[O]ur regiment receives a new stand of colors. The colors we carried through the battles of Fort Donelson and Shiloh are now so mutilated that we are unable to carry them any longer. They will be sent to Springfield to be laid away in their glory, and while they thus rest from battle and storm, back with Illinois' great loyal people, may they ever remember as they gaze upon its hallowed ribbons, the noble ones who went down while its rents and scars were being made; whose lamps of life flickered out while wrathful storms were sweeping along the shores of the Cumberland and the Tennessee, and over the fields of Mississippi; remember that while it was swung in its glory the noble hearts of Captains Mendell and Ward, Lieutenants Myres and Estabrook, Sergeants Wheeler and Mitchell, Corporals William Boring, Seth Hamilton and Nixon, Privates Charles Newton, John Fifer, Andrew McKennon, John Teft, Richard Lamherdt, Isaac Britton, John H. Duff, John Gibland, Ole Porter, Peter Miller, John H. Hopper and others ceased their loyal throbbings for ever. They loved that old banner, made so hallowed on fields of blood. It was the pride of their hearts; for it they lived, for it they died. Those shot-riven folds will speak to the loyal people in a silent language, telling them a thrilling story—a story, the letters of which have been written in blood. We send them back to the good people from whence they came, hoping that the story they tell will find an entrance into their loyal hearts and cause it to start a tear to the memory of those who went down beneath its folds.
SOURCE: Daniel Leib Ambrose, History of the Seventh Regiment Illinois Volunteer Infantry, p. 82-3
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