MEMORIAL
of
Deceased Officers
of the
FOURTEENTH REGIMENT,
By Henry P. Goddard,
Late Captain Company B,
Fourteenth Regiment,
“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
CASE, LOCKWOOD & BRAINARD.
1872.
To
The Living Officers and Men of the
Old Fourteenth
I dedicate
This Memorial of our Dear Ones
“MUSTERED OUT.”
PREFACE.
The Fourteenth
Connecticut Regiment was mustered into service August 23, 1862. Participating in
twenty-six general engagements and the long siege of
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.
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.
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.”