Franklin County: "77th Reunion Address," by Capt. G. W. Skinner, November 8, 1870
Summary: This address was delivered before the 77th PA Volunteers at a reunion. It recounts their deeds, describes the burning of Chambersburg, and at the end calls for reunification in affection as well as theory.
ADDRESS OF CAPT. G. W. SKINNER
Delivered Before the Reunion of the Survivors of the 77th Pa. Vet. Vols., at Chambersburg, on the 6th of October, 1870.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Comrades of the 77th: It is as much a matter of regret to me as it can possibly be to you, that the gentleman first selected to deliver this address could not perform that duty. With considerable experience as a public speaker and being possessed of more than ordinary ability, I doubt not any effort on his part would have met your expectations more fully that I hope to do.-Not knowing till within the last few days that Col. Pyfer would not be here, and that I was to take his place, my opportunities for preparation have not been as great as I could have desired. I shall give you what few points of interest and such thoughts as I have been able to call together, within this very limited space of time, asking you to pardon me anything that, to you, may seem amiss.
On the 12th day of April, 1861, that fearful civil war, which had for so many months been portending, unclasped its purple leaves at Sumpter. Dark as were the clouds which in these months had hung over our country's Southern horizon, our people were as yet unprepared for the shock of battle. Though fearful, they had not actually believed until then that the differences, which ambitious men and designing politicians had created between sections, were to be wiped out in blood. The immediate causes of the war, I shall not attempt to discuss at all to-day. Suffice it for the occasion to say that it came upon us in the shape of a war between the two great sections of the country-the North and the South. -Whatever may have been the opinions of parties here in the North prior to that time, it was almost unanimously agreed upon after the bombardment of Sumpter, that the rebellion should be quelled. The Flag of our Union had been assailed, and from every section of the North there went up the cry "To Arms." Companies and Regiments were speedily formed. States vied with one another in their haste to succor the cause of our imperilled country. Pennsylvania, true to her instincts and true to her own proud position as the "Keystone of the Federal arch," proved herself first among the foremost in this patriotic work. She sent forth regiment after regiment of brave, gallant fellows, and in October, 1861, nine years ago she sent the 77th. I know I will be pardoned when I say that of all the regiments she sent forth there was no braver and better one, than this, whose surviving representatives are met here to-day, to renew the associations of the years of arduous, dangerous service through which they have passed. Briefly as possible let its history speak for itself. On the 1st day of August, 1861, Col. Stumbaugh, who presides here to-day, received authority from the department of war to recruit the regiment. A camp of rendezvous was first established at this place, which was afterwards transferred to Pittsburgh, when the regiment was mustered for service on the 11th of October. On the 18th of October it was transported to Louisville, by way of the Ohio river; thence to Nolin's river, where it encamped for several weeks. Here it was assigned to General Buell's army, and participated with it in the advance on Nashville. From Nashville it advanced in the direction of Savannah, Tenn., where the division to which it belonged-General M'Cooks', arrived on the night of the 6th of April, 1862. Its march that day was hurried on by the booming of cannon ahead, which told plainly enough that a battle was raging somewhere along the line of the Tennessee river. Arrived at Savannah, the news came to us that General Grant and his forces, were in sore peril on the field of Shiloh.-Part of Buell's forces reached the scene of action that evening and the remainder were hurried forward during the night through a most pittiless and pelting storm. The 77th arrived on the field of conflict at 8 o'clock on the morning of the 7th. Although not warmly engaged, it was brought under fire several times during the day. The loss of the regiment in the fight was 3 killed and 7 wounded. It was the only Pennsylvania regiment engaged in that battle.
After Shiloh it participated in the siege of Corinth; then in that long, wearisome race between Bragg and Buell to Louisville. It was at Stone River when that battle began, and to a member of the 77th belongs the honor of firing the first shot in the fight. All day long on the 31st of December, it was engaged, and lost heavily. Many of its bravest men were killed and wounded and some of its best officers. It was there that Col. Housum fell at the head of the regiment. Brave gallant fellow, he met the stern messenger of death with that same coolness and inflexible courage which had characterized every other act of his life. I speak no words of superfluous praise here to-day when I say that he was one of the most honorable of men, one of the best of commanders, and one of the bravest of soldiers. Over his grave, in yonder cemetery, stands a monument erected by his men whose simple inscription tells the whole story of his career as a soldier. "Davis, I am wounded; stay by the brave boys of the 77th," were the last words he uttered, after having been struck down by the fatal missile of death. The 77th did its duty at Stone River well and no stronger proof of the fact is needed than the words of General Rosecrans, uttered while reviewing the regiment after the battle. He said, "Col., I see your regiment is all right. Give my compliments to the boys and tell them I say it was the banner regiment at Stone River. They never broke their ranks." After several months spent in camp at Murfreesboro during which it was engaged in building fortifications at that point, the regiment moved South again with the army; was at Liberty Cap on the 25th of June, 1863, and, although the battle there lasted but ten minutes, our loss in killed and wounded was fifty. Time will not permit me to follow up closely the history of the regiment, all its skirmishes marches and countermarches. I only touch upon points of greatest importance. After many long and tiresome marches, the regiment again came face to face with the enemy at Chicamauga, on the 19th of September 1863. That was its most terrible struggle. Entering the battle with 18 officers and 215 men, it came out with but 6 officers and scarcely fifty men.-Few of all those faces which were missing from the ranks after the battle closed were ever seen there again. Some killed, some wounded and others taken to vile and torturous prison pens where life ebbed slowly, but surely away. By myself nothing is more clearly remembered than the conflict there on the night of the 19th. It was the most fearful scene I have ever witnessed. The heavens were dark and cloudy, and the air through the woods in which our men fought was murky with the smoke of the battle. The conflict was hand to hand, and it was only by the light of flashing muskets that friend could be distinguished from foe. Our colors were taken, but only when the brave fellow who bore them was pinned to the earth by a rebel bayonet. We were two regiments to a whole division, and they bore us down with an overpowering force. I could speak of many acts of individual bravery there that night, but where all acted so well, it would be unfair to make any distinction. By Col. Housum's side their sleeps one who fell in that fight.
From Chicamauga we follow the regiment back to Chattanooga. But it is not a regiment now, save only in name. It is a mere handful of men, scarcely half a company. After participating for a month in the defence of Chattanooga the organization went into camp, at Whitesides, Tenn., where it remained until the close of 1863. In January, 1864, most of its survivors re-enlisted and the regiment was sent home. After remaining in the State a little over a month, and having recruited many new members it again returned to the front in order to take part in the Atlanta campaign. In that campaign which might justly be termed the hundred miles and hundred days fight from Resaca to Atlanta, the regiment must have been engaged twenty times, the most prominent of which engagements were Resaca, Kingston, Cassville, Dallas, Kenesaw Mountains, Chattahoochie River, Peach Tree Creek, Lovejoy, Jonesboro and Atlanta itself. In the latter engagement Capt. Walker, who had been wounded twice before, was killed. Parting with Sherman when he began his march "From Atlanta to the Sea," the 77th followed the fortunes of the 4th army corps, to which it was then attached, back through Georgia, through Northern Alabama and through middle Tennessee, until on the 30th of November, 1864, it found itself facing Hood at Franklin.
For the time it lasted, and the number of troops engaged on both sides, the battle of Franklin was one of the bloodiest of the war.-Seven times in quick succession did the united forces of Hood's army hurl themselves against the temporary breast-work we had erected, each time to be driven back with fearful slaughter. Never did men charge with more desperate courage than did the enemy there that night, and never were charges more sternly met. At times the conflict was hand to hand, bayonets, and even picks and spades, being used. Twenty days after the battle I rode over the field and counted in one spot the graves of 13 officers, and over a 100 men of the 26th Tenn, confederate regiment. They had been burried by kind hands where they fell and their graves marked. As I afterwards learned from a prisoner, the regiment was small when it entered the fight and came out with but 15 men and not a single officer. I mention this fact to show the severity of the loss on the enemie's side. It was not quite as great on our own, from the fact that we were protected by slight breast-works. Retiring from Franklin under cover of night we fell back to Nashville, where on the 15th and 16th of December our little army of scarcely two corps again met Hood's forces in battle. In those two days we almost destroyed his army. But a mere remnant, bleeding and torn, escaped back across the Tennessee River. That was the last battle in which the 77th was engaged, and with it closed the war in the West and South West.
Following the remnant of Hood's army as far as the Tennessee, our corps halted at Huntsville, Ala., for a few weeks rest. On the 5th day of March, 1865, we were transported to East Tennessee for the purpose of joining in the last, grand, "On to Richmond." But ere we were ready for the forward march "the last ditch" of the enemy was found and emptied by our boys in the East. At Appomatox Court House, on the 8th day of April, 1865, the head of that army which had struggled against us for four long years, surrendered and the war was over. Southern valor had not proved enough for Northern prowess. What a glad day that was, when the surrender of Lee was echoed in one universal shout of "Peace." Peace was what the heart of the nation had longed for. That four years of war had devastated our fairest fields and brightest spots, it had taxed almost to the utmost the energies and resources of the country, and sent more than a million of its best and bravest in the spring and bloom of their lives to the dark shores of eternity. Oh! is it to be wondered at, the hearts of all people had grown sick. With Lee's surrender the war virtually closed, many regiments being soon after mustered out. Not so, however, with the 77th. A few weeks before the surrender the regiment had been reinforced by the addition of five new companies. These companies arrived too late to take part in any engagement, but soon enough to see some hard service. Having been reorganized and there being no further work for it in East Tennessee, it was sent back to Nashville, where it lay until the 17th of June, when it was ordered along with others to Texas. Starting from Johnsonville and going by way of the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, it arrived at New Orleans on the 25th of June, when it encamped on the old Jackson battle ground, a place called Chalmette.
On the 13th of July it embarked for Matagorda Bay, Texas, where it landed on the 20th. The trip across the Gulf was a stormy and dangerous one, so stormy in fact that six days were spent in sight of the coast, without any attempt being made at landing. The intervening time, from July the 20th till the 17th of the following December, was spent in that far distant State. We were now three thousand miles from home, and in an inhospitable clime. Many a gallant soldier, who had braved the storms of battle, fell there in that far off land, a victim of disease.
If my memory serves me aright, we lost 60 by death from fever alone. Leaving
Galveston on the 17th of December, the regiment returned home and was mustered
out of service on the 17th day of January, 1866. Among the first to enter, it
was the last to leave the service. Its terms of service covered a period of over
four years, during which it traveled over 20,000 miles, fought in more than 20
pitched battles and buried over 400 men. Such, comrades, is in part the history
our regiment has written for itself. Time has allowed me to give but a synopsis
of its doings, and that imperfectly. Enough has been spoken however to give some
idea of its record. Who will say the record is not one of which every member may
justly feel proud. Other regiments may have served as faithfully and as well,
but none better. I am glad it was my fortune to belong to it. I love to run back
in memory over the stirring scenes in which it participated. I love to recall
the faces of old comrades-some dead, others living. And it gives me pleasure to
meet so many of you here to-day, some of whom I have
not seen since at Philadelphia, we doffed the livery of soldiers, and donned the
dress of citizens. How pleasant to all of us is the reunion here to day. It is
like brothers long parted meeting together again, and are we not brothers?
Members for years of the same great family, eating from the same table, drinking
from the same fountains and streams, reposing together on the same fields,
companions in camp and on the march, comrades in battle, the tie that binds us
is almost as strong and dissoluble, as that which links together the hearts of
those, who in childhood's hour, knelt at the same parental knee. To myself there
are many very pleasant memories connected with my soldier life. As you know, all
was not hardship and danger. There were many really pleasant evenings spent
around the camp fires, when jokes were freely passed round and genial spirits
entertained their comrades in roars of laughter. There were those, we had them
in every company, whose love of fun and natural exhuberence of spirit, no amount of hardships could suppress. In the
camp, on the march, and even where great danger lurked, they were always in a
jolly mood. Such fellows were the life and soul of the army. Who of the older
members of the regiment, does not remember Neal Foy, of Co. A, always lively, always ready for a joke - no matter where it
was, whether in camp, or when the storm of battle was about to break over our
ranks. He was brave too, and never shirked a single duty. Poor fellow; he died
in Texas, just before our term of service closed. I wish I could stop to-day to pronounce a eulogy upon each one of our
cherished dead. I can think now of so many whose names are deserving of special
mention on this occasion-not officers alone, but private soldiers-men who
fought, not for promotion or for pay, but who went with hearts fired with
patriotic zeal went forth to find nameless graves. Poor fellows, this reunion
here to-day is not for them. Our festivities will carry
no enjoyment to the places where they are resting. It is meet therefore that we
should speak of them, if not by name at least in general terms. Let us worship a
moment at the shrine of their memories. They made the sacrifices so necessary to
bring back peace and unity to the country, and their great services will be
remembered long after our own have passed from the minds of men.
"A debt of
gratitude we owe-
To them is justly due-
And till our nation's latest
day,
Our children's children still shall say:
They died for me and
you."
There is another class worthy of mention on this occasion. They are those who went forth full of the strength and vigor of manhood, and came back to us mere shattered wrecks of their former selves. Although they are, to a certain extent, objects of a nation's care, it seems to me as though some of them were unkindly dealt with; in fact, I have seen more than one of them ruthlessly thrust aside to make room for those who have no claim upon the patronage of the government, or the sympathy of the people. This should not be. The man who laid a limb upon the field of battle, or whose arm when raised in his country's behalf was torn from its place, has provided he is in every way capable, a superior claim to preferment in every walk of life-a claim which a grateful people and a grateful country cannot consistently ignore. They bear the marks of honorable service and should not be made to do menial labor. I confess to have blushed for my country when I have seen one of her faithful defenders, a crippled almost helpless man, grinding an organ on the streets for a living. Often when the plaintive notes of his instrument have fallen on my ear, I have been reminded of poor, blind Bellisarius, sitting before the gates of the capital he had saved, begging a penny from the bands of charity. Why such sights are permitted is more than I can understand. It is certainly a burning shame on us all. What if there be some defect in his discharge papers? Red-tape officials should be made to overlook mere irregularities on paper, when a man presents for a pension a certificate written out by the enemies bullets on the field of battle.
Nor should I forget to-day, when there are so many fair ones here, that there is still another class to whom the nation owes its meed of praise. Not of those who endured the danger and fatigue of the camp and march, this class is still perhaps to be held in more grateful recollection than any other. Unfitted for the bivouac of actual army life, its silent watch was kept by the side of the dying. At home and in the crowded hospital it found its work of devotion and love. All honor to them that noble army of Christian women, which carried its ministration to the bedsides of the suffering ones. Thousands this hour have reason to bless the name of some one of these whose kindly hand had kept back the life which else had spent. Back along the past we find many instances of the heroic devotion of women, but it seems to have remained for our own great civil war, to develop the highest type of nobility in her sex. Not in hospitals alone did her devotion to the cause shine forth; she was active elsewhere; active in encouraging enlistments, active in her efforts to buoy up the heart when despondency threatened. She suffered too. Show me a wife who lost a husband, or a mother who lost a son in that war, and I'll show you one who has suffered anguish greater than you and I have ever known. Though uncomplaining, the pallor of her cheek and the lines upon her face speak of a grief yet unassuaged. Even yet when I meet one of these, her wan, sad face seems to me to be looking away off in the direction of those sunny hills, and fragrant groves, where that one who was dearer to her than all else besides, is taking his warrior's rest-looking anxiously as though the hope yet lingered that he might yet come back to her side. Oh, my comrades and friends, if true devotion is to be found anywhere, it is to be found in the hearts of such as these. If there is hope for our country in the uncertain future, it rests on the altars they have erected. Somebody has fitly remarked: "If woman be with us, who can be against us; woman who was last at the Cross, and first at the Sepulcher." To the crippled ones then, to the mother in her sorrow, to the widow in the lonliness of her heart-to those in the tears of orphanage, is due all of the gratitude we owe. Let our thanks and benefactions be showered upon their heads. Give them all the praise. Those who went forth, and returned again in safety, need it not; they ask it not. His must be a craven heart indeed, who would expect it above any of these.
It may not be inappropriate to the occasion, my comrades, for me to allude to the fact that our reunion occurs to-day in a place which has suffered far more than the ordinary vicissitudes of war.
This temple of justice and these buildings for squares around are new. They stand over the ashes of the houses and homes, which lined these streets when you were marching down them to the seat of war, nine years ago. Many of you doubtless remember the day (I remember it well) when the news was brought to the front that Chambersburg had been burned. It was the 5th day of August 1864, just after we had succeeded in fighting our way up to the environs of Atlanta. I remember how deep the feeling of indignation which ran through our ranks, at the act; how our boys vowed to one another that the foul crime should be avenged; and how that very evening, when part of them had been called upon to charge the enemy, they fought with an unwonted degree of valor. "Oh, if the 77th had only been there," was the expression heard that day. Yes if the 77th had only been here, I feel free to say the unholy work of burning would only have been accomplished when the power to defend had been stricken from their arms. The history of the burning must be in a manner familiar to you all. You will recollect that the town was fired on the 30th day of July 1864, by about 3000 of the enemies cavalry, under command of General McCausland. Our Southern border here was at the time unprotected by any force of our own troops, and the natural defenders of this people were absent fighting in the trenches of Virginia and Georgia. On the 30th day of July there were those standing with us in front of the enemy before Atlanta, whose aged parents here, unprotected and unable to protect themselves, were fleeing before the flames which were wrapping up their homes and all they possessed in the world. No defense could have been made against this force of the enemy. There was spirit enough among those left behind to defend, but not strength enough. It would be difficult indeed to estimate the loss of our people here by that conflagration. It would certainly not fall short of $3,000,000. In a single hour 266 families were robbed of their homes and turned out upon the world to battle with penury. Not only homes were burned, but all the conveniences and comforts which years of patient toil had placed therein, clothing, furniture, books, cherished heir-looms-everything, was swept away. I mention these facts, my comrades, because I do not want you to forget them. I want you to remember that you have visited on this occasion a people who have suffered far more than their proportion the losses of the late war. I make bold to speak to you thus, because I know you have noble and generous hearts, and will when you hear this people vilified and abused as they have been in the past, rebuke the insulters whoever they may be.
Briefly, my comrades, I have traced the history of our regiment. In a feeble manner, I have essayed to pay a tribute to the memory of our comrade dead, and to the faithful services of others, who, though still living, are but wearing out lives of sadness. I have spoken too of the peculiar sufferings of this people you have come among to-day; so I am about to leave the subject with you. The incidents I have related and the facts to which I have referred are all history now.-We remember them and will remember them while we live, and when the last one of us has obeyed the bugle call to another world, the lids of the great volume in which they are written will stand open for those who are to come after us.
My comrades, it may be permitted many of us who are assembled here to-day to meet together on a future occasion of this kind, to talk over the familiar scenes of the past, but certainly not all of us. The great world with its varied pursuits is drawing us apart.-These reunions will be growing smaller from year to year and after a little while they will cease forever. While the opportunity remains then to any one, let that one come up to these reunions whenever they may be.-Let us not forget the old 77th, its association and friendships, nor let us forget the cause which first called us together, and made us the comrades we are. It was the cause of an imperilled country. It was to save this union of States from the impending fate of dissolution. True in the past, I know each one of you will be true in the future; tried in the furnace of battle your country knows now of what stern material you are made. She knows that in any just cause, she may rely on the same strong arms and brave hearts, which had saved her in the hour of her greatest peril. She may need you again. While I hope for her future, that it will be great and glorious, I am not unmindful of the dangers which lie in the path of her progress. Most of us have read the sad fate of other nationalities. We have seen how the whole pathway of the world's history is literally strewn with the wrecks of Empires and peoples; of generations and liberty; and it may been in the Providence of God this country of ours is destined to follow in the wake of those that have gone before. It if must be so, let the fault be none of ours. Let it be known that we at least stood by the union of our fathers. They made it; their best blood cemented it. It was good enough for them; it is good enough for us, and it will be good enough for all those who are to come after us. In order then that this Union may be perpetuated, let us strive to forget the hatred and animosities engendered by the war. The Union cannot long exist if bound together only by a paper tie called the Constitution. No, it needs a stronger and far more enduring tie than that. It needs the firmly cemented affections of the people of all the States. Though deep and wide the wounds may be, heal them all up.
Let us take a lesson in this from the gallant dead of both sides. On every battle field they sleep, "the grey and blue," almost in brotherly embrace, their warfare over and forgotten. So let it be with ours. Let us join hearts and heads again, and go forward to labor for the fulfillment of what I trust will be a great destiny for our country.
Bibliographic Information: Source copy consulted: Public Opinion, November, 8, 1870, p. 1 col. 1-5
