USA > New York > Dutchess County > Address delivered Wednesday, 28th November, 1866 : in Feller's Hall, Madalin, township of Red Hook, Duchess Co., N.Y. > Part 10
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considered his superior qualities. The habit of com- mand which his institution had given him, and the slavish deference and obedience of the subject race, tended to exaggerate this idea of his personal import- ance ; and the promptness with which he was educated to resent even a trivial affront convinced him that in point of high-breeding, gallantry and courage he was the superior of the Northern man. This, as can easily be seen, bad + double effect, in embittering the reflec- tion that he was politically overruled by the numer- ical superiority of those whom he regarded as singly bis inferiors, and to make him look with complacency and personal confidence upon the likelihood of an armed collision with this same numerical and sectional majority. In brief, the most prominent feelings in the mind of the defeated champions of national sla- very was that if the time had come when they could no longer contend with the North at the hustings there yet remained the wager of battle; and there was manifested a general wish to appeal from the contest by ballots to a contest with bullets.
There was but one division of opinion among the influential planters of the Gulf States after the elec- tion of Mr. Liscons. and that related not to the right or propriety of secession, but to the time and mode of taking the step.
South Carolina, and with her all the radical men of the South and all the disciples of CALHOUN, held that the fact of his election was enough for them to know ; that no one act of his was likely to be so direct an attack on the Constitution as to form a basis for a bill of grievance that they could lay before the world in justification of revolt. They contended, also, that the mere fact of his election wholly by Northern voters and his representing ideas wholly sectional, and surrounding himself with men whose lives had been devoted to the business of abolishing slavery, was in itself an affront and an indignity to the South which a proper sense of honor summoned her to resent by taking the po-ition of open defiance.
Others were calmer and, doubtless, a little wiser. They were for waiting awhile for some flagrant and decisive attack upon the South ; for an orert act against which they could protest even to revolution ; and there were those, also. with an American instinct, who believed in Union, even in secession, and that all the aggrieved States should combine and concert a har- monious separation, a united-disunion. These, by a significant political -olecism called themselves co- operation disunionists. But in the secession conven- tions that assembled in. the several Cotton States in the Winter and Spring of 1861 the co-operationists were overruled by the more fiery and radical element
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from South Carolina, and all the oratory and the combined influence of the press and the pulpit was directed to the rash and suicidal policy of immediate secession.
It is erroneous to suppose that secession was a trick practiced upon an ignorant and misguided populace by a clique of disappointed aspirants and ambitious demagogues. Doubtless the secession leaders acted in concert and seized upon the election of a sectional President as a fitting occasion to fire the Southern heart. But they found it an easy task. The prepara- tory steps had been taken long before. The material upon which the in endiary orators operated was in the highest degree inflammable, and little skill was required to apply the torch. CALHOUN in 1835 begun the movement that was completed in 1861. For twenty-six years the poison of the arch-traitor had been working in the body politic, and though he had died in peace and was sleeping in a grave which the whole country honored, his doctrines have wrought a mischief which plunged the entire country into blood- shed and brought hopeless ruin upon the institutions to the support of which the whole of his long public life was dedicated.
He it was that resuscitated the dead corpse of Nulli- fication, breathing upon her the breath of metaphys- ical sophistry, gave her the more captivating name of State Sovereignty. and recommended her as the guard- ian Genius of Slavery and the tutelary Goddess of the South.
The revolt of the South was the movement of an oligar chy embracing nearly all the education, all the popular talent, all the editorial ability in those States. and operating from above downward until nearly all the white population of the planting States and final- ly of tlie South generally were involved in the cur- rent and swept into the vortex. Secession was urged not merely as a right that might be expressed, but as a duty that ought to be discharged. On the 29th of November, 1860, it being a day of National Thanks giving, the most eloquent and highly gifted orator South of the Potomac, and pastor of the leading church in the Southern metropolis, ascended his pul- .pt steps. with a manuscript in his hand which did more than any one document, composed by any living man, to hurry the best classes of Southern society tosnap the ties that had held them in the Union and plunge them into the cloudy abyss of civil war The scru- pulousness with which he had ever avoided the ming- ling of political discussions with theological orations or exhortations to personal virtue gave all the more weight and significance to this carefully elaborated. address.
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After an introduction in which he spoke of his pre- vious silence upon all questions of politics; of the momentious nature of the questions then agitating the publie mind, and of the fact that he spoke as the representative of that large class whose opinions in such a controversy are of cardinal importance ; the class which seeks to ascertain its duty in the light simply of conscience and religion, and which turns to the moralist and the Christian for support and guid- ance, declared that one distinguishing characteristic of the South as a people was that unto it in the Prov- idence of God had been committed the sacred trust of conserving and perpetuating the institution of slav- ery as then exi- ting.
" Let us, my brethren, " exclaimed the orator, "lift ourselves intelligently to the highest moral ground, and proclaim to all the world that we hold this trust from God, and in its occupancy we are prepared to stand or fall as God may appoint Without deter- ·mining the duty of future generations, I simply say that for us as now situated the duty is plain of con- serving and transmitting the system of slavery with the freest scope for its natural development and ex- tension. As the critical moment has arrived at which the great issue is joined, let us say that in the light of all perils we will stand by our trust, and God be with the right." Farther to enforce this duty he de- clared it bound upon the Southern communities as the constituted guardians of the slaves themselves. '. That slavery was a blessing to the African, and their worst foes were those who intermeddled in their be- half ; that freedom would be their doom, and their residence here in the presence of the vigorous Anglo- Saxon race would be but the signal for their rapid extermination before they would had time to waste away through listlessness, filth and vice."
Furthermore, he urged this duty as.imposed upon them by the civilized world ; that slavery, notwith- standing all the attacks upon it, had steadily increas- ed for thirty years, and had enlisted the material interests of England in its support ; that the enrich- ing commerce which had reared the splendid cities and marble palaces of England as well as America, had been largely established upon the products of Southern soil ; and the blooms upon their fields gathered by black hands had fed the spindles and looms of Man- chester and Birmingham not less than of Lawrence and Lowell, and if a blow were to fall on this system of labor the world would totter at the stroke. And, finally, he declared that in the great struggle the South were the defenders of God and religion ; that the abolition spirit was but Jacobinism in another form, and availing itself of the morbid and misdirected
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sympathies of men, it had entrapped weak consciences in the meshes of its treachery, and now, at last. bad seated a high priest upon the throne clad in the black garments of discord and schism so symbolic of its ends. What does this declare, what can it decl.re bat that from hencefor h this is to be a government of section over section ; a government using constitutional forms only to embarrass and divide the section ruled, and as a fortress through whose embrasures the cannon of legislation is to be employed in demolishing the guar- anteed institutions of the South. "I say it with solemnity and pain." continued the orator, "this Union of our forefathers is already gone. It existed but in mutual confidence, the .onds of which were ruptured in the late election. For myself. I say, under the rule which threatens us, I throw off the yoke of this Union as readily as did our ancestors the voke of King George III., and for causes immeasura- bly stronger than those pleaded in their celebrated declaration." After suggesting the various obj ctions then urged for quiet submission to the President elect, and giving what seemed to his audience asatisfactory refutation, the oration concluded with the following paragr .ph : " We may for a generation enjoy compra- ative ease, gather up our feet in our beds and die mn peace ; but our children will go forth beggared from the homes of their fathers. F shermen will cast their nets where your prond commercial navy now rides at anchor, and dry them upon the shore now covered with your bales of merchandize. Sapped. circumvent- ed, undermined, the institutions of your soil will be overthrown, and within five and twenty years the histo y of St. Domingo will be the record of Louisiana. If dead men's bones can tremble, ours will move under the muttered curs s of sons and daughters denounc- ing the blindness and love of case which have left them an inheritance of woe.
. I have done my duty under as deep a sense of responsibility to God and man as I have ever felt. Under a full conviction that the salvation of the whole count y is depending upon the action of the South, I am impelled to deepen the sentiment of re- sistance in the Southern mind. and to strengthen the current now flowing toward a union of the South in defence of her chartered rights. It is a duty I shall not be called upon to repeat, for such awful jumctures do not occur twice in a century. Before another po- litical earthquake sh .Il shake the continent I hope to be' where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest.'"
Probably no discourse of these times bud so great an effect upon those who heard it, or on the thousands and tens of thousands who read it in the numerous
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and large editions that were immediately issued. A majority of Dr. PALMER's congregation at once became secessionists The papers and pamphlets in which his views.were published were scattered all over the saveholding States and were read, re-read and passed from hand to hand and from family to family till in ma y cases the paper was so worn as to be barely legible. It was read to groups of eager listeners in the obscure grocery in the depths of the pine forests ; by the lordly planter amid the rich perfumes of his orange groves or of his sugar-house; in the temples dedicated to religion, in the halls of legislation, and may be taken as the most glowing. the most emphatic and generally popular setting forth of the sentiment of the most cultivated and moral people in the South. that any public man has made.
And Dr. PALMER was a disciple and admirer of CAL- HOUN. and his friend and co-laborer in South Carolina, Rev . Dr. THORNWELL, took ground precisely similar and counselled prompt secession for the protection of slavery. even though it launched the South upon a sea of blood. As with these leaders in the Presbyterian Church, so in the Episcopal, Methodist and Baptist, The ministers of Christ were all clamorous for war. PETER did not draw his sword with more zeal to smite the capt r of our Savior, than they counselled war, and in many cases, entered the military service to fight. for the perpetnation of slavery ; and the ground univers- ally taken was that so clearly stated by Dr. PALMER, that the South was the Heaven-appointed guardian of slavery, and it was their sacred duty to see that the institution suffered no harin nor submitted to any threat of attack from the numerically superior North.
Thus will be seen the degree to which the virus of South Carolina doctrine had inoculated all the influ .- ential and cultivated class of Southerners. A gener- ation had been educated into the conviction that the preservation of slavery was a matter of more import- ance than the preservation of the Union.
Loyalty and devotion to the Union had for a gener- ation been growing less in the Southern heart, and could hardly be said to have existed in 1861. The planter was loyal to slavery and determined to pre- serve and extend it at all hazards, and this resolution was paramount to any sentiment of Unionism, any love of the whole country. With him the Union was an equivocal ble-sing, good, indeed, if it left him and would leave bis children in full and. perpetual enjoy- ment of slavery and the right of extending its area equally with the extending area of free labor, but when it failed of that, to be cast aside as a forgotten garment or left to be consumed in the tire of a gen- eral revolution.
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In the chapter which succeeds, there are detailed the political manœuvers by which secession became an accomplished fact. But every attentive student of American history must see that the elements of the storm had long been in ferment, and an instrument far less potent than Prospero's wand would be able at any time to unchain the powers of the air and put the wild waters in a roar.
For more than a generation agencies had been quiet- ly but actively at work which culminated in a violent and bloody civil war, raging, for four years. over thousands of square miles, destroying half a million of lives and thousands of millions of property ; yet aris- ing, apparently, from no circumstances more exasper- ating than the election by legal voters and through constitutional forms of a President distasteful to the States lying Sonth of the Potomac.
The disintegrating and centrifugal tendency . of Southern institutions ; the slow and reluctant adhe- sion of several of the Southern States to the Federal Union ; the doctrine of State Sovereignty first pro- pounded by the States of Virginia and Kentucky. revived by South Carolina : first to enforce the doctrine of local free trade in the teeth of a national tariff ; and again, as a refuge and remedy for anti-slavery agitation, and for that purpose recommended and enforced by the deepest thinkers and the most fiery orators · of the South ; the ambition . f Southern cities hoping to become independent of Northern ports of entry ;. and the doctrine widely disseminated by the whole Southern pulpit that the perpetuation of slavery was a great moral trust committed by God to the slave- holding States, these were the facts, the doctrines, the influences by the action of which the Southern mind became ripe for revolt.
COLONEL CHARLES E. LIVINGSTON.
NOTE 2 TO PAGE 16. FOOT NOTE T. 7TH LINE
Having applied to parties who were supposed to be cognizant of the military service of Colonel CHARLES E. LIVINGSTON, without receiving the desired infor- mation, I am compelled to rely upon the reminiscences of one of his foriner associates in command. He is stated to have been a pupil of the United States West Point Military Academy, but was forced to re- linquish his studies, there, in consequence of ill health. Wben Colonel W. P. W. assumed command of the Seventy-sixth New York Volunteers, Colonel C. E. L. was its Major. The latter acted for some time as commandant of the city of Fredericksburg, and is said
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to be handsomely mentioned in Captain NOYES' "Bivouac and Battlefield." Subsequently he was attached to the staff of Major-General DOUBLEDAY. At the two battles of Gainesville and Bull Run Second, he was serving with his regiment and his colonel had occasion, each time. to speak of his cour- age and good conduct. At Gainesville he was of the greatest assistance in encouraging the men and main- taining the line under a very hot fire-a fire so severe that the Seventy-sixth lost one-third of its men in line. Upon this occasion his behavior could not have been better. At Bull Run. Second, he was also most efficient. Colonel L. was captured in this fight, as was reported. through his horse rearing and falling upon him. In several other battles he wason General DOUBLEDAY'S staff, and until the time Colonel W. resigned the command of the Seventy-sixth, after Chancellorsrille (in consequence of severe sickness in- curred in service, from which he has not yet entirely recovered), excepting when Colonel W. was on sick leave from middle of September to beginning of No- vember, 1862. during which period also. Colonel L. com- manded the Seventy-sixth N. Y: He was also in com- n.andbefore Petersburg. Colonel L. suffered a great deal from ill health. but on the battlefield his conduct. was unexceptionable. Further particulars of the services of Colonel L. will appear in the " History of the Seventy-sixth N. Y. V.," by Captain A. P. SMITH, of Cortland Village, which ought to issne from the press in a short time.
NOTE 3 TO PARAGRAPH 2, PAGE 20, 29TH N. Y. V.
Lieutenant HENRY LIVINGSTON ROGERS, grandson of Hon. JOHN SWIFT LIVINGSTON, of Tivoli, was born in the city of New York, but brought up in his grand- father's house. and consequently may be claimed as another representative of Red Hook. He went out early in 1861. as Quartermaster of the Twenty-ninth New York Volunteers, and throughout his service proved himself a very efficient officer. When his Colonel, VON STEINWEHR, became acting Brigadier- General, Lieutenant ROGERS continued with him and acted with equal energy as brigade quartermaster, proving himself under all circumstances, not only brave but energetic and reliable. His mother, Mrs. ROGERS, presented a beautiful silk. National (U. S.) flag to the Twenty-ninth New York Volunteers. before it left New York, which Hag is now deposited in the Trophy Hall of the Bureau of Military Statistics at Albany.
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NOTE 4 TO PAGE 22, T 3D. 20 N. Y. S. M.
Immediately after the news of the firing upon Fort Sumter, and responsive to President LINCOLN's call for 75,000 Volunteers, this regiment offered its services. Although at once detailed, some delay oc- curred before it was accepted. From Kingston it proceeded to Annapolis, thence to Annapolis Junction, Baltimore, etc. It lay in camp, for the greater part of the time, to the right or the South and East of the Baltimore and Washington Railroad, guarding the same and coterminous districts. As representatives of this company district (formerly Twenty-second, now Twenty-first Regiment, Ninth Brigade, Third Division N. Y. S. M.) there were a number of men from the Upper District of Red Hook, of whom the following have been reported :
ANDREW DECKER .- He enlisted three consecutive times and served honestly and faithfully until killed under SHERIDAN at Cedar Creek, in the Shenandoah Valley, 19th October, 1864, either in the Sixth New York Cavalry, or, as some say, the Fifty-sixth New York Infantry or the First New York Chasseurs.
CHARLES DECKER.
MONTGOMERY MARSHALL. - Returned home broken down in health.
ADAM MOORE.
EDWARD SNYDER .- Afterwards deserted.
CHARLES STATLEY .- He enlisted three consecutive timess and came home Orderly Sergeant.
WM. H. STOCKING. - Served honestly and faithfully. three enlistinents ; at Gettysburg he was shot through the leg above the ankle, so bad a wound he was offer- ed his discharge, but refused it. He was in swimming at City Point when the famous explosion t ok place in June, 1864, and although 5 were killed and 17 were wounded in the detachment of his own regiment stationed there, and an immense destruction occurred, he escaped without the slightest injury
In the Fall of 1861 the Ulster County Guard again took the field as a regular United States Volunteer R giment, and was known as the Eightieth New York Volunteers.
For details of the services of this regiment see Ap- pendix, page i. to liv.
There were twenty-five men from the Upper Dis- trict of Red Hook in Company B. Their names were as follows :
1. WANSBROUGH BLOXHAM .- Shot through the arm in carrying the colors at Gettysburg.
. 2. JOHN DECKER .- Shot by accident at Upton Hill, opposite Washington, died 21st March, 1862, brought home and buried at the Old Red Chureb, northeast
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of Madalin. See pages 68-69.
3. OSWALD DECKER .- Wounded with a buckshot in the breast at Manassas or Bull Run, Second, where Colonel PRATT was likewise mortally wounded by a buckshot which lodged in his spinal marrow, from which be died in a few days.
4 MORGAN DENEGAR.
5. CHARLES GARRISON.
6. THEODORE GARRISON. - Shot through flesh of thigh at Manassas or Bull Run, Second.
7. CHRISTIAN GRUNTLER, Senior .- Discharged and died of dropsy, brought on by effects of severe service, after his return home. See page 70.
8 CHRISTIAN GRUNTLER. Jr .- Died of wounds re- ceived at Manassas or Bull Run. Second. See page 70.
9. JOHN HATTON. See page 55.
10. Wy. H. HOFFMAN.
11 GEO W. KELLY .- Killed at Manassas or Bull Run Second.
12. ALFRED LASHER (son of Widow SARAH LASHER). -Killed at Manassas or Bull Run, Second.
13. PETER W. LASHER.
14. ROBERT MCCARRICK.
15. CHARLES MACNIFF .-- Twice wounded, slightly in the arm under BURNSIDE at Fredericksburg First, and above the forehead at Gettysburg. This brave soldier was finally appointed Sergeant and detailed for Ambulance service at headquarters.
16 JAMES OF JJACOB MINKLER.
17. ADAM MOORE .- Twice severely wounded and then injured in a blow or tornado at Point Lookout.
18. FREDERIC OVERMIER (Sergeant) .- Twice wound- ed slightly in the breast at Manassas or Second Bull Run, 30th August, 1862, the bullet lodging in a testa- ment in his pocket, and in the foot at Gettysburg.
19. DAVID A. PAULMATIER.
20. LEWIS REDDER .- Killed at Manassas or Bull Run Second, 30th August, 1862
HIRAM RISEDORF. - Died of typhus fever at Upton Hill, opposite Washington, and was buried at Falls Church, Va. See pages 61-62.
22 FREDERIC SIMMONS.
23. JOHN H. SWARTZ.
24. REFr's WARRINGER .- Killed at Antietam. 17th September, 1862, by a Minie ball through the bowels. 25. DAVID WOOL (colored).
In Company A, which was entirely composed of Duchess County men, there were several, perhaps quite a number. from the Lower District of Red Hook. Their names have never been furnished to the writer, nor bas he any means of ascertaining them.
From the Upper District there were two brothers : 26. MARCELLUS STOCKING. See page 55. 27. WM. H. STOCKING.
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It is said there were no other Red Hook men in any other companies than A and B in this regiment.
After Gettysburg, this regiinent, which went out about 1,000 strong-it brought home only 150 men- on'y 60 men could be brought into line of battle. In the three days fight it did magnificently and suffered severely, having 34 killed and 110 wounded. During this battle, at one time, Colonel GATES himself carried the colors while mounted and under fire. Wy. H. STOCKING says that he counted the marks of 16 gun- shot wounds in the co'onel's horse. and yet the animal survived to come home.
BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG.
NOTE 5 TO PAGE 25 .- DERIVED FROM CORRESPONDENCE WITH MAJOR-GENERAL S. W. CRAWFORD.
THIRD DIVISION, FIFTH CORPS (CRAWFORD'S).
IN the general march of the Army of the Potomac. north ward, my division pas-ed through Hanover on the night of the 1st of July. I marched all night and just before morning halted at a little town called Brushtown to rest. The men lay down in the road. It was not yet day when an aide of General SyKES. who commanded the Fifth Corps, came to me with orders to push on, at once, without letting the men have coffee. I moved as soon as we could dis- tinguish the road, but was soon obliged to halt and give the road to GREGG's cavalry, who were going to the front. In my rear was SEDGWICK with the Sixth Corps. I pushed on after the cavalry to Bonough- town, sending my ammunition train to the left. at the edge of the town, with orders to strike the Baltimore turnpike. I marched on to the middle of the town, and striking a road. to the left, crossed to the turnpike. and after a short march crossed Rock Creek, turned in to the left, in rear of Wolf's Hill, and halted. It was not yet noon, and my men enjoyed several hours of much-needed rest.
Meantime a staff officer from General SYKES caine to me to learn the situation of the division, and stated that a staff officer would report to me at 3 o'clock to conduct ine to my position on the field.
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