Second Lieutenant EDWARD W. HART

Second Lieutenant EDWARD W. HART, was born at Madison, Conn., October 2d, 1844. He was educated at that town except that he spent a single year at the celebrated Williston Seminary, Easthampton, Mass. His home life in Madison was quiet and uneventful, as he was hardly free from school when he enlisted. Yet in the delightful home circle of which he was a member, his tender amiability and Christian principle made him, the only son, very dear to his parents and sisters; and the people of his town have most pleasant recollections of the brave yet gentle lad. Enlisting August 18th, 1862, in Company G, of the 14th, he was made a corporal and mustered into service as such. He followed the fortunes of the regiment through its long and weary marches, and the battles of Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, Bristoe, Auburn, and Mine Run. The only battle he missed was Antietam, he having been left on a sick bed at Fort Ethan Allen a week before. He was made sergeant February 4th, 1863, and November 5th of the same year commissioned second Lieutenant. When the regiment went into camp at Stevensburg, Virginia, he was taken ill, of diphtheria, and removed to the regimental hospital, where, after a short illness, his delicate constitution gave way to the disease, and he died Jan. 2d, 1864. His remains were removed to Madison, and buried there on the 11th of the same month. His fellow soldiers passed appropriate resolutions of respect to his memory, and brief memorials by comrades were published in the New Haven papers, and Brooklyn (N. Y.) Union, and Conn. War Record.

It was my fortune for some time to command the company to which Lieut. Hart was attached, and I can most cheerfully testify that he was ever brave, prompt, and faithful in his duties as an officer, a soldier, a gentleman, and a Christian. Incidents of his gallantry, of his tenderness for his men, of his loathing for meanness of any kind, rise up in my thoughts as I write, but his memory needs no pean from me to be dear to his comrades. I last saw him New Year’s day, 1864, when I found him in the bleak tent that was then our hospital. I said, “Well, Eddy, I hope you will be at home soon.” He replied, with a sad, sweet smile, “I do not think I shall ever be able to reach Connecticut.” I little dreamed that he was then so near the home for which he was so well prepared, and to which his spirit so soon fled. And so we drop a tear on the grave of

“The youngest, the noblest, the bravest of us all.”