USA > New York > The history of the Forty-eighth regiment New York state volunteers, in the war for the union. 1861-1865 > Part 19
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
them, they seem to throng about us. Memory grown vivid quickens imagination, and in our fancy they are all here to- night -- or, rather, we are there with them again. Once more the ranks are full. Once more we all answer to our names when the orderly calls the roll. Once more dear Colonel Perry calls, " Attention, battalion !" and we all fall in line again, just as we used to do so long ago. Again we sleep together in the same old tents, take ship together, march shoulder to shoulder as we did of yore ; deploy and wheel, and charge and fire; sit together around the camp- fires singing songs and telling stories-lips that have been silent so long. Once more we dig intrenchments, and carry logs for corduroy roads, and build mud-forts on the Savannah, and garrison Pulaski, and strut upon the stage of mimic theatres, and skirmish at Port Royal Ferry and Bluffton and Coosawhatchie ; and at last together, in column by com- pany, at close order on the double-quick, in the dark and to the death, we start on that fatal charge upon Fort Wag- ner. Sheeted about with fire, shot through with canister and grape and shrapnel, in the most desperate struggle and on the deadliest spot of the war ; with incapacity behind us, and death before us ; amid all dangers, but without dismay-, this brave regiment of a thousand men, upon that spot, in that single immortal hour, perished from off the earth and left but a shadowy remnant behind it to remind the world that it had ever been. (Applause.) History has declared that they were defeated, but History has spoken falsely. They took the great bastion of that fort and held it for four mor- tal hours ; and at last, at midnight-a little group of them still clinging to that bank, denied reinforcement and forsaken, but holding tenaciously to what they had won at such cost, with- out an officer to command them, with a solid mass of their comrades, dead and dying, heaped about them three and four feet deep, amid their cries of pain and passion, without ammunition, without orders, without hope, without every- thing but courage-at last at midnight they were surrounded and overpowered, and the rebels had retaken their fort.
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
The next morning, when they were marched through Charles- ton, amid the jeers of the populace, and counted in the prison, it was found that twenty-eight of them belonged to the Forty- eighth Regiment-private soldiers to a man. (Applause.) Nine months later six of them escaped from prison ; but twenty-two were left behind, and they are there to-night ! They died of hunger and cold and privation on Belle Island and at Andersonville. When the history of this regiment is fully written, it will be unjust if it only chronicles the deeds of colonels and captains and men who held office by the acci- dent of rank in those days, and if it gives no place to these nameless private soldiers who held Fort Wagner for four hours, after every officer was shot or disheartened, and who died in foul prisons alone, without a word of pity or a breath of prayer. Pardon me for thus precipitately speaking of them, but I have thought that I might be the only private soldier who should have voice here to-night, or the only one who was with the men in those fiery days; and I have been jealous lest they should be forgotten. The Forty-eighth Regiment won other honors (as you will hear directly when its history comes to be spoken) at Olustee. Drewry's Bluff, Cold Harbor, Petersburg, and Fort Fisher, and in the finalstruggles of the war. (Applause.) I am not to give its history. I am only to speaka salutation ; and so I do : from the humblest place in the ranks of those thousand men, I salute these my comrades who are here to-night in mortal flesh. And-will you pardon the fancy ?- may I not salute those other and nobler of my comrades who gave their lives for the Republic, and who. I love to think, are here also to- night in immortal spirit? For there have been dreamers who have fancied that that veil which interposes between this life and the other, and which is so impenetrable and opaque from this side, may be transparent from that ; and if that is true. may not our old companions be crowding about us here to-night. though " unperceived amid the throng"? Ifit is a fancy, will you not pardon the fancy, and permit me to salute them as they pass us in the viewless air? For they pass by
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
us in our memory like a procession-empty sleeves and vacant chairs, but robed in imperishable glory and laurelled with fade- less renown-with noiseless tread they pass. The cemeteries are their camping-ground, the white stones are their tents. Their camp-fires that went out in ashes are rekindled in the grateful hearts of their countrymen, and the roll of their victories is writ upon the skies.
"On Fame's eternal camping-ground Their silent tents are spread ; And glory guards with solemn mound The bivouac of the dead."
But to us to-night they live. They are with us, and they throng above us in the air. Brave old Colonel Perry, about whose person we gathered twenty years ago, if in immortal spirit you are here with us to-night, I, the little boy that was your orderly, salute you in the air. (Applause.) Captain Lent, who died, the first man, on Morris Island ; Lieutenant- Colonel Green, who died right at my very side on that bank at Fort Wagner; Swartwout, shot at Petersburg ; McDou- gall, Tantum, Richman, Duffle. Depuy, Carman, Dandy,- names heroic of forms that were lost in the smoke of battle long ago,-of men who loved not their own lives when the life of their country was in peril, but who died cheerfully, unhesitatingly, sublimely, to defend these flags which are to be presented here to-night-I salute you all. my old com- rades, in the air. For you know we have liberty as we have salvation-only by the blood of saviors ; and these humble names which I have spoken are the names of real redeemers. by whose self-sacrifice this nation to-night is free. (Applause.) I wonder how many of you remember John Wilgus? He was a private in Company D. He was taken prisoner that night in the rifle-pits before Fort Wagner, and was with us in the prisons at Charleston, Columbia. in Libby, and Belle Island: and at last he came to die to the prison-hospital in Richmond, where I was convalescing. I remember how. day after day, I used to visit his bed, and how he sank day
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
by day-starved, frozen, exhausted, trying hard to hold on to life ; deprived of life's necessities, fire and fuel, and food and clothing and shelter; but at last, at the end of a hard winter, died-only one of thousands, victims of a cruelty unequalled in the records of civilized warfare. Shot if in the delirium of fever they passed an imaginary line ; pur- sued pitilessly and mercilessly by hate and scorn, and dying at last of slow starvation in the prisons-Oh. John Wilgus, and other of my old companions that died there on Belle Island and at Andersonville, if you are with us here to-night, I salute you, also, in the air.
I belonged to a company that had a strange nickname. Everybody called us in those days the "Die-no-mores." (Great applause.) You remember the "Die -no- mores." You will pardon me for saying a word about them. You see we had been, some of us, students in a seminary when the war broke out, and we had enlisted under our teacher (your orator here to-night); and as we were the sons of Christian people we used to sing the Christian songs we had been taught at home, and one of them had this refrain :
" We're going home, We're going home. We're going home, To die no more !"
And so in fun at our hymn-singing everybody called us the " Die-no-mores." Sometimes a name that has been given a man, or a group of men, or a cause, in sport or in deri- sion, has become immortal ; and this name was one of them. For, that night of greatest glory in the history of this regi- ment, Captain Paxson of Company D (applause) was shot on that bank at. Fort Wagner, and lay there bleeding to death in that gorge of dead men that were heaped about him four feet deep. Amid cries of pain and hate, in that last frenzy of a desperate hour, with the sound of musketry in the air and cannon belching forth their fiery death from Fort Sumter above us and the casemates about us, when the living cheered and the dying moaned, when some cursed
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
and some prayed, amid cries for help and cries for pity, but not a cry for quarter-there was one cry that rang clear over all. It was the call of Captain Paxson to his men; and it grew fainter and fainter as the moments passed, and he grew weak from the loss of blood. It was in these words : " Die- no-mores, follow me! follow me, Die-no-mores!" And they did follow him, brave fellows, to where, if the noblest spirits are immortal, they " die no more." And to-night I salute you, my brave old captain, my brave old comrades, in the air. There is one other name before the memory of which I will bow, and then I will take my seat. There was one flag in our regiment that is not here to-night. You re- member that. It was lost in battle. Do you remember the man who bore it and was lost with it ? His name was William H. Porch. He was color-sergeant from Fort Wagner to Cold Harbor. Now, do you recall that charge at Cold Har- bor? Everybody knew it was useless. The great soldier who commanded it has since acknowledged it was a mistake. But then and there-
" Was there a man dismayed ? Not though the soldier knew Some one had blundered. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die." .
And so they did. You remember now how the flag was in advance that day, and how, as that bank was reached, Tantum shouted to Porch to "mount it;" and Porch, white to his lips, but faithful to the core of his heart-Porch, who bore the flag, without hesitancy and without a word leaped up the bank alone, and was shot down by a score of bullets, and throwing his arms around his flag, fell with it among his foes. Seventeen years have passed since then ; but standing here to-night I seem to see him again, the first and last and only man that dared to mount that bank, and the free wind blows that free flag around him for a shroud as they fall together on the bayonets that pierced them
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
both,-standard and standard-bearer, Freedom's emblem and her hero,-the starry flag and Color-Sergeant " Billy" Porch. (Applause.) To-night, dear old fellow, I salute you also in the air. (Applause.) Now I will venture to take my seat, having done, the best I could, my part on this occasion. I have spoken a few names, mostly private sol- diers who were dear to me, lest they from being so humble might be forgot.
I welcome you all to this reunion, and I pray you to make of it not only a helper to memory, but also an inspiration to patriotism ; for this Republic has need of heroes in the future as she has had heroes in the past, and I pray you to hold up your hands, my comrades, in a new oath to be forever loyal to their memory and forever faithful to their cause.
" From the lily of love that incloses In the glow of a festival kiss, On the wind that is heavy with roses, And shrill with the bugles of bliss ;
Let it float o'er the mystical ocean, That breaks on the kingdom of night-
Our oath of eternal devotion To the heroes who died for the right.
" Ah! grander in doom-stricken glory Than the greatest that linger behind,
They shall live in perpetual story, Who saved the last hope of mankind.
For their cause was the cause of the races That languished in slavery's night,
And the death that was pale as their faces Has filled the whole world with its light.
"To the clouds and the mountains we breathe it, To the freedom of planet and star ;
Let the tempests of ocean inwreathe it, Let the winds of the night bear it far-
Our oath, that, till manhood shall perish, And honor and virtue are sped,
We are true to the canse that they cherish. And eternally true to the dead !"
Comrades. good-night ! (Loud applause.)
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
THE PRESIDENT-The next exercise will be the singing of two stanzas of the hymn,
" My country, 'tis of thee, · Sweet land of liberty,"
in which we shall be led by Mr. Henry Camp.
The audience rose, and with great spirit united in singing.
THE PRESIDENT-Prayer will now be offered by Rev. W. P. Strickland, D.D., chaplain of the regiment.
PRAYER BY REV. W. P. STRICKLAND, D.D.
O Thou eternal Father, the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and our God! though Abraham be ig- norant of us and Israel acknowledge us not, yet Thou art our Father and our fathers' God. We thank Thee for Thy good Providence over us, for the merciful manifestations to us of Thy grace and goodness. O Thou who dost rule in the armies of heaven and command among the inhabitants of earth ! we thank Thee to-night that Thou hast been our God in the midst of war and strife, when our enemies would have rent from us our liberties and despoiled us of all the precious blessings Thou hast vouchsafed to us. We thank Thee, O God, that Thou hast been with this nation from the beginning ; and through all the conflicts through which it has passed Thou hast been the God of our battles and guided us to victory. Thou didst enable us, O Lord, who are here to-night, a remnant of a host that went forth to defend our liberties-Thou didst. O God, teach our hands to war and our fingers to fight. and cover our heads in the day of battle : and though many have been left on the field of the slain, we thank Thee that there is a remnant left to remember Thy goodness and mercy. We beseech Thee, O God, that Thy blessings may continue with us as a nation. Look upon us in mercy. Bless, we pray Thee, our country, all who are in places of trust and power ; and grant, O God, that our liberties may be preserved, that no external or
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
internal foe may rise against us, and that the time may come when war shall cease to the end of the world ; when swords shall be beaten into ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and nation shall no longer lift up sword against nation, and they shall learn war no more. Gracious Father, we pray for Thy blessing upon all who are connected with us in the regiment-a remnant of which has been left -who are not permitted to be with us here to-night. May Thy blessing attend them! Guide us all by Thy Spirit ; direct us in all our ways: take all our interests into Thy hand ; and finally, through riches of grace, bring us to Thy kingdom, for the Redeemer's sake. Amen.
THE PRESIDENT - A song will now be sung, entitled " The Two Grenadiers."
Mr. Geo. Werrenrath sang the song with fine effect.
THE PRESIDENT-The flags to which reference has been · made will now be presented to the Society by the Rev. D. C. Knowles, Captain of Company D.
Sergeant Sparks, who carried the flag into Fort Wagner, and Corporal McKie, of the Color Guard, wounded at Cold Harbor, appeared on the platform with the tattered rem- nants of the flags. The veterans arose and gave three enthusiastic cheers for "the old flags." Professor Max Liebling furnished appropriate piano music.
The Rev. D. C. Knowles faced the President, both stand- ing, and addressed him as follows:
CAPTAIN KNOWLES' PRESENTATION ADDRESS.
Dr. Storrs, in the name of my comrades of the Forty- eighth Regiment I come to present to the Long Island Historical Society, through you, its honored President, these sacred relics of our civil war.
If you have never been a soldier, sir, and followed the fortunes of your country's flag on the bloody field. it will be difficult for you to understand fully the feelings that rise in our hearts to-night as we look again on these tattered ban-
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
ners. To us, who have seen them waving in line of battle, they have a value that cannot be expressed in words.
It is not a difficult task for a man of trade to tell their value in this world's currency. It is a simple problem. So many square yards of silk, so much skilled labor in em- broidery, and the problem of production is solved.
But, sir, we ignore in our estimate all this elementary calculation. We judge by other standards. Our data for valuation come from the imperishable sentiments of the heart. These old, faded flags represent to us everything that is worth prizing in this life. When face to face with the armies of the rebellion, they proudly flung out their folds over our heads as symbols of law, constitution, order, equity, property, honor, civilization, even life itself.
It is but an impulse of worldly wisdom that leads all civi- lized governments to seek by every possible expedient to attach its soldiers to their respective standards. To this end army regulations require that they be brought forth with almost religious ceremonies, and presented to the keep- ing of the troops. At dress-parade an imposing escort pro- ceeds to the Colonel's tent, and with various salutations receives the colors at his hands, and then gayly marches away, with martial music, to present them to the regiment, to be preserved at the cost of life itself. Thus every senti- ment of pride and honor is appealed to by the imposing ritual of parade to kindle in the soldier's breast respect and love for these symbols of his country's glory. And my comrades will attest the truth of the assertion, that a strange enthusiasm is thus created in the midst of the varied duties of the camp, that settles at last into a permanent veneration for the flags we carry-a veneration that lifts the soul to the highest possibilities of self-sacrifice for their preservation.
Sir, we have felt all this-we feel it now. These senti- ments of profound regard for these symbols of the cause for which we fought are as fresh and full in our hearts to- night as when we stood marshalled for the battle of consti- tutional liberty and unity under their flaunting folds.
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
May I not be indulged, sir, for a few moments in some sacred reminiscences? It was one of the darkest hours of our country's history when these men who stand around me met for the first time at Camp Wyman, a few miles away from this hall. Most of us were strangers to each other, but we came together in the friendly band of a common cause.
You doubtless remember, when the first call was made for volunteers, how jubilantly our young soldiers started for the field. It seemed to the North like a vast military picnic at the Government's expense. Very few saw with prophetic eye the fierceness of the storm that was gathering in the political heavens. Even great statesmen told us it would dissipate the rebellion if we sent a few thousands of our soldiers South, and waved the stars and stripes valiantly in the face of the foe. But, sir, you remember also how delu- sive were such dreams. Our panic-stricken army, broken and dispirited at Bull Run, poured into Washington a dis- organized mob, dispelled these false theories of the war, and awoke the nation to the real bitterness of the coming con- test. The North then began to measure the magnitude of the task it had undertaken. For the first time we perceived that nothing short of stern and stubborn war, bloody and terrible, could save the Republic from dismemberment. The idle dream of speedy peace gave way to deep dejection in many, and a great gloom fell like midnight darkness on the North. Enlistments were checked for a time, and men held back shuddering at the fearful sacrifices of blood and treasure that loomed up before them as the price of unity.
In that hour, sir, we volunteered : not through the im- pulse of youthful excitement-the times had disenchanted war of its holiday attire; not for high bounties-the days had not yet come when patriotism could only be induced to volunteer for gold ; not for idle love of adventure, or pirati- cal hope of plunder-but from an intelligent love of coun- try, and a settled purpose to lay life and all on its altar for constitutional unity. We came when it looked like a hope- less task, and freely gave ourselves to all the bloody possi-
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, Y. Y. S. VOLS.
bilities of war to secure for ourselves and posterity the union of these States. Was it a foolish venture, a price not worth the sacrifices? No, never : for we saw just before us the terrible chasm of disunion. We saw the disastrous consequences of such a fate. We saw more clearly than the outlines of any fancy picture the pernicious certainties of such a calamity. We saw rivers that God had made to run from our northern boundaries to our southern gulf-those natural highways of commerce and brotherhood-crossed by an imaginary line, that must prove a barrier through all ages to the free interchange of trade and travel, subjecting the coming millions to the exactions of rival governments, and the annoyance of passport and servile espionage. We saw these great mountain-ranges, that bind the North and South together with their cables of solid stone, cut in twain by that same invisible boundary, and from every lofty eleva- tion frowning batteries facing each other with a perpetual challenge to the fight ; we saw paternal estates divided asunder by landmarks that were only symbols of hate and strife, while from Atlantic slope to Pacific shore we saw the bivouac fires of armed hosts, casting their lurid colorings on burnished bayonets that were ever ready to be wet in the blood of brothers. We saw all this, and more too .; For we saw, as the natural and inevitable outcome of all this, posterity crushed under the grinding budgets of taxation to keep these standing armies in the field, and the laboring classes of America rivalling in poverty and degradation the war-cursed peasantry of Europe; and, as a final consequence, the man on horseback coming to rivet the chains of des- potic rule on the limbs of freemen, and the sunset hour of constitutional liberty giving place once more to the hopeless dark of absolutism and despair: and all this to gratify the insensate greed and godless ambitions of a little combination of slave-drivers ! We saw it all, sir, at a glance, as clearly as the immortal Webster saw it when he drew back from this vision of disunion, shuddering in every fibre of his loyal heart.
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
It was to shield our nation from this fate, sir, that we came together in those gloomy hours, some twenty years ago. Some of us came from the plough, some from the counting-room, some from our schools of learning, and others even from the sacred desk. We met around one manly form, whose commanding presence inspired respect and con- fidence, and whose imperial figure on horseback was an in- spiration then, as it is a sacred memory to-night. No regi- ment could boast a better leader than ours. Under his earnest tuition we gained a drill and discipline that served us well in the supreme hour of trial in the field.
It would have been very pleasing to us to have had here to-night all our banners ; but events forbid.
One National flag is in the keeping of the State at Al- bany, and one is not. You have already had an allusion to its history. It was the flag under whose starry folds we marched southward. At Cold Harbor it was lost to us forever-not through cowardice, but sheer bravery. Its color-bearer, who had drawn patriotic inspirations from the philippics of Cicero under my personal tuition, and who was the first man to enlist in my company, was shot dead with the flag in his hand. Another seized the fallen stand- ard, and was shot down: and another took it up only to perish under its crimson stripes. Then a fourth man lifted its proud challenge to the foe, and planted it on the parapet in the very midst of the rebel host, when he too died, pierced with bullets, and flag and flagmen fell together into the very arms of the enemy. It was never recovered. But, sir, I am proud to say, on account of the heroic efforts of the regiment that day, a special order was passed immediately replacing the lost banner. This flag, whose substance is al- most all gone, is the one presented to us by the Hanson Place Church. Its appearance tells its history better than any words of mine. You have heard from our historian the heroism of its bearer on that eventful night at Wagner. where so many of our comrades fell.
Permit me to speak now of this larger banner. One day
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
at Hilton Head, while we were sturdily preparing for the conflict, there was brought into our camp this splendid flag. It was brilliant then in its new rich blue and lustrous gold. We were drawn up in a hollow square one beautiful Sab- bath-day to receive it. We were told it was the gift of our Brooklyn friends. It was then thrown to the breeze, and on its broad ground of silken blue we saw the resplendent coat of arms of the Empire State. Our Colonel called for " Home, Sweet Home" from the band; and with the mem- ories of the dear ones far away, and the unbidden tears steal- ing to our eyes as we thought of our Northern homes, we lifted our swords, presented our arms, and vowed that flag should never be dishonored.
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