartered in the old Libbey prison.
Lieut. Frank C. Wasley, Co. C.
Enlisted from Manchester, and mustered as a corporal in Company I. Received various promotions, to first lieutenant, and wounded at Gettysburg. Now resides in Lowell, and is state inspector of factories and public build- ings.
The regiment arrived at City Point about noon on the 5th, and from that time until Decem- ber 19 the officers were busily engaged in making the muster out rolls and preparing for a December 19, the Second was
speedy departure from Virginia. mustered out of the United States service, and the same day embarked for Baltimore ; left Baltimore on the 21st, and arrived in New York the next morning ; at 5 p. m. embarked on the "City of Norwich," and arrived at Allyn's Point early the next morning. At 9 o'clock in the evening of December 23d the regiment reached the city of Concord, and the men were marched to the various hotels, where supper was awaiting them.
Monday, December 25, the regiment was formally welcomed home by the state authorities. It made a parade through the principal streets, escorted by the state militia and veterans who had once served under its tattered banners. Arriving opposite the state
THE SECOND'S LAST PARADE. 269
house, after being reviewed by the governor, the command halted. Speeches were made by Governor Frederick Smyth, Ex-Governor Gilmore, Adjutant-General Natt Head, Colonel Walter Harriman, and Colonel Peter Sanborn, to which Colonel Patterson responded in a fitting manner in behalf of the regiment. Cheers were given for and by the regiment, when it shouldered arms for the last time and returned to " Camp Gilmore."
On Tuesday, December 26, the regiment was paid off, and there was nothing further to hold the men together. They went their several ways, and the Second Regiment New Hampshire Vol- unteer Infantry existed no longer except in memory and the history of a glorious past.
The Three Guardsmen. Thirty Years After.
Leonard E. Robbins, Co. G.
George W. Cilley, Co. I. William K. Philbrick, Co. H.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GILMAN MARSTON.
N a Memorial Day address delivered in Manchester in 1891 by I Gen. Charles H. Bartlett, one of New Hampshire's most gifted orators and scholars, he took as his theme GENERAL GILMAN MARS- TON, then recently deceased. As the most appreciative and finished portrayal of the life and character of the Second Regiment's great commander that has yet appeared, it has been thought desirable to preserve the major portion of it in this history of the regiment he led. The elimination of the eloquent lines with which the orator approached his theme will not detract from its completeness and symmetry ; nor will the omission of incidents which have already been given in the preceding narrative :
"The ideal infantry soldier whom the genius of the artist has moulded in imperishable bronze, and whose heroic form stands like a sleepless sentinel at the base of yonder imposing shaft which a grateful city has appropriately reared in honor of those of her sons ' who gave their services in the war which preserved the union of the states,' bears the proud insignia of the Second New Hampshire regiment.
" The Second was the first of the three-years' regiments which New Hampshire sent to the front, and none other surpassed it in length of service, in hard blows given and received and dangers encountered and overcome.
" The distinguished citizen, and afterwards no less distinguished soldier, who led that regiment with bold, 'unfaltering step and dauntless courage to meet the first impetuous onset of the exultant and confident foe, before the black cloud of war then rapidly rising and swiftly moving upon the national capital, had yet burst in its fury, but whose fearful portend was seen and felt and known by all, since last you observed this honored anniversary has surrendered at
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the icy touch of the last great foe of man, and today his honored grave receives its first Memorial Day visitation. Others did nobly and well. Others deserve all that has been or may be spoken in eulogy of and concerning them. Others have won fame and renown which the old Granite State will ever cherish in her casket of price- less jewels, but no brave and martial spirit that dwells within her borders will be touched with envy, or moved by jealousy, as we appropriately pause today to pay our humble tribute to that gallant leader, your so honored comrade and friend, so recently fallen, General Gilman Marston.
"Like you all, prior to 1861, he had trod the paths of peace. To him, as to you, war was new and foreign to his thought, habit and occupation. But the heroic, martial spirit was inbred. Through a long and distinguished ancestral line the fire and flame came down to his noble soul and lost none of their ardor on the way. His ancestors were at home upon the battlefield and had maintained the right with the sword with courage undaunted and faith unfal- tering.
" Born on the 20th of August, 1811, in the quiet, rural, agri- cultural town of Orford, on the banks of the beautiful Connecticut, surrounded by natural scenery well calculated to inspire his youth- ful ambition with longings for greater opportunity for activity and achievements than his native heath seemed to open to him, he early resolved to secure a collegiate education and to launch his bark upon the more fascinating but uncertain waters of professional life.
" He made no mistake and he took no risk. All the elements essential to success were happily blended in his nature. To great natural capacity and brain power, developed, enriched and fortified by the discipline and culture of an early classical education, he added indomitable pluck, tireless industry and honesty of character and purpose, and in the pathway of this combination success never trails her banner.
"Graduating from Dartmouth College in 1837, admitted to the bar in 1841, we find him selecting the thriving, beautiful and important town of Exeter as his future home and the arena for his professional contests. How quickly he won the confidence and favor of the new community to which he came a stranger and
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unheralded is shown by the fact that in 1845, 6 and 7 he repre- sented that town in the legislature, and in 1850 was chosen a member of the constitutional convention.
"In the meantime his professional career had been marked with great brilliancy and success, and the young stranger soon found himself the peer of the greatest and best at a bar widely famed for the great learning and eloquence of its leaders.
" In 1859 he was elected to congress, and there the war of the great rebellion found him, absorbed in the duties of his high office, with every impulse of his soul responsive to his country's claims upon him in the hour of her supreme peril. His contact, upon entering congress, with the moulders of public sentiment in the south, quickly convinced him that the threatened rupture was inev- itable, that nothing could stay the pride and arrogance of southern chivalry save only the strong arm of the federal government, asserted with all the force and power which its vast resources could command. So, forecasting the crisis, he saw his own path of duty clear, and when the storm burst his sword was already drawn to meet its initial blow. After the inauguration of Lincoln and before the advance guard of the great loyal uprising of the north could organize, equip and march to the rescue of the national capital, whose atmosphere was lurid and hot with the breath of treason, and tremulous with the mutterings of secession, General Marston was found enrolled in the Cassius M. Clay Battalion for the defense of Washington. Did he follow the bugle call and the drum beat? No : he led them. Before the reveille or the tattoo, before the advent of the picket guard or sentinel, Gilman Marston had sought the post of danger and awaited their coming.
" Although a representative in congress at the outbreak of the rebellion, he nevertheless saw in that fact no impediment to mili- tary service, and he accepted the colonelcy of the Second regiment with alacrity, and devoted himself with tireless energy and unbounded enthusiasm to its preparation for active duty, and in a remarkably brief space of time, considering the work to be accomplished and the inexperience on every hand in all matters pertaining to military affairs, he led it forth amidst the applauding shouts of a people aroused as never before to a sense of national danger, and inspired
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with a patriotism as ardent and lofty as the situation was grave and perilous.
" Thus was the Second regiment recruited, organized, equipped and mustered in the early gray of the morning of war. The breathless suspense that precedes the bursting of the storm was on the land. Fear and hope, doubt and confidence, alternated in the public mind as it contemplated, first the magnitude of the threat- ened revolt, and then turned to the apparently resistless ardor and enthusiasm and boundless resources of the loyal north.
"Can a rebellion of such magnitude, involving so many states, so extensive an area of country, so numerous, so brave and heroic a people, be suppressed even by the strong arm of the national government ? was a question everywhere propounded. History was searched, and searched in vain, for an assuring response. The past offered no consolation. A new precedent had to be established, and General Marston and the men who swarmed about him were- the type of manhood to establish it.
" That this regiment should receive a continuous ovation on its . journey through the loyal states to the scene of threatened hostili- ties, was to be expected in the then excited condition of the country, and was the common experience of the early regiments which constituted the advance of the loyal armies. Banquets and flag presentations were the order of the day at the populous centers- through which they passed.
" We should do great violence to the memory of the noble dead whose name we seek to honor did we not here pause for at least brief mention of that famous regiment, at whose head he received his first baptism of fire and blood on the fated field of Bull Run, and whose fortunes he shared in the early stages of the war, and until called to assume more responsible duties on a broader field of action. That he should ever regard it with even more than pater- nal pride and affection, was but the natural sequence of his official relationship to it, and his thorough appreciation of the splendid soldierly material of which it was composed, and which he had so often seen tried and tested in the terrible crucible of war.
"To say that it was highly distinguished in the personnel of its membership, is but to repeat familiar history. To say that it was
18
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equally distinguished for the hard and solemn work done, is but to say anew what all who ever touched shoulder with it in battle array have ever and always most generously said of and concerning it.
" No officer ever led it in battle who did not sanctify some field of carnage with his own blood, while the names of those who fell in the ranks, at the post of duty and danger, would make a catalogue too long for recital here. The score of battlefields upon which it left its dead tell the story of the Army of the Potomac, from Bull Run to Appomattox. What it did, how it fared, may be judged of by one battlefield alone-Gettysburg-where out of twenty-four officers, eighteen were killed or wounded, and of the privates, three out of every five went down in death, or suffered mutilation more or less severe.
" An historian who has told something of its story has thus epitomized its salient points : 'The roll of the Second regiment during its organization contained more than three thousand names. Every regiment but two from the state was supplied, in part, with officers from its ranks ; and more than thirty regiments in the field had upon their rosters names of men who were once identified with it. It marched more than six thousand miles, participated in more than twenty pitched battles, and lost in action upwards of one thousand men.'
" No words of mine can be so eloquent as this plain, simple recital of work done and dangers confronted. No orator, poet or painter can approximate the terrible reality of the cold and solemn record.
"The age of General Marston at the time of his military career is worthy of our consideration. The successful soldiers of the war, as a rule, were young men. The adage, 'Old men for counsel and young men for war,' grew out of the experience of mankind, and accords with the natural adaptation of man to his life work. The first year of the war found General Marston turning the milestone which marks a half-century in the pathway of life, a period when the question of physical endurance and hardihood, such as the exigencies of war imperatively demand, becomes one of deep con- cern and solicitude to one who would bear a part in its privations and hardships.
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Lieut, Sylvester Rogers, Co. G.
His home was at Nashua when the war com- menced, but he was studying medicine with Doctor Tubbs, at Peterborough. He was one of the first to enlist under Captain Weston, for whom he acted as medical examiner of the recruits. On the reorgani- zation of the regiment he was appointed second lieutenant, promoted to first, and was killed at Bull Run, August 29, 1862, under circumstances narrated on page 133.
" Grant was but thirty-nine, Sherman forty-one, and Sheridan thirty. Wellington fought his last battle at forty-six. Washington received his commission as commander-in-chief of the armies of the revolution at forty-three, and Napoleon's victories and defeats ended at Waterloo at the age of forty-five ; while Alexander the Great was sighing at thirty for more worlds to conquer.
" General Marston not only had his battles to fight, but the art of war to learn after his half century of active life in the pursuits of peace. The fires of youth no longer coursed in his veins, but the flame was in his soul, and the man whose sun was far advanced in the afternoon of life, turned to the appropriate work of youth and early manhood with an ardor, zeal, impetuosity and dash equaled by few, excelled by none.
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" He soon, however, had the opportunity to test his powers of physical endurance, for in the first great engagement of the war, at Bull Run, he was struck by a rifle ball, which so shattered his right arm as to make amputation necessary in the judgment of his surgeon, but which was saved by his own courage and bravery in refusing to submit to the operation, preferring to face the alterna- tive of death rather than to submit to the mutilation proposed. The sequel proved the correctness of his judgment and the value of his courage, for thereby his good right arm was saved to him and thereafter served him well.
" In this engagement General Marston had ample opportunity to test the quality of his courage, and he improved it to its utmost. He was not disappointed in himself, for he found his nerve the same in the presence of the terrible reality of war as in safe and distant contemplation ; and no sooner was his crushed and broken arm made endurable by temporary adjustment than he again sought the front to lead his regiment to fresh assaults and to share with it the further perils of that eventful and disastrous day.
" The brief moment allotted to this part of the exercises of the day will not permit a recital in detail of the part taken by General Marston in that long and sanguinary conflict, but compel us to notice only a few salient features which serve to illustrate the char- acter which it is our privilege and pleasure to contemplate.
" The soldierly qualities so conspicuously displayed at Bull Run were no less marked and manifest on every field of conflict on which he faced the deadly perils of war. At Yorktown, Williams- burg, Drewry's Bluff, Fair Oaks, Cold Harbor, Malvern Hill, Fredericksburg, or wherever engaged, he was the same daring, intrepid, fearless soldier.
" And yet he was perfectly oblivious to the fame and glory which ever reward heroic deeds. Popular applause, so much sought, so highly prized, to his ear had neither sweetness nor charm. Fame, popularity, renown, the so common objects of ambition, weighed nothing by his standard of values.
" Between congress and the army he divided his services as he deemed most useful to his country. When there was fighting at the front he was there, equipped for the fray, but when the campaign
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was over for the season and military movements were at an end, he left to others the monotony of the camp and the quiet of the winter quarters, and gave to his state and country, in the halls of congress, the best of his noble heart and brain.
" His indifference to promotion and personal advancement in the service is shown in the fact that, although promoted to briga- dier-general in the fall of 1862, he did not accept the much-coveted honor among men of political aspirations until the spring of 1863. But for this indifference and even positive aversion to the notoriety and conspicuousness inseparably incident to high military authority in active service, it is fair to assume that General Marston would have been advanced to much higher rank and command than that with which he was content.
" No blood was needlessly shed, no human life uselessly sacri- ficed by any order or command of his to add a laurel to his brow or broaden his fame. The blows he struck were blows against the confederacy and for his country. To that end, and that alone, he consecrated every energy of his soul. Nowhere in this broad land on this Memorial Day have flowers been dropped upon a grave whose occupant lost his life in any movement, any part of the motive behind which was the aggrandizement of the name of Gilman Marston.
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