Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen:
The generous and grateful care which our State exercises over its veteran
soldiers enables us to-day to consecrate this monument to the One hundred and
fifty-fourth Regiment, New York Volunteers. This gratitude and care are well
deserved. These fields now marked with granite and marble columns, twenty-seven
years ago were trodden by heroes and moistened with their blood. Here the
presumption of the Rebels who helped to carry devastation to Northern fields
hearts and homes received its death blow, and the so-called Confederate States
were to become Confederate ruins. It took many a heroic life afterwards to end
their career, but that end was here, on the first days of July, 1863, doomed and
made certain. It is fit then that this spot, this ground=swell of our Nations
hopes, should be spired heavenward and dedicated to fame, that posterity and the
ages may see and read the proven deeds of their ancestors.
These columns are not erected through any partiality upwards the troops who
fought here, to distinguish them from the brave regiments from our State whose
valor consecrated other fields. Our other regiments and these same troops fought
as courageously upon other fields and enabled us to triumph here. The gratitude
of our State is just as great to all of our soldiers who fought well whether
this was the scene of their exploits, or whether their valor and their lives
consecrated the fields of Yorktown, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville,
Cold Harbor, Petersburg, or Appomattox, or the many glorious fields of the West.
This field was rather selected for these monuments because our victory here was
more marked and certain; the tide of the battle here began to turn. If not the
greatest battle of the war, it was the most decisive, except the final one. It
was the only great battle fought in the North where the consent of the State
authorities and citizens would be willingly given to the protection of the
ground, and where the surrounding sentiment and atmosphere was free and loyal;
and lastly, because easy access to the millions, I trust, who in the future will
come and stand with uncovered heads beneath these monuments and inhale the air
of freedom, of patriotism, and loyalty which hallows this spot.
Comrades of other armies then will not feel aggrieved but proud that fortune
has decreed that these memorials to heroism should be erected here, although
their names and services are not particularly marked in the numbers inscribed
upon these columns; and could our fallen soldiers whose dust is consecrated here
speak a few last words they would say to their comrades, so many of whom, alas,
sleep in strange soil and in unmarked graves, - "Come to me, comrade; my fortune
is your fortune; we marched to the same music; we endured the same hardships; we
shared the same fate; ‘we drank from the same canteen;’ we fell in the same
cause; come sleep with me under my blanket!"
The duty which we perform in coming here to-day is necessary and sad. The
memories of war are mournful. Each heart had its special grief besides the
general mourning. Each battle took away some one or more who were particularity
dear to us. "Death loves a shining mark." Years have hung their curtains around
the graves of our loved ones; the poignant edge of grief has become softened;
but memory comes back to-day laden with many sorrows.
There are some compensations in the soldiers life for its toils and dangers
besides the main one - the performance of duty. The grandest, proudest, most
enthusiastic feeling which can ever visit the heart of man is the moment at the
end of a hard fought field when the enemy finally gives way and surrenders the
field of battle. The Union soldier who witnessed the final repulse and flight of
Longstreets Corps upon this field twenty-seven years ago, can never again
experience the feeling of joy and pride which then thrilled his soul.
If the heavens were beyond the reach of his swelling heart and waving hands,
they were not beyond the sound of his enthusiastic voice; and any anxious
citizen within miles around who could distinguish between the different cheers
of the two armies could not mistake upon which standard the eagle of victory had
finally perched.
Through some mistake, the number of the killed and wounded in the battle are
not correctly stated upon this monument. I am informed that the losses in the
regiment as recorded here were taken from the records of the adjutant general’s
office. Probably these figures were taken from my report of our losses, made
before I had had any communication with members of the regiment captured and in
hospitals, and, therefore without the means of distinguishing the killed and
wounded from the captured. I recollect I was called upon for such a report
immediately after the close of the battle, and the best I could do was to report
the all the missing as captured, unless I knew they were killed or wounded.
There are eleven graves of members of this regiment in the cemetery here at
Gettysburg.* The correct number of our killed and wounded in this memorable
battle I am still unable to state, as I first learned of this error to-day.
Our regiment was unfortunate in the position assigned it, or rather where it
happened to fall, here on this low ground, where nothing could be seen on our
immediate left, or in front of the left wing of the regiment.
Our brigade was composed of four small regiments, reduced probably after the
battle of Chancellorsville to about 1,000 men, and consisting of the One hundred
and fifty-fourth New York, One hundred and
thirty-fourth New York,
Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania and Seventy-third Pennsylvania. From these, 50 men
each had been detailed at daybreak of July 1st, to form an observing party, in
the nature of a picket force, to march along the left flank of our corps upon
its march, to look out for th enemy and prevent surprise. This detail left us
probably not more than 800 men with which we went into action. Of these the
Seventy-third Pennsylvania was held back in reserve, back by the railroad, in
the outskirts of the village. About 3 o’clock we marched from Cemetery Hill down
through the principal street, and out the one running parallel to the one
nearest us, across the open field between, and past the brick house which you
see there; and when the rear of the line had crossed this street we were halted
and came to a front with the One hundred and thirty-fourth on the right in what
was a wheat field then; the One hundred and fifty-fourth in the centre, along
where we stand, and the Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania on the left, out towards the
brick house. This higher ground which you see commencing near where we stand,
and extending on past the brick house across the street beyond, while it
protected the left of our line, also prevented its firing, except obliquely to
the right. Our left ought to have been advanced upon this higher ground where we
could observe the whole movement of the enemy, and doubtless would have been,
except for a strong post and rail fence which occupied the same position as the
present one. The enemy consisting of Earlys whole division came down upon us
almost before we had got in line.
I heard cannon and some musketry firing off in front and to our left as we
marched out under cover of this high ground, and believed that we joined onto
something, so that we would be better protected on our left. Even from the right
of my regiment, where I immediately went as soon as we came to a front and the
firing commenced, I could see nothing of how far the enemy’s right extended on
our left. I relied upon orders for withdrawing the regiment in case we were in
danger of being flanked in that direction. We stopped the enemy and were holding
tem in our front, and I immediately gave orders for my regiment to fall back.
They retreated towards the left. When I reached a position in the rear of where
the Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania had formed, I found that they had been withdrawn
without my knowledge, and that the enemy had outflanked us to a much greater
extent upon our left than on the right; that their line had advanced unopposed
down the road and across the open field beyond. The ground directly in rear of
the position which we had occupied was cut up into village lots surrounded by
board fences, so that retreat was greatly impeded in that direction. The men
being almost entirely surrounded by the enemy, who outnumbered them more than
five to one and were right in their midst, many of our men were compelled to
surrender.
After the battle I was informed that the brigade commander sent
an order for the One hundred and fifty-fourth and the One hundred thirty-fourth
to retreat at the same time he withdrew the Twenty-seventh Pennsylvania. This
order I did not receive. It was very unfortunate that I did not, as I had
confidently relied upon receiving such an order incase there arose unusual
danger from the direction I could not see.
Now, to you gentlemen, Commissioners of the Memorial Association, we present
this monument. The trust is sacred. It represents the best endeavor of 1,000
men, the blood of 300 patriots who died during their term of service upon fields
of battle, in hospitals, or in prisons; and, "He who marks the sparrows fall"
alone can tell, what long years of anxiety, of tears of sorrow, and finally of
broken hearts, of the widowed and the fatherless. I will not lift the veil which
time has woven around mourning hearts and vacant hearthstones. I trust the kind
Providence
who knows them so well will make then His special care. All you can do is to
preserve well this, their memorial which we now in trust to your keeping.
Source:
New York at Gettysburg:
Final Report on the Battle of
Gettysburg
(Albany: JB Lyon
CO, Printer, 1900. Page 1047 - 1052)