Fair Oaks. General Porter's artillery had quite an engagement. In the afternoon the whole of the Second corps got ready for action. Our battery was harnessed up. The infantry of Richardson's division advanced under cover of two light batteries. The engagement was of short duration. Our loss, one hundred and seventy, killed and wounded, all of Richardson's division. General McClellan was present.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 47
Fair Oaks. The enemy lost nearly four hundred men in yesterday's engagement.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 47
Fair Oaks. Heavy skirmishing along the whole line.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 48
Fair Oaks. The whiskey rations are countermanded to-day. During the night we were called under arms five times, the rebels making repeated attacks on the railroad.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 48
Quiet along the line.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 48
Fair Oaks. Short engagement on the railroad. Thunder shower at night.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 48
Fair Oaks. The enemy attacked at two o'clock A. М.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 48
Heavy engagement near Old Church, lasting all day. Heintzleman's corps engaged. Our loss, one thousand men.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 48
Fair Oaks. Battle of Gaines' Farm. General Fitz John Porter was attacked on the north side of the Chickahominy this morning. The battle was going on till nine o'clock P. M., with great fury, when General Porter drove the enemy, as could be seen from our position. The peal of artillery was terrible, and the sky at night in a constant blaze. Great cheering along our line at ten o'clock in the night. All the bands playing national airs.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 48
Fair Oaks. Battle of Gaines' Mills. Stonewall Jackson opened the battle this morning with overpowering numbers against General Porter. We could see from our position how the rebels drove Porter's troops from one position to the other. They are already fighting near Coal Harbor. General McClellan ordered General Sumner to hold his position at all hazards. By twelve o'clock A. M. we were attacked by the rebels with great determination. Four batteries opened on our centre and Smith's division, but were finally repulsed. General Porter is utterly defeated. Meagher's Irish brigade went to cover his retreat. Troops are marching and countermarching all night. Great cheering within the rebel lines.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, pp. 48-9
Fair Oaks. Our centre was attacked again this morning at ten o'clock. The enemy was handsomely repulsed, leaving one hundred and fifty, killed and wounded, inside our lines, Colonel Lamar, of Georgia, among the latter. Our situation is very critical, our right flank being turned. General Porter lost nine thousand men and twenty-four guns, and is crossing Bottoms' Bridge. The rebels occupy White House Landing. Towards evening, all the baggage teams were sent away, and all surplus ammunition, arms and commissary stores destroyed. The army is preparing to retreat. A part of the Second corps had already left, when orders arrived that our position must be held. A deep gloom is prevailing over the whole army.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, p. 49
Evacuation of Fair Oaks. At three o'clock A. M. orders came for us to leave as quick as possible. Smith's division had already fallen back two miles, which movement completely exposed our right flank. The rebels followed at our very heels. After marching a mile, General Sumner hastily formed a line of battle, crossing the railroad. We were not held long in inactivity. The rebels, in command of Magruder, soon attacked with three brigades of infantry and three batteries. This fight bears the name of battle of Peach Orchard. Our battery was in close action, supported by General French's brigade. Pettit's New York eight gun battery, was sent to our assistance towards three o'clock P. M. By General Sumner's skilful manœuvring we were enabled to fall back to Savage Station, leaving the dead and wounded behind. At the latter place, half of the Potomac army was drawn up in line of battle. The quantity of ammunition and stores at that place was immense. (Who would not remember the great explosion of the railroad train at Bottoms' Bridge.) About five o'clock P. M., the battle of Savage Station commenced, and kept on until late at night with great desperation. Our battery was within dangerous range of the enemy's fire, but not engaged. About nine o'clock, we fell back to the White Oak Swamp, arriving there at midnight.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, pp. 49-50
Battle of Glendale Farm. This battle is known by five different names: White Oak Swamp, Glendale Farm, Golding's Farm, Turkey Bend, and of Charles City Road. At daybreak we formed in line of battle. The enemy appeared shortly after. The battle opened at different points. (Every one recollects the delay of our retreat on that day, in covering our extensive trains, which occupied seventeen miles length of road.) At three o'clock P. M. the rear of the trains passed by, just in time, as we were attacked immediately after. The battle lasted until night. Sergeant Hammond, Seidlinger, and Slocum were wounded. Battery B, Pennsylvania Artillery, was taken by the rebels, right in our front. The gunboats participated in the battle. We fell back at midnight, leaving our dead and wounded on the field. Our battery carried their wounded off, but left one caisson behind, a lynchpin giving way. No other could be found during the excitement.
SOURCE: Theodore Reichardt, Diary of Battery A, First Regiment Rhode Island Light Artillery, pp. 50-1
MR. CHAIRMAN: I have
been struck with one fact, that the best orators who have added their praise to
his fame and I need not go out of this house to find the purest eloquence in
the country — have one rival who comes off a little better, and that is John
Brown. Every thing that is said of him leaves people a little dissatisfied; but
as soon as they read his own speeches and letters they are heartily contented
such is the singleness of purpose which justifies him to the head and the heart
of all. Taught by this experience, I mean, in the few remarks I have to make,
to cling to his history, or let him speak for himself.
John Brown, the
founder of liberty in Kansas, was born in Torrington, Litchfield County, Conn.,
in 1800. When he was five years old his father emigrated to Ohio, and the boy
was there set to keep sheep, and to look after cattle, and dress skins; he went
bareheaded and barefooted, and clothed in buckskin. He said that he loved rough
play, could never have rough play enough; could not see a seedy hat without
wishing to pull it off. But for this it needed that the playmates should be
equal; not one in fine clothes and the other in buckskin; not one his own
master, hale and hearty, and the other watched and whipped. But it chanced that
in Pennsylvania, where he was sent by his father to collect cattle, he fell in
with a boy whom he heartily liked, and whom he looked upon as his superior.
This boy was a slave; he saw him beaten with an iron shovel, and otherwise
maltreated; he saw that this boy had nothing better to look forward to in life,
whilst he himself was petted and made much of; for he was much considered in
the family where he then stayed, from the circumstance that this boy of twelve
years had conducted alone a drove of cattle a hundred miles. But the colored
boy had no friend, and no future. This worked such indignation in him that he
swore an oath of resistance to Slavery as long as he lived. And thus his
enterprise to go into Virginia and run off five hundred or a thousand slaves,
was not a piece of spite or revenge, a plot of two years or of twenty years,
but the keeping of an oath made to heaven and earth forty-seven years before.
Forty-seven years at least, though I incline to accept his own account of the
matter, at Charlestown, which makes the date a little older, when he said,
"This was all settled millions of years before the world was made."
He grew up a
religious and manly person in severe poverty; a fair specimen of the best stock
of New England; having that force of thought and that sense of right which are
the warp and woof of greatness. Our farmers were Orthodox Calvinists, mighty in
the Scriptures; had learned that life was a preparation, a "probation"
to use their word, for a higher world, and was to be spent in loving and
serving mankind.
Thus was formed a
romantic character absolutely without any vulgar trait; living to ideal ends,
without any mixture of self-indulgence or compromise, such as lowers the value
of benevolent and thoughtful men we know; abstemious, refusing luxuries, not
sourly and reproachfully, but simply as unfit for his habit; quiet and gentle
as a child in the house. And, as happens usually to men of romantic character,
his fortunes were romantic. Walter Scott would have delighted to draw his
picture and trace his adventurous career. A shepherd and herdsman, he learned
the manners of animals, and knew the secret signals by which animals
communicate. He made his hard bed on the mountains with them; he learned to
drive his flock through thickets all but impassable; he had all the skill of a
shepherd by choice of breed, and by wise husbandry to obtain the best wool, and
that for a course of years. And the anecdotes preserved show a far-seeing skill
and conduct which, in spite of adverse accidents, should secure, one year with
another, an honest reward, first to the farmer, and afterwards to the dealer.
If he kept sheep, it was with a royal mind; and if he traded in wool, he was a
merchant prince, not in the amount of wealth, but in the protection of the
interests confided to him.
I am not a little
surprised at the easy effrontery with which political gentlemen, in and out of
Congress, take it upon them to say that there are not a thousand men in the
North who sympathize with John Brown. It would be far safer and nearer the
truth to say that all people, in proportion to their sensibility and
self-respect, sympathize with him. For it is impossible to see courage, and
disinterestedness, and the love that casts out fear, without sympathy.
All women are drawn
to him by their predominance of sentiment. All gentlemen, of course, are on his
side. I do not mean by "gentlemen," people of scented hair and
perfumed handkerchiefs, but men of gentle blood and generosity, "fulfilled
with all nobleness," who, like the Cid, give the outcast leper a share of
their bed; like the dying Sidney, pass the cup of cold water to the wounded
soldier who needs it more. For what is the oath of gentle blood and knighthood?
What but to protect the weak and lowly against the strong oppressor?
Nothing is more
absurd than to complain of this sympathy, or to complain of a party of men
united in opposition to Slavery—As well complain of gravity, or the ebb of the
tide. Who makes the Abolitionist? The Slaveholder. The sentiment of mercy is
the natural recoil which the laws of the universe provide to protect mankind
from destruction by savage passions. And our blind statesmen go up and down,
with committees of vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new
heresy. They will need a very vigilant committee indeed to find its birthplace,
and a very strong force to root it out. For the arch-Abolitionist, older than
Brown, and older than the Shenandoah Mountains is Love, whose other name is
Justice, which was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before Slavery, and will be
after it.
SOURCE: James
Redpath, Editor, Echoes of Harper’s Ferry, pp. 119-22
REGIMENT!
100 MEN WANTED!
To fill the Ranks of the 25th Reg’t Mich. Infantry, commanded by
COL. O. H. MOORE.
This Regiment is now in winter quarters at Bowling Green, Kentucky, in comfortable barracks. It is pronounced by Hon. J. J. Crittenden, and other eminent loyal Kentuckians to be the best disciplined, finest appearing and most orderly regiment that has ever crossed the Ohio River. It stands deservedly high in the service, and for those who desire to serve their country through patriotic motives, no better corps can be founded in which to serve than this
PAY & BOUNTIES:
TO EACH RECRUIT WILL BE PAID THE FOLLOWING:
|
Government Bounty, |
$100,00 |
|
Monthly Pay, per
month, |
13,00 |
|
Stock Bounty (now
being provided |
50,00 |
|
Premium |
2,00 |
Under the conscription bill about to be passed it is presumed that not less than 600,000 additional men will be called for. Michigan’s quota will not be far from 20,000. Let us hope that for the honor and glory of our gallant State, her citizens will spare no effort to raise these men AS VOLUNTEERS, and that none of her sons will be obliged to serve in the ranks as CONSCRIPTS. The Government needs the services of all our loyal men. Let us cheerfully give those that are asked. Persons desirous of enlisting in this favorite regiment will apply
Office in _____________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________
February 28, 1863
Telegraph Job Print
SOURCE: Photograph of poster provided by Bruce Mulder.
Organized at St. Joseph, Mo., March 1 to April 14 1865. Stationed at St. Louis, and in the Dept. of Missouri. Mustered out August 31, 1865.
Regiment lost during service 2 Enlisted men killed and 47 Enlisted men by disease. Total 49.
SOURCE: Frederick H.
Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part 3, p. 1338
Operations in Carroll, Ray and Livingston Counties July 27-August 4, 1862. Duty in Lafayette County. Affairs in Jackson and Lafayette Counties November 26-29, 1862. Duty in 7th Military District, Dept. of Missouri, August, 1864. At Albany, Ray County, June 7, 1864.
SOURCE: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part 3, p. 1338
Operations in Ray and Carroll Counties August 12-16, 1864. Skirmish Fredericksburg August 12. Albany, Ray County, October 26, 1864.
SOURCE: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part 3, p. 1338
Failed to complete organization.
SOURCE: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part 3, p. 1338
Called into service September 25, 1864, to repel Price's invasion of Missouri. Relieved from active service October 31, 1864.
SOURCE: Frederick H. Dyer, A Compendium of the War of the Rebellion, Part 3, p. 1338
