USA > New York > The history of the Forty-eighth regiment New York state volunteers, in the war for the union. 1861-1865 > Part 20
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We were young and strong then. Our blood was warm with the impulses of hopeful life. We are aware that time has left its impress on us ; for, strange to say, we find our- selves quietly taking on the colors of our enemies : we are beginning to wear the gray. One and all of us are insensi- bly growing white with the hoar-frosts of accumulating years. But, sir, we stand here to-night and salute this dear old faded flag with the same heroic ardor we felt when for the first time we saw it given to the winds. We salute it now, tattered and torn with the storms of heaven, and rent and ragged with the flying missiles of the fiercer storms of battle.
But, sir, I am proud to say our early vows were never broken : it has never been dishonored. In Georgia's marsh- es, in Florida's tangled jungles, on the blazing parapet of Wagner, in the deadly charge on the enemy's lines at Cold Harbor, in the trenches that compassed Petersburg, in a score of bloody battles, it lifted up its challenge to every foe to our nation's unity. Inspired by its proud defiance in the face of rebel hosts, many a wounded soldier has found a so- lace for his sufferings, and under its witnessing folds many a hero has laid down to die and many a manly heart ceased to beat forever.
Passing over its history during the active service of the
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
regiment, permit me briefly to state a few facts concerning its recent discovery.
By some strange freak of fortune, this flag was left, when the regiment was disbanded in 1865, in the possession of its commanding officer. Colonel Coan. It was taken by him to Lawrence, Mass. Six years ago he died.
In the order of providence my ministry had fallen in that city. A few months since I was requested by Captain Carl- ton to make inquiries for the lost banner,
In my search for the relatives of Colonel Coan I was in- formed that the mayor of the city was a brother-in-law, and hastening to his residence I was told the old flag had there been safely housed through all these intervening years. The Colonel's sister led me to the room where she had so sacred- ly preserved it : and with hands trembling for very joy, I took the standard up, unrolled the outer covering that en- cased it, and flung out its faded fringes once again, while the hot tears started in my eyes over memories that came up as fresh as the events of yesterday.
Sir, those were not unmanly tears. Some of us have suf- fered too much from half-healed wounds and merciless dis- eases through these twenty years to blush with shame at tears that start out of memory's treasures at the sight of these dear old flags.
Why, sir. these flags are the proofs of our loyalty. They are the demonstrations of proud patriotism. Our hearts cling to them as such. We are as loyal to these symbols to- night as in '61. Do you doubt it, sir? Would you put us to the proof ?
We are here to-night to tell you frankly, that after all we know of war, its horrors and its loathsome beastliness. after all the imperishable hatred we feel toward it, the product of bitter personal experience. yet if a rebel host should rise in the South and march on Washington, we would rally once again around these tattered banners and go to the front as we did twenty years ago.
No, sir, I am not ashamed to tell you the hot tears came
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
as a tribute to this symbol of law and liberty when I clasped this banner in my arms and took it home.
There in my hall it stood for weeks, while scores of our patriotic citizens came in to look upon it and hear me re- hearse the story of those dreadful days. Then I sent it to your city ; and here it is to-night, to be deposited with this other flag for safe keeping with your Society.
Sir, we all belong to the color-guard to-night. We are ' but a remnant of that long line that filed down by Fort Hamilton that midnight hour twenty years ago to take the steamer for the South and destiny. Many of those noble hearts, sons of this great city, are sleeping in Southern graves.
Providence has left us the sweet privilege of rallying once again around these standards, to lay them away, we trust, forever. I am deputed by my comrades to say to your Soci- ety through you : Take these sacred symbols of our loyalty ; preserve them carefully ; hang them where our children and children's children to latest posterity may come and look upon them, and drink in patriotic inspiration, and senti- ments of right and truth and unity, as the flowers drink in the dew.
And may God grant that they may here learn to cherish the institutions we have helped to save, and value those principles of liberty, righteousness, and human brotherhood -principles born of the Gospel of the Son of God-which were rescued from impending peril by the blood of the heroes who fell beneath their folds, and who now lie sleeping in honored sepulchres! (Loud and prolonged applause.)
REPLY OF REV. DR. STORRS.
Gentlemen, Officers and Men of the Forty-eighth Regiment, General Gillmore, and Honored Guests :
I have never before felt it so impossible to say that which would be to my own mind and heart appropriate and adequate to the occasion as I do this evening. Words are weak in
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
the presence of heroic deeds. All sentences seem to turn to nothingness in the presence of such symbols as these, and under the august memories by which we are overshadowed. Eloquence is in silence. I can say certainly for the Society of which I have the honor to be President, that we receive with gladness and with gratitude these symbols of heroic daring and suffering and success ; that we will guard them carefully ; we will make our custody of them as permanent as the continued existence of the Society-which, I trust, will be as permanent as the city and as the land. And we will, sir, teach those who shall look upon them in their torn majesty, in the splendor which not merely consists with but comes from these drooping threads and these half- obscured stars-we will teach those who look upon them to reverence the holy cause in which they were first advanced, and the glory of whose memory shall cling to them ever- more. (Applause.) It is in fact, ladies and gentlemen, a proper function of this Society, and one for which in part it was constituted, to preserve the records and the memorials of that tremendous struggle which began twenty years ago. The Society began its life in the midst of the civil war, in 1863, a few months after the Proclamation of Emancipation, a few months before the victory of Gettysburg ; and one pur- pose which those who founded it had in founding it was to preserve whatever might relate to that supreme passage in our national experience, which was the result of so many ten- dencies going before, which was felt to be the certain source and cause of so many and such vast influences following after. The Society exists for the purpose for which it is called together this evening, in the persons of its officers and directors, to put into its most choice treasure-house these relics of that great, that prophetic, that memorable struggle. How vast the contrast between the scene in which we are gathered this evening, peaceful and brilliant, and the scenes which are recalled to us by these historical relics which have been presented to us-scenes of twenty years ago! On the 15th of April the President's proclamation calling for seventy-
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five thousand volunteers was published. On the 20th of April, 1861, the order was given to General Duryea to for- ward two .regiments from Brooklyn to the front ; and on the 2Ist-twenty years ago to-day, it falling on a Sunday in that year-collections were taken in the churches of this city to aid in the equipment and the furtherance of the regiments immediately going forward. We remember, all of us, that which followed in those four apocalyptic years-the raising of this regiment and of others; the long suspense; the dreadful fear, when battle was imminent, of those who tarried at home and looked with eyes blinded with tears toward the perilous lines of battle in the distance ; the pain which fol- lowed defeat, the exultation which came after success; the long-protracted and fierce excitements under which so many died at the North-under which so many of the women whose hands had wrought or whose money had purchased this flag fell into graves, stricken by the war as if they had been hit by bullets at the front. We remember the triumph with which the close of the struggle was hailed, and that stroke which fell like a bolt from a clear sky, in the death of the President under whose counsel and administration it had been carried to success, and the silent processions that carried his remains to their resting-place in the West: it seems almost like romance rather than sober history as we recall it all. Reckoning time by experience rather than by the passage of suns across meridians, we might almost remit that period to the middle ages, it seems so remote from us as we sit together in our cheerful prosperity this evening. The contrast on which these flags have looked-which looked once into the mouth of hell from the parapet at Fort Wag- ner or at Cold Harbor, and which now look upon this cheer- ful assembly, gathered in peace, gathered in liberty, full of hope, full of joy, full of exulting memories of the past and of bright expectations-this contrast is hardly greater than that between the scenes which surrounded us then and the scenes which surround us now. Out of the hurricane into the calm we have come. It reminds one of those hamlets,
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
villas, cities, at the foot of Vesuvius. At one time there is the terrific explosion of the volcano hurling its fiery ban- ner into the air and its fiery flood down the slopes, and then there are the human habitations on the hardly-cooled lava, the vineyards in their luxuriance, the olive orchards, and the children sporting in the garden.
And yet, when we think of this contrast, how we are im- pressed by the fact that that which went before was the condition of that which has come after-that they stand related to each other as cause to effect. He whose lips have just closed this pathetic and noble address, delivering to us the custody of these flags, has spoken of the consequences which they foresaw who, twenty years ago, went forth to battle if the government of the Union were not maintained in that critical exigency. And he has not overstated those consequences by a line-by a phrase. All that which he foresaw, and others, would have resulted, must have resulted, except for the valor and the fortitude of these men who stood between the rebellion and its success. Out of that crash of conflict, which was inevitable, has come our liberty and peace. Two glaciers slipping from opposite slopes toward each other do not more surely come into grinding and crash- ing collision than did the two forms of civilization, differing in purpose and aim and theory, which had found simulta- neous place on this continent come into that tremendous strife. Men had foreseen it; and as he saw it, Webster, with his prescience of the future, gave the full energy of his magnificent mind to trying if it were possible to avert or to prevent the contest. It had to come. And only out of that contest, and the victory which it signalized and symbolized to us to-night, have come the joyful peace and the expectant hope of this compacted and triumphant people.
" Purchased by blood !"-yes, so it was well said in the sal- utatory address. That is the august and luminous motto written by the finger of God Himself on the front of the Church of Christ in the world. That is the legend that might be written on every grandest achievement of man in the
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
securing of popular liberty, and the advancement of popular, political, and social progress. " Purchased by blood!" So it will be to the end of history. The Apocalypse shows that things do not melt quietly into the consummated kingdom of God; but they march toward it through terrific crash of conflict.
So it is that they who are before us to-night stand in suc- cession with those who in other countries and centuries have maintained the cause of righteousness and of liberty. They are but a handful as compared with the great host of which they were a part in this our own land. But not merely those hosts are represented by them, but all the illustrious hosts of men who have stood for the truth and for human progress against power and faction since history began. We are overshadowed not merely by these standards to-night. They represent the whole marshalled series of standards and gonfalons which have been borne by those who have bared their breasts to the onset of violence, that they might main- tain the sweet sanctities of home ; that they might maintain the glorious liberties of peoples. with the freedom and equity of governments. (Applause.) We stand here with all this past behind us and with what the future holds in it still to come. The question for us is whether all this struggle in the past, this sacrifice and sorrow in the army and in the homes from which the army went-whether this vanished and precious life which went up to God from the parapet at Wagner and Cold Harbor, from everglade and swamp and sandy beach-whether all this is to have results adequate to compensate for it, a fruitage vast enough for the costly and precious seed. If we get mere wealth in this country out of the war, then the sacrifice was too great. Blood is too costly to buy money. If we get merely the ornaments of civilization, then the sacrifice was too great. Luxury and convenience are too cheap to pay for a single life, like the many heroic lives the record of which has been suggested to us or read before us this evening. We must get something grander and more enduring as the fruit of this vast struggle.
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
It must be not a spirit of hate toward those with whom we then met in armed array, as has been well said.
Your spirit is illustrated in the fact that you place these standards in the custody of a Society which exists to pro- mote the study of history ; for history, as Macaulay said of Westminster Abbey, is "a temple of silence and reconcilia- tion." You go into the Ambras Museum in Vienna, and you see there side by side the battle-axe of Montezuma and the lances and swords, the shields and horse-armor, of the chivalry of Europe which rushed over Mexico. You see there the armor of the Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnese, and the armor of Maurice of Saxony in the adjoining apart- ment : the bronze helmets of Roman soldiers, and the helmet of Maximilian. History gathers these standards, and re- joices to keep them without bitterness of spirit ; and we would recognize as readily the sentiment in those who fought against us in the great conflict if they were gathered around their torn battle-flags and honoring them for the memories which they awakened of courage and endurance in them- selves. We are not to get a spirit of sectional strife out of these symbols of the war. The soldiers on either side re- spected each other more after the war than they had done before. (Applause.) We used to think at the North that the South could talk loudly and fiercely, but would not fight. The South thought that we were too busy speculating in cotton, building railways, starting new factories-too mer- cenary and craven-spirited-to fight. They found their mis- take; we found ours. And wherever any sectional spirit may have its origin hereafter in the history of the country it will not be among the soldiers who wore the blue or wore the gray. (Applause.) But we must get that which is per- manent and fruitful out of the struggle. Part of it we have. The old flag is everywhere supreme from the St. Croix to the Rio Grande-" not a star erased or obscured, and not a stripe polluted." We must have the old institutions and spirit of American freedom equally universal-a free and hon- est ballot everywhere. (Applause.) We must have the race
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FORTY-EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
that won its spurs where you won yours-at Fort Wagner (applause )-lifted into confirmed, recognized, and permanent liberty. every hand that held the bayonet holding the bal- lot -- now (applause) more powerful than the bayonet. We must have the American spirit exalted and reinforced, filled with a loftier patriotism and a nobler hope. That spirit comes out of great crises. It is a mistake to say " blessed is the people which has no history." Blessed, rather, is the people whose history is rough with lofty passages of peril which have been met in a spirit adequate to the greatness of the crisis. In such a people you find no low monotony of life. A lazy man said, when some one asked him how he remembered so many stories, "I don't know; I just heard them here and there, and I was too lazy to take the trouble to forget them." (Laughter.) Men sometimes take great privileges, political and social, inherited from their an- cestors, and enjoy them, simply because they are too lazy to lose them : but the spirit that clutches victory upon the edge of defeat, that rescues freedom when desperately assailed, that rises to the supremacy of self-consecration in defending the grand cause of patriotism and of religion -- that is the spirit which more than mines of wealth, more than a million trains thundering over railways, more than hundreds of thou- sands of factories with their humming wheels. ennobles and glorifies a nation. That spirit comes out of great emergen- cies nobly met. That spirit comes. and must come more and more in the future experience of this people, out of that crisis where you so bravely met the onset of the vehement enemy.
I pray God that the life which was sacrificed and the life which was imperilled may have these magnificent results un- der His superintending and guiding providence. Certainly it shall have it in the advancing and illumined history of the American people, in the perfected liberties made universal, in the grander spirit and temper of this expanding and pow- erful nation. So the influence of those who took part in that struggle shall go on, while these banners continue, in a pros-
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AFTER TWENTY YEARS.
perity tranquil as these pearls in which the legends were wrought upon them, rich as these gold beads in which the arms of the State were blazoned-it shall go on, the influ- ence of those who took part in that struggle, in the exalted spirit of the people. and in the influence of the people upon the world, until God folds up and lays aside His own banner of yonder constellations in the heavens. (Applause.)
Mr. Werrenrath sang the "Star-Spangled Banner," the audience joining in the chorus.
Prayer was then offered and the benediction pronounced by the Rev. Dr. Farley, after which the audience gradually dispersed. A large number met General Gillmore in the li- brary, including all of the veterans, and shook hands with him.
Thus this wonderful night of reunion drew to its close. It can never be repeated. We will never meet again-so many of us-until we meet to answer to the great roll-call above.
One result of that reunion was the organization of a Vet- eran Association of the Forty-eighth New York Volunteers. which has held monthly meetings ever since, and under whose auspices this History has been prepared.
Major Barrett was the President of the Association the first three years, and Lieutenant Acker the fourth year.
The names and addresses of more than three hundred surviving members of the regiment have been ascertained. with whom a correspondence is kept up. Many have been aided in securing pensions and back-pay due them, and situations have been obtained for some. The comrades are widely scattered through almost every State and Territory, and a number live beyond the sea.
About one hundred reside in Brooklyn, New York, and vicinity, and all feel that we are bound together by a last- ing bond of brotherhood.
The twentieth anniversary of "Fort Wagner" was ob-
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:
1 1 1
!
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FORTY. EIGHTH REGIMENT, N. Y. S. VOLS.
served at Glen Island, July 18, 1883, by about sixty of the comrades ; and February 20, 1885, was made the occasion for recalling " Olustee" at a large gathering of the members of the Association at their rooms in Brooklyn.
A reunion of the Forty-seventh and Forty-eighth was held at Coney Island July 30, 1885, that day being the twenty-first anniversary of the battle of the Petersburg mine explosion. It is hoped that similar gatherings will be held from year to year.
The officers of the Veteran Association at this time (1885) are as follows :
GEORGE W. MARTEN, President.
TOM DAWSON, Vice-President.
DAVID B. WHEELER, Secretary.
JAMES A. BARRETT, Treasurer.
GEORGE B. STAYLEY, Treasurer History Fund.
GEORGE W. BRUSH, M.D., Surgeon.
ABRAHAM J. PALMER, Chaplain and Historian.
ROSTER AND RECORD
OF THE
FORTY - EIGHTH REGIMENT,
NEW YORK STATE VOLUNTEERS.
1861-1865.
CONCERNING THE ROSTER AND RECORD.
The Muster-out rolls on file in the Adjutant-General's Office at Albany have served as the basis for the Roster and Record of the Regiment, but they have been found so incomplete and inaccurate that much time and labor have been required in preparing them for publication. They have been compared with the records at Albany and with the printed reports of the Adjutants-General of the State and General governments, and with such other sources of information as have been accessible to the Committee having the work in charge; but not- withstanding all the labor that has been bestowed upon the following pages, they undoubtedly contain many errors-some of them serious and annoying. No one will regret this more than the members of the Committee, but they can plead in extenuation that the best possible service has been rendered with the facilities at their command. The forbearance of all concerned is asked, and that the difficulties under which the work has been done will be borne in mind when this portion of the history passes under review and criticism.
While it is to be regretted that the regimental and company records were not kept with greater care and accuracy, it must be remembered that they werein the hands of many different persons during a period of four years, and that, con- sidering the exigencies and vicissitudes of the service. especially when in the field, it is surprising, rather than otherwise, that they were preserved at all and with any approach to correctness.
EXPLANATIONS .- The four records after each name are, in order : the age at enlistment, the date thereof, the time of leaving the service, and the reason therefor. The date of rank is given with each commission. Blank spaces in- dicate that a part of the record is missing.
ABBREVIATIONS .- Exp'n of service, for expiration of term of service or enlist- ment; Trans. for Transferred; U. S. C. T. for United States Colored Troops; V. for Volunteer: V.V. for Veteran Volunteer; R. for Recruit; S. for Substitute; D. for Drafted.
ROSTER AND RECORD.
FIELD AND STAFF.
COLONELS.
Perry, James H. 49. July 24, '61-June 18, '62. Died of disease at Ft. Pu- laski. Colonel Oct. 26, '61. V.
Barton, William B. 26. July 24, '61-Dec. 3, '64. Exp'n of service. Lieut .- Col. Aug. 21, '61; Colonel June 18, '62. Brevet Brig .- Genl. U. S. V. Wounded at Ft. Wagner and Cold Harbor. V.
Coan. William B. 30. Aug. 8, '61-Sept. I. '65. Muster-out of Regt. Capt. Co. E Aug. 27, '61; Major July 18. '63; Lieut .- Col. June 9, '64; Colonel Dec. 3, '64. Brevet-Col. U. S. V. Wounded at Ft. Wagner, Olustee, and Ft. Fisher. V.
LIEUTENANT-COLONELS.
Beard, Oliver T. 28. July 24, '61-Dec. 24, '62. Resigned. Major Oct. 26, '61; Lieut. Col. June 18, '62. V.
Green, James M. 32. Aug. 5, '61-July 18, '63. Killed in action at Ft. Wag- ner. Capt. Co. F Aug. 31, '61; Major June 18, '62; Lieut .- Col. Dec. 24. '62. V.
Strickland, Dudley W. 23. July 24, '61-June 9, '64. Resigned. Capt. Co. H Aug. 16, '61; Major Dec. 24, '62; Lieut .- Col. July 18, '63. V.
Elfwing, Nere A. 29. Sept. 5, '61-Sept. 1, '65. Muster-out of Regt. Ist Lieut. Co. B Sept. 5, '61: Capt. Aug. 29, '62; Major June 9, '64; Lieut. . Col. Dec. 3, '64 (not mustered). Brevet Lieut .- Col. U. S. V. and Brevet.Col. N. Y. V. Wounded at Ft. Wagner, Olustee, Ft. Fisher, and Wilmington (leg amputated). V.
MAJORS.
Swartwout, Samuel M. 22. Aug. 3, '61-July 30, '64. Killed in action at Pe- tersburg mine explosion. Ist Lieut. Co. I Sept. 14. '61; Capt. Co. F Dec. 24, '62; Major July 6, '64. Wounded at Fort Wagner. V.
Miller, Albert F. 35. Aug. 1, '61-Jan. 13, '65. Discharged, disability. 2d Lieut. Co. K Aug. 16, '61; Ist Lieut. May 6, 62; Capt. July IS. '63; Major Dec. 3, '64 (not mustered). Brevet Lieut .- Col. N. Y. V. Wounded at Ft. Wagner and Cold Harbor. V.
Barrett, James A. 29. July 27, '61-Sept. I. '65. Muster-out of Regt. Pro- moted from Ist Sergt. Co. H to 2d Lieut. Dec. 29, '62; Ist Lieut. July 31, '63; Capt. May 16, '64; Major April 13, '65 (not mustered). Wounded at Ft. Wagner and twice at Cold Harbor. V. ADJUTANTS.
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