"C" Company of the Forty-first New York after the Second Battle of Bull
Run, August 30, 1862. When the troops of Generals Milroy and Schurz were
hard pressed by overpowering numbers and exhausted by fatigue, this New
York regiment, being ordered forward, quickly advanced with a cheer along
the Warrenton Turnpike and deployed about a mile west of the field of the
conflict of July 21, 1861. The fighting men replied with answering shouts,
for with the regiment that came up at the double quick galloped a battery
of artillery. The charging Confederates were held and this position was
assailed time and again. It became the center of the sanguinary combat of
the day, and it was here that the "Bull-Dogs" earned their name. Among the
first to respond to Lincoln's call, they enlisted in June, '61, and when
their first service was over they stepped forward to a man, specifying no
term of service but putting their names on the Honor Roll of "For the
War."
[Illustration: BRIG.-GEN. RUFUS KING]
Brigadier-General King, a division commander in this battle, was a soldier
by profession, and a diplomatist and journalist by inheritance--for he was
a graduate of West Point, a son of Charles King, editor of the New York
_American_ in 1827, and a grandson of the elder Rufus, an officer of the
Revolution and Minister to the Court of St. James. He had left the army in
1836 to become Assistant Engineer of the New York & Erie Railroad, a post
he gave up to become editor of the _Daily Advertiser_, and subsequently of
the Milwaukee _Sentinel_. At the outbreak of the war Lincoln had appointed
him Minister to Rome, but he asked permission to delay his departure, and
was made a Brigadier-General of Volunteers. Later he resigned as Minister,
and was assigned to McDowell's corps. At the battle of Manassas, in which
the Forty-first New York earned honor, he proved an able leader. In 1867
he was again appointed as Minister of the United States to Italy.
[Illustration: THE GENERAL-IN-CHIEF IN 1862]
Major-General Henry Wager Halleck; born 1814; West Point 1839; died 1872.
Sherman credits Halleck with having first discovered that Forts Henry and
Donelson, where the Tennessee and the Cumberland Rivers so closely
approach each other, were the keypoints to the defensive line of the
Confederates in the West. Succeeding Fremont in November, 1861, Halleck,
importuned by both Grant and Foote, authorized the joint expedition into
Tennessee, and after its successful outcome he telegraphed to Washington:
"Make Buell, Grant, and Pope major-generals of volunteers and give me
command in the West. I ask this in return for Donelson and Henry." He was
chosen to be General-in-Chief of the Federal Armies at the crisis created
by the failure of McClellan's Peninsula Campaign. Halleck held this
position from July 11, 1862, until Grant, who had succeeded him in the
West, finally superseded him at Washington.
[Illustration: AT ANTIETAM.
_Painted by E. Jahn._
_Copyright, 1901, by Perrien-Keydel Co.,
Detroit, Mich., U. S. A._]