THE WAUPACA REPUBLICAN

September 9, 1892

 

WHEN THEY WERE BOYS.

The Grand Army Will Celebrate Real Old Times

 

“ON TO WASHINGTON!” THE CRY.

 

A Retrospect of Their First Trip to the Capital – Scenes That Lie Beyond. 

The Crack Regiments That Earned Immortal Fame on Eastern Battlefields.

{Copyright, 1892, by American Press Association.)

 

            Sept. 20 the veterans will meet to live the war days over on the banks of the Potomac.  They will glide over the course to the grand encampment in parlor coachers, they will float there in palace steamers, and even couch their rheumatic limbs in the downy berths of those supreme luxuries of the age – hotel card – feasting at will, sleeping when the fit takes them, and awakening from dreams as charming as an Oriental’s vision to hear the train call, “Washington!”  Then they will rub their eyes, pinch their flesh and hunt through their clothes for mementos to identify themselves, for all will be so strange.  When they were boys they joked about rooms bespoken at Willard’s or the Spottswood, the swell wartime hostelries of Washington and Richmond.  Now they will be honored guests in quarters that are kingly in contrast with those noted models, and will have the keys to a city where splendor paints the air with a royal tinge.

            In 1861 they were happy to secure a bench in a boxcar, and thought nothing of riding the bumpers and holding on to the brakemen’s ladders.  Anything above an open flat car was a prize, and they would even be thankful for standing room in one of them as a means of getting to the eat of war somehow, or, if put to a pinch, go afoot and not grumble at bad walking.  Once there was a berth on the pavement was a stroke of fortune, for a bed in the mud was a common lot, while a strip of sward 6 feet by 2 on Capital Green was elegance itself.

            Very modest and timid at first about taking liberties in the holy city, their shyness vanish-ed in a day or two and Washington, that didn’t press honors and cheer upon them contained nothing too good for their eyes for the men who were to save it.  They made a cooking camp on the grounds around the treasury, bivouacked under the overhanging scaffolds of the Capitol ro-tundra and in the chambers and committee rooms of congress.  Groups of mild eyed but savage clad Zouaves picketed the streets and squares, picturesque reminders that the much decried mili-tary power was for once on top.  Fremont, the ex-pioneer and explorer, and Little Mac, the ex-railroad builder, riding down Pennsylvania avenue, the one in his wild west trappings, the other in his trim, simple, regular army clothes, gave notice that the nation had suspended the chase after the almighty dollar to go gunning for marplots.

            The social entertainment of the boys at the capital in 1861 was as informal and primitive as their fare.  Guests of the republic’s court residence and invited there to defend it, they were obliged to help themselves to a smack of Washington life, yet even in that manner saw something to recall at this date for their children and grandchildren.  They clambered over builders’ debris on the Capitol plaza, dodged among scaffoldings and derricks that encumbered the way around porticos, galleries and corridors, querying whether the mammoth pile was ever to be finished and serve its true purpose.

            They haunted the navy yard and arsenal to see how solid Uncle Sam might be in thunder making supplies, roamed through the Smithsonian and patent office, eyed the treasury and war buildings with awe or with skepticism, according as pay days were prompt or languishing and battles good or bad for our side.  They scoured the town looking for ducal parks and palaces in their innocence, and at last voted the place a worm eaten, ramshackle village, then pulled their war enthusiasm up to the fighting point by elbowing through the crowds to shake “Father Abram’s” hand and congratulate the nation, while commiserating the sad eyed martyr that he was in the president’s chair.

            This trip public spirited Washington will look after their good cheer in a way to set their eyes agog, and once more they’ll look back thirty years, with the exclamation, “Is this Washing-ton?” or, “Am I myself or some other fellow?”  In some respects the great contrasts will be reversed.  The parade on Pennsylvania avenue to commemorate the grand review of 1865 will lack nothing in enthusiasm, though the color of the great original can never be reproduced.  It will be a renewal of youth to every man in the Grand Army line.  Then when the last tattoo sounds beside the Potomac’s shore the plodding pilgrimage will begin to scenes of other memories.  Washington recalls the victory, the glory; the battlefields beyond recall the deeds that purchased both.  On that pilgrimage two columns will join their marches, our Grand Army and the Grand Army gone before, that ghostly column the poet had in vision when he wrote:

And I saw a phantom army come

With never a sound of fife or drum,

But keeping step to a muffled hum

Of wailing and lamentation.

 

The martyred heroes of Malvern Hill,

Of Gettysburg and Chancellorsville –

The men whose wasted bodies fill

The patriot graves of the nation.

* * *

All night long moved the strange array,

And all night long till the break of day

Watched for one who had passed away,

With reverent awe and wonder,

Till a blue cap waved in the lengthening line

And I knew that one who was kin of mine had come.

* * *

            When that march begins the old army will materialize into regiments, brigades and corps out of the posts of the G.A.R.

            While going the rounds from Cemetery Hill to Five Forks, let there be a new canoniza-tion – a calling out of the forty immortals of the Army of the Potomac, the forty infantry regi-ments whose dead on those fields scored above 200 killed in battle.  There are just forty of them and in state lines knew no east nor west.  New Hampshire heads the list of these crack regiments with the famous “Fighting Fifth,” that scored a death roll on the field of 295.  Pennsylvania fol-lows with the Eighty-third’s death roll of 282.  Ten other Keystone regiments appear in this list, the One Hundred and Fifth, that lost 245; the Sixty-first, 237; the Eleventh, 236; the Forty-fifth, 227; the One Hundredth, 224; the One Hundred and Forty-eighth, 210; the Eighty-first, 208; the Fifty-fifth, also 208; the One Hundred and Forty-fifth, 205; and the Fifty-third, 200.

            The third place on the list is held by Wisconsin, with the Seventh, that lost 281.  The Sixth Wisconsin has a place lower down, with 244 for a record of killed, and the Second Wisconsin is close to that, with 238.

            Michigan is in the fourth place, next following her sister state.  Her Fifth regiment lost 263.  Five other Michigan regiments have places – the Sixteenth, with 247; the Twenty-seventh, 225; the Second, also 225; the Eighth, 223; and the Seventh, 208.

            Massachusetts comes fifth on the list, with the Twentieth regiment at 260.  Just below is the Twenty-eighth, with 250, and down the line the Fifteenth, with 241; the Twenty-second, with 216; the Ninth, with 209; and the Fifty-seventh, 201.

            New York that shed more heart’s blood than any other state, because she had more – but she did give it – New York comes in for the sixth place, and that is held by the gallant Sixty-ninth (Irish), with a roll of 259 killed.  The Empire State appears again with the Fortieth (Mozart regi-ment), scoring 238; the One Hundred and Twenty-first, 226; the One Hundred and Eleventh, 220; and the Fifty-first, 202.

            New Jersey holds the twelfth place on the list, the seventh to eleventh being taken by re-giments named with their state leader.  The Fifteenth New Jersey lost 240 killed.

            Vermont has her first honor in the twenty-third place, with the Second, that lost 221 killed; the Fifth lost 208; the Third, 206, and the Sixth, 203.

            These four regiments, together with the Fourth Vermont, formed the famous Vermont brigade, that lost more men killed on the field than any other brigade in the army, east or west.

            Maine scores one in the thirty-second place, the Seventh, that lost 207.  But she is at the head in two other lists of crack regiments noted below.

            Connecticut is thirty-fifth, with the Fourteenth, that lost 205, and Indiana is thirty-eighth, with the Twentieth, that lost 201.

            Another band of immortals that fought over the bloody ground of the Potomac is the nine regiments of heavy artillery that scored records of over 200 killed.  They were all recruited for garrison duty, and went to the front in 1864.  Their losses were remarkable, because they nearly all occurred within ninety days, in the battles of May, June and July, at Spottsylvania, Cold Har-bor and Petersburg.  The list is headed by the First Maine, with its 423 killed.  Next follows the Eighth New York, with 361.  The Empire State has four other representatives in the band – the Seventh, with 291 killed; the Fourteenth, with 226; the Second, with 214, and the Ninth, with 204.  The Second Connecticut lost 254, the First Massachusetts 241, and the Second Pennsylvan-ia, 233.

            It is popularly supposed that heavy artillery regiments had more men to expose to the enemy’s bullets than did the infantry, and for that reason cannot fairly rival the latter in a compar-ison of losses.  Here are three facts bearing on that point.  The forty immortals in the infantry of the Army of the Potomac are led by the Fifth New Hampshire, which carried 2,500 men on its rolls, and 295 of them were killed.  The Seventh New York Heavy artillery carried less than 2,700 men on its rolls, and 291 of them were killed. That is about even, allowing for all contingencies.  But the Eighth New York pulls the artillerymen ahead by a long reach.  It carried less than 2,600 men on its rolls, and 361 of them were killed.  In other words, with only eighty more men on its rolls its killed numbered sixty-six more than the New Hampshire infantry lost.

            Now for the immortals on horseback.  The nine cavalry regiments of the Union that lost over 100 men killed in battle belonged to the Army of the Potomac and rode to the charge and raid in the narrow strip between the Susquehanna and the James.  Maine heads this band also, and with its First Cavalry and a score of 174 killed.  Michigan follows, with three claimants in rota-tion – the First, with 164; the Fifth, with 141; and the Sixth, with 135.

            Vermont claims a place in this list with its First cavalry, that scored 134.New York has two names on the roll, her First Dragoons, that lost 130, and the Second cavalry, that lost 121.  New Jersey is represented by her First cavalry, with 128 killed, and Pennsylvania by the Eleventh regiment, with 119.  The troopers won their honors by hard fighting, where Kilpatrick, Custer, Gregg, Torbert, Wilson and Kautz led them against Stuart, Hampton, Rosser and the Lees.

            Another band of immortals whose honors belong to the Potomac field comprises the ten regiments that suffered the heaviest in killed, counting percentages on the number enrolled.  The first three lost over 19 per cent .. or about one in every five enrolled.  These were the Second Wisconsin, 19.7 per cent; the First Maine Heavy artillery, 19.2 per cent; and the Fifty-seventh Massachusetts, 19.1 per cent.  The One Hundred and Fortieth Pennsylvania lost 17.4 per cent; the Seventh and the Twenty-sixth Wisconsin, each 17.2 per cent; and the Sixty-ninth New York, 17.1 per cent; the killed in these four regiments being about one in six of those enrolled. In the remain-ing three of this immortal tent he loss was about one in seven of the enrollment.  They were all Pennsylvania, the Eleventh scoring 16.6 per cent; the One Hundred and Forty-second, 16.5; and the One Hundred and Forty-first, 16.1 per cent.

            Last and greatest of all, when the supreme test is applied, come the immortal five regi-ments that lost in killed in single battles a proportion considerably greater than one to five of the number engaged.  These five made their remarkable records on the eastern fields.  At the top stands the First Minnesota, which in a charge at Gettysburg left 28 per cent of its men dead or mortally wounded.  The Fifteenth New Jersey left 24 per cent, of its fighting strength dead or dying at Spottsylvania, and two weeks later, at Cold Harbor, the Twenty-fifth Massachusetts dropped 24 per cent of its men in front of a single breastwork.  The One Hundred and Forty-first Pennsylvania also lost 24 per cent in the Peach Orchard fight at Gettysburg.

            The fifth in this list is the famous Duryea’s Zouaves, that lost 23 per cent in one dash at Second Bull Run.  Its death roll was 117, the highest in any Union regiment in a single battle during the war.  Every unit in all these startling numbers represents a hero, and it is not getting very close to the individual to simply name a regiment’s total.  But to his comrades each brave boy will seem to stand in line and answer “Here!” on the very ground where his young life was given to his country.

GEORGE L. KILMER.