July 16, 1873 to 1874, Lyster, W. J., Brevet Lieut.-Colonel U. Aug. 16, 16, 1874, S. A. 28, Sept. 1, 1872 to 1874, Elliott, W. L., Brevet Major-General U. McCook, John J., Brevet Colonel, 1873 to 1874, Duffield, H. M., Lieutenant, 15.00 5 00 5.00 10 00 Curtis, James, Brevet Major U. S. A. 5 00 ORATION DELIVERED BY COLONEL GEORGE I. WATERMAN. Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen of Utica: In the autumn months of 1863, while the Army of the Cumberland was close beset in the valley of the Tennessee river, two corps of the Army of the Potomac, under MAJORGENERAL HOOKER, with knapsacks and muskets and banners, visited the Army of the Cumberland. They were welcome guests, and eventually became one of and with that army. GENERAL THOMAS, at the first meeting of our Army Society, said: "The reinforcements from the Army of the Potomac, which were not then incorporated with the Army of the Cumberland, carried that high point on our right, Lookout Mountain. This opened the eyes of the enemy to the danger of his position, and gave us great encouragement." To-day the Cumberland army of twelve years ago sends its representatives from the valleys of the western rivers, to return that visit, not with knapsacks and muskets and battle-smoke, but amid peace and plenty and social enjoyment; not in sight of Lookout's bald top, or the forests and dark shadows of Waldron's hills, but, by your kind invitation, amid the beauty, the wealth and power of our nation's empire State. The West sends an "all-hail" to the East. This is our trysting-place, where soldiers from beyond the lakes and the Ohio and the Mississippi meet soldier comrades who carried beneath our western skies the victorious banners of New England, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. We meet here, from all parts of our wide land, solely as friends. No sectional or state lines divide us in sentiment. Self-glorification is not the object of our meeting. The magnetism that draws is that which holds together all soldier friendships, whether formed under a XENOPHON or an ALEXANDER; in the shadows of the pyramids, under NAPOLEON; at Valley Forge or Yorktown, under WASHINGTON; at Buena Vista, under TAYLOR; at Vicksburg, under GRANT; at Atlanta, under SHERMAN; at Nashville, under THOMAS; or in Georgia, under JOHNSTON and HOOD. These friendships, formed in tent and bivouac, amid mutual toil and danger, have only incidentally to do with moral or political questions. The air such friendships breathe is not that of the church or the town-house, but rather that which gives life to the "fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind." Under your auspices we meet to revive these old feelings of soldier friendship, and, like HOMER'S Nestor, to tell long stories, and live over the times when grapevine telegraph lines supplied the news, with a station at every spring of pure water, and each soldier an independent operator in originating the latest rumor; when camp-fires supplied the lack of far-away hearthstones, and day-dreams of loved faces and loving eyes at home were made to satisfy a longing which the author of "Home, Sweet Home" must have felt, if he did not realize. At one time in the Atlanta campaign, when the Federal and Confederate armies occupied opposite ridges, with a deep and wide ravine between, during one of those impromptu truces which intense heat and long weariness always compelled, COLONEL ANDERSON, of the Sixtieth Illinois, took the brigade band to the summit of the ridge. It was a warm Southern night, the air clear and still, while a full moon flooded camp and field with its peerless light. The band first played "Yankee Doodle," to which the Union soldiers, all up and down the long line, responded with cheers and shouts. Then "Dixie" was played, followed by shouts and cheers from the Confederate side. "The Star Spangled Banner” and "Bonnie Blue Flag" met respectively the same reception. Thereupon came from the band, thoroughly in the spirit of the occasion, "Home, Sweet Home." For a moment there was a deep silence as the strains died away, and then, from each ridge, Federals and Confederates mingled their loudest shouts and repeated cheers. The episodes and incidents of individual life in active campaigns, together with the historical events of those days, are all revived in these reunions, and, irrespective of any other sentiment, it is the living over again the hours of danger, the hours of toil, and the long hours of camp idleness and enjoyment that gives these meetings an interest that, to the world outside of soldier life, borders upon the incomprehensible. Comrades of the Army of the Cumberland, after a decade we meet as graduates of a few years' course of study in the practical art of war; in the practical application of mud, water, and mules; in the practical solution of the problem how to save a country; and, after ten years of home enjoyment, with the consciousness of a duty well performed. Before we speak of the present, past, or future, let us recall that there were those without whom the Army of the Cumberland would not have been. The death of thousands was essential to the name and enduring fame of our army. Of these numbered and unnumbered, known and unknown, who did not come back with us, but who sleep beneath the clods in those valleys where the twilight hardly lingers, we feel that they have a reward greater than ours. The Great Judge, fairer than a generous people-He who weighs worlds in the same scale in which He weighs atoms-has not found them wanting. We glorify them generally; He has rewarded them individually. |