Ohio History Journal

242       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

 

 

ADDRESS OP EX-GOVERNOR JAMES E. CAMPBELL.

 

All history may be searched in vain for a spectacle more

pathetic than that of which we are today the witnesses; no scene

could appeal more deeply to our sympathies, and none could be

more inspiring. It infinitely refreshes our patriotism in this day,

when the trimmer and truckler are abroad in the land, to revive

the glorious memories of a desperate war fought for a noble

purpose. As we gaze, with moistened eyes, upon these blood-

stained flags, they not only remind us of the holy cause which

they typify, but they also remind us that there are some evils

inexpressibly worse than a just and honorable war.

 

"Who has not read, with throbbing heart, some old chivalric story

Where din of arms and wars alarms bespoke a people's glory,

And felt, though dark the carnage be, that war, when right's defender,

Adds another gem to the diadem which crowns a nation's splendor".

 

If ever a war "crowned a nation's splendor," if ever a war

served to make a nation great, and proud and happy; it was

the one in which these tattered banners received their baptism

of fire.

Those of us who were living at the outbreak of that war,

cannot look upon these battle-scarred flags without recalling

many tragic memories. We can again see the war clouds low-

ering as, one by one, the southern states attempted to secede;

we can see, temporarily, the fatal hopefulness or apparent differ-

ence of the total states-their inexplicable belief that, in some

fortuitous way, war would be averted. Then, when the old flag

of Sumter was fired on, we are thrilled to the very heart by

the spontaneous fury of the entire North-an instantaneous

uprising of the whole people in which age, sex, party and, in

fact, everything else was forgotten in the fierce determination

to avenge that insulted banner. No tongue could adequately

depict that scene. "Old Glory" was flung to the breeze from

every hill and housetop, while there rushed to its defense an

affronted and unconquerable race of freemen. Again we can

see the stern realities of a long and bloody war; the land rever-

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Battle Flags of Ohio.              243

 

berating with the "tramp, tramp, tramp," of the marching thou-

sands (which finally ran up into millions) as "Father Abraham"

repeated his calls for "three hundred thousand more"; the num-

bering and renumbering of people (like Israel of old) as fresh

thousands went forth, undismayed, to fill the ghastly gaps which

shot and shell had made, while, over those gallant hosts there

floated these war-worn banners which, today, are laid away in

their last home-never again to be proudly borne by the aged

veterans who fought and bled under their torn and mangled

folds.

Every son and daughter of Ohio will doubtless listen, with

conscious pride, to a partial recital of the long list of illustrious

Buckeye soldiers who led their comrades under these glorious

flags. There was the modest Grant rising, by sheer merit and

an ever readiness to fight, to the command of the greatest armies

that the civilized world had ever known; the incisive Sherman

who, at the outset, saw more clearly than others the probable

magnitude of the coming struggle; the dashing Sheridan, the

very embodiment and incarnation of war, whose ambition at

the start was to rise to the command of a regiment; the gallant

McPherson, dead on the "Field of Fame;" those numerous

"Fighting McCooks," so many of whom shed their last blood in

their country's cause; those future presidents, Hayes, Garfield,

Harrison and McKinley; those future Governors, Anderson,

Jacob D. Cox, Noyes, Young, Foraker and Harris; these two

conspicuously gallant generals, comrades in war but not in peace,

Keifer and Sherwood; McDowell the unfortunate but not culpa-

ble commander at Bull Run; Rosecranz, the brave but mistaken

commander at Chickamauga; Hazen, always in the thickest of

the fight; Crook, the hero of the Shenandoah Valley; Robert C.

Schenck and Durbin Ward with their broken shoulders; Gilmore,

the greatest engineer; Custer, the tawny-haired lion of battle;

George W. Morgan, the Mexican War veteran; Lytle, the poetic,

and Lorain Andrews, the scholarly; Steedman, the "beau

Sabruer;" Lowe, the first Ohio colonel to fall; Vanderveer, the

right hand of "Old Pap Thomas" on that long night, succeeded

by a happier day, when he deservedly earned his well-known

soubriquet of "The Rock of Chickamauga;" and those brave

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244      Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

men of this city, Beatty, Mitchell, Carrington, Walcutt, McMil-

len and Hamilton. This list might be continued almost indefi-

nitely, but we must pass on.

It would require a most eloquent orator, with a copious

vocabulary, to portray the graphic scenes of march and battle

over which these dear old flags have floated-sometimes in exul-

tant triumph but often in gloomy defeat. They were at the

early battles in Virginia, beginning in the western part of the

state and ending ingloriously at Bull Run, during which time the

Union forces learned in bitterness the lesson of a lack of due

preparation for war-a lesson so costly as to make it seem

incredible that it all must be learned over again, and that too

at a time when the world is being deluged in blood. These flags

were at Fort Donelson where Grant first showed the bull-dog

qualities which were the basis of his later and greater victories;

and they were with him at Shiloh and its "slaughter pen" when

he was alleged to have used a brand of whiskey which Lincoln

was so anxious to get hold of in order that he might issue it

as rations to some of the other generals who were not so anxious

to fight. These flags were in that dreadful Chickahominy cam-

paign, including the bloody Seven Days' Battle; and at Antietam

where McClellan redeemed his reputation for willingness to

fight, but lost it again by failing to pursue and destroy the enemy.

They waved over the many deadly charges through the icy river

at Fredericksburg where Burnside made the same awful

mistake that Grant did at Cold Harbor and Lee did at Gettys-

burg, when he ordered direct assaults in front against an im-

pregnable position. They were floating in pride at Stone River

on those bitter wintry days of desperate strife; and they wit-

nessed the disastrous and unnecessary defeat at Chancellorsville,

where Hooker was outgeneraled and Stonewall Jackson was

killed. They followed Grant through the campaign which ended

in the weary siege of Vicksburg and its grand surrender a day

after the ending of the decisive battle at Gettysburg-the only

one fought on northern soil and the greatest battle of the war.

These tattered flags were all over the bloody field of Chick-

amauga, a battle in which more than one-third of the army came

from our grand old state; and they followed up that engagement

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Battle Flags of Ohio.              245

 

by fluttering gaily above the clouds in the unique and spectacular

victory of Mission Ridge. They were with the gallant Shaw,

first commander of a colored regiment, as his young life ebbed

out in the fierce charge at Fort Wagner. These same old flags

floated in every one of those great battles between Grant and

Lee in 1864 when they fought continuously for the whole sum-

mer, and where Grant lost in thirty days more men than Lee's

entire army. They were in the desperate assault on the "Bloody

Angle" at Petersburg; and they were at Cedar Creek "with

Sheridan twenty miles away" at the beginning, but whose won-

derful ride to the field, and the resultant victory snatched from

defeat by his inspiring presence, have been embalmed in

Buchanan Reed's stirring poem of "Sheridan's Ride." They

floated over Sherman's army in his triumphant Atlanta campaign

against that master of Fabian strategy-Joseph E. Johnston;

and they were with that same army in its semi-bellicose picnic

known as "Sherman's March to the Sea" celebrated in that good

old song "Marching through Georgia." Those old flags were

with Thomas in the marvelously perfect battles of Nashville and

Franklin. They followed the fortunes of the Mississippi Squad-

ron as step by step it fought its way down the Father of Waters

and up its tributaries including the unparalleled feats of engi-

neering during Bank's expedition on Red River; and they were

within supporting distance where Farragut lashed himself to

the mast and "damned" the torpedoes in Mobile Bay. At the

last they were with Grant when he finally throttled Lee and

ended the war in the historic surrender at Appomattox-ever

memorable for the unstinted magnanimity of the victor and the

impressive dignity of the vanquished.

And what of the brave boys from Ohio who fell in battle

under these precious flags-whose promising young lives were

offered up as a "costly sacrifice on the altar of liberty"? Where

are they? Everywhere-in the mountain gorges of the Blue

Ridge; on the fertile plains of the Cotton Belt; under the deadly

swamps of the Carolinas; amidst the dense thickets of the Wil-

derness; strewing the almost continuous battlefields of northern

Virginia; scattered over the "dark and bloody ground" of Ken-

tucky and her sister state of Tennessee, and far beyond the

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246       Ohio Arch. and Hist. Society Publications.

Mississippi. Their bones are heaped in trenches where the leaden

hail fell thickest, and bleach unfound in prison pens where

ghastly famine stalked. The turbulent waves of the Atlantic

and the tepid waters of the Gulf flow over the iron ships in

which they are forever coffined. They are the "Unknown Dead"

-peace to their ashes! These war-wasted flags are their most

glorious memorial-these flags that are

"While for their precious honor, red for the rose of youth

Lost in the heat of battle, lost for the sake of truth;

Blue for the skies above them when, in the long ago,

They, in a loyal spirit fought with a gallant foe".

 

 

TRIBUTE BY GOVERNOR JAMES M. COX.

 

It was a beautiful thought that inspired the preservation and

display of these battle-scarred standards of three wars. They

occupy a sacred place in the affections of all Ohioans, and it

is indeed fitting that they are now enshrined beneath the dome

of our state capitol, where they may be at once an inspiration

and a beautiful memory.

It is appropriate for us to pause, in the midst of our par-

ticipation in the present gigantic military conflict, that we may

reflect upon the achievements of those whose valor and patriot-

ism are commemorated by these battle-flags.

I congratulate the Commission upon its diligence in collect-

ing 455 of these flags and thus affording the opportunity to

have with us for all time these eloquent witnesses of our fathers'

and forefathers' achievements.

JAMES M. Cox.

 

TRIBUTE OF EX-GOV. JUDSON HARMON.

 

The placing in the rotunda of the Capitol of the battle flags

of the Ohio Regiments in the Civil War was approved while I

had charge of them. I am glad the plan has since been carried

out.

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