MEMORIAL
of
Deceased Officers
of the
FOURTEENTH REGIMENT,
CONNECTICUT VOLUNTEERS.
By Henry P. Goddard,
Late Captain Company B, Fourteenth Regiment, Connecticut Volunteers.
“We think with imperious questionings,
Of the brothers we have lost
And we strive to track, in death’s mystery,
The flight of each valiant ghost.”
* * * * *
“No fear for them! In our lower field
Let us toil with arms unstained,
Till at last we be worthy to stand with them
On the shining heights they’ve gained.
We shall meet and greet in closing ranks,
In Time’s declining sun,
When the bugles of God shall sound recall,
And the battle of Life be won!”
JOHN HAY.
Published by request of the Fourteenth Regimental Union
HARTFORD:
CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD.
1872.
To
The Living Officers and Men of the
Old Fourteenth
I dedicate
This Memorial of our Dear Ones
“MUSTERED OUT.”
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PREFACE. |
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The Fourteenth Connecticut Regiment was mustered into service August 23, 1862. Participating in twenty-six general engagements and the long siege of Richmond, it was mustered out, May 31, 1865. During these two years and nine months there were killed in action 132; died of wounds, 65; died of disease, 169; missing, 6; discharged prior to muster out, (nearly all for disability contracted in the service,) 416. This makes a total of 788 casualties in a regiment that left the State with 1,015 men, which number was subsequently increased by recruits to 1,726.
Of commissioned officers the regiment lost twenty during and six since the war, all but one of whom owe their deaths directly or indirectly to the service. In the following pages brief memorial sketches of these officers will be found. Could it have been, I would gladly have printed here a sketch of the dead of rank and file also, but no record has been kept, and it is now impossible. But the figures given above tell their story more eloquently than I could have done. No record of commissions issued, no personal mention in official reports, no detailed biographies preserve their memories, yet the highest of earthly honor is theirs, in that they gave up homes and loved ones, not for glory, not for personal advancement, but for Freedom and for Fatherland. In compiling these sketches, I have been struck with the extreme youth of most of our officers. The oldest at death was Lieut. Emery who died at forty-four, though but thirty-five when he enlisted. Capt. Willard who enlisted and died at thirty-nine, was the oldest at muster-in. The youngest at death was Lieut. Hart, aged nineteen years and three months, though Capt. Bartlett who survived him a year and died at nineteen years and seven months was the youngest of us all, enlisting as a private on his seventeenth birth-day, and winning his way to a captaincy in two and a half years.
In the preparation of these memorials the writer has been greatly assisted by several of his old comrades, and by relatives of the deceased. To Mrs. Gen. Joseph R. Hawley he is especially indebted for the sketch of her brother, Lieut. Foote.
H. P. G. Hartford. Conn.. Sept. 17, 1872.
Click on the names below to read the Memorial for each Officer Second Lieutenant GEORGE H. CROSBY Second Lieutenant DAVID E. CANFIELD Second Lieutenant WILLIAM A. COMES First Lieutenant THEODORE A. STANLEY Second Lieutenant EDWARD W. HART First Lieutenant FREDERICK E. SCHALK First Lieutenant HENRY W. WADHAMS Second Lieutenant JAMES M. MOORE First Lieutenant PERKINS BARTHOLOMEW Captain JAMES R. NICKELS (NICHOLS) Second Lieutenant JOHN T. BRADLEY Captain (afterwards Colonel) THEODORE (THOMAS) F. BURPEE First Lieutenant IRA A. GRAHAM Second Lieutenant GEORGE AUGUSTUS FOOTE, Jr.
CONCLUSION.
In closing this memorial of our dead, now that ten years have flown since that sunny August afternoon when with glistening bayonets, the Fourteenth, a thousand strong, issued forth from Camp Foote, with its glorious colors flying, marched clown the streets of Hartford to the music of its own splendid band and filed on board the steamers that bore us down the beautiful Connecticut on our way to the front, the memory of the two years and nine months that followed rises like a vision before me. Marches, bivouacs, and battle-fields, crowd fast upon each other until they culminate in that happy April day at Appomattox, when the war was finished and the handful left of the dear old Regiment witnessed the fruition of all our hopes, in the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to the patient, long-suffering, persistent Army of the Potomac.
In this review the faces of our dead lads, for in the main they were but youths, come up in silent sadness, and as they pass in succession it is hard to think of the lives so full of hope and promise so suddenly cut short. Yet as we reflect upon what they accomplished in their lives and by their deaths for country, for freedom, and for God, we can in these bright days of peace and plenty take heart again and remember that while their work is done, their record finished, the world lies all before us, their survivors, and that whatever of happiness or of suffering, of prosperity or adversity, of successful achievement or disappointed hope, time has brought us in these quick-passing years there is work to be done, hard earnest work upon the battle-field of life for all who will be loyal to the old watchword of duty. Hence we may rather rejoice than mourn that these brave ones have fought their battle, winning the victory.
“What is worth living for is worth dying for too, And therefore all honor brave hearts unto you Who have fallen, that Freedom, more fair by your death, A pilgrim may walk where your blood on her path Leads her steps to your graves.” |
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