Address, delivered at the reunion of the Eighth Kansas Veteran
Volunteer Infantry, held at Fort Leavenworth, October 10th, 11th
and 12th, 1883.
Surviving members of the Eighth Kansas Veteran Volunteer Infantry, to
the number of about one hundred, assembled at Camp Pope, on the Fort
Leavenworth reservation, on the 10th, 11th and 12th of October, 1883.
The headquarters of the “Society of the Eighth Kansas” were established
in a tent opposite the general headquarters for the soldiers’ reunion,
designated by a banner bearing the following inscription:
HEADQUARTERS
EIGHTH KANSAS VOL. INFANTRY.
3d Brigade, 1st Division, 20th Army Corps,
1st Brigade, 3d Division, 4th Army Corps,
ARMY OF THE CUMBERLAND.
Beneath this was painted the badge of the Third Division, Fourth Army
Corps—to which the regiment was longest attached—a blue triangle,
bearing the names of the most prominent engagements in which the Eighth
took part, viz.:
PERRYVILLE.
LANCASTER.
BRENTWOOD PIKE.
TULLAHOMA.
CAPERTON’S FERRY.
CHICAMAUGA.
CHATTANOOGA.
ORCHARD KNOB.
MISSION RIDGE.
KNOXVILLE CAMPAIGN.
DANDRIDGE.
KENNESAW MOUNTAIN.
PEACH TREE CREEK.
CHATTAHOOCHIE.
ATLANTA.
LOVEJOY STATION.
NASHVILLE.
On the afternoon of October 10th the roll was called by companies, and
the day was spent in social greetings, in revisiting Fort Leavenworth,
and in reviving recollections of the campaigns in which the command took
part.
The Society elected the following officers for the ensuing year, viz.:
_President_—Colonel John A. Martin.
_Vice-President_—Lieutenant-Colonel John Conover.
_Secretary_—Sergeant Chas. W. Rust.
_Treasurer_—Lieutenant David Baker.
At the conclusion of the exercises in the “big tent,” the President,
Colonel John A. Martin, delivered the following address, which was
ordered printed in pamphlet form, together with the proceedings of the
reunion and the names of those in attendance:
COMRADES OF THE EIGHTH KANSAS: There is always a charm in revisiting
once familiar places after a long absence, and to a Kansas soldier this
reservation will ever possess a fascinating interest. Here nearly all
the troops young Kansas sent to the war were organized or equipped. And
to those who were mustered here; who slept for the first time under
canvas in the old blue-grass pasture, and there ate for the first time a
soldier’s fare, Fort Leavenworth will always be holy ground.
I have paid many visits to this Post since the far-away days of ’61, but
never have the scenes and incidents of that period been so vividly
recalled as during the present occasion. The white tents, the trampled
grass, the groups of men, half uniformed, half in citizens’ dress; the
straggling stacks of arms, the marching columns, the orderlies coming
and going, the notes of bugles and the music of fife and drum—these
scenes and sounds seem to belong to the turbulent past rather than to
the peaceful and prosperous present. The alien and unfamiliar feature is
this great tent, and the speech-making within its canvas walls. The days
of ’61 were not distinguished for talk. They were days of action. The
speech-maker did his work then, as now, but not here on this reserve. I
fancy that if “Old Prince,” that terror of the Kansas recruits, had
caught a man making a speech on the reservation, he would have organized
a drumhead court-martial at once, for his prompt trial and execution.
The place and the surroundings, as I have said, are familiar. And yet
how vast the changes that have been wrought since the mustering here
twenty-two years ago! It is doubtful if the adult male population of
Kansas at that time greatly exceeded the numbers present at this
reunion. The poor, harassed and feeble Territory has grown to be one of
the greatest States in the Union, rich in all the elements of
substantial prosperity; richer still in the imperial manhood of a
citizenship which includes representatives of every regiment in the
Union army. Plodding along in all the walks and ways of our now peaceful
and quiet Kansas life are men who have fought on every battle-field of
the civil war; men who were active participants in all the events of the
greatest and most stirring drama of the world’s history; men whose
personal recollections embrace the story of every march, camp, bivouac,
skirmish and battle in which the armies of the Union engaged; men whose
blood has been poured out in every combat where patriotism maintained
the supremacy of our flag.
Is it any wonder that Kansas has, in the nearly two decades that have
elapsed since the war closed, grown to be one of the greatest, most
intelligent, and most prosperous of the States? Of what achievements, in
the enterprises of civil life requiring courage, energy and resourceful
vigor, is such blood and bone, and heart and brain, as make up her
population, not capable? From the most sterile and reluctant soil a
manhood of this order would wrest plenty. Is it wonderful that, when
earth and air combine to aid its labors, this population should have
made Kansas one of the greatest and most prosperous States in the Union?
I need not say how glad and proud I am, my dear old comrades, to meet
and greet you, one and all, once more. It seems but a brief time since
the Eighth Kansas Volunteer Infantry pitched its tents in the blue-grass
of this reserve and was mustered into the service of the United States,
“for three years or during the war.” But the whitening locks of many of
its survivors, gathered here to-day, tell the story of time’s flight.
The youngest soldiers in its ranks have reached middle age; the oldest
are now old men, nearing the sunsets of their lives. The hardships and
privations of march and camp, and the casualties of battle, decimated
its ranks again and again during its long term of service; very many
have since died, their lives shortened by wounds, or by the wasting
effects of the campaigns in which they participated; and the survivors,
scattered all over the country, probably do not number one-third of the
1,081 men who have answered “here” at its roll-calls.
It is no vain-glorious or empty boasting to declare, as I do, that to
have served in the Eighth Kansas is a fact of which any man has a just
right to be proud. No regiment in the army of the Union during the civil
war can cite participation in campaigns of greater magnitude, events of
more romantic and exciting interest, or marches over a vaster scope of
country. Nor did any regiment more conspicuously illustrate, in camp or
field, a loftier devotion to duty, a more unselfish patriotism, or a
more constant courage.
The Eighth Kansas served in four of the great armies of the Union. Its
service began in what was afterwards known as the “Army of the
Frontier;” thence, early in 1862, it was transferred to the “Army of the
Mississippi;” in the summer of the same year it joined the “Army of the
Ohio;” and in November became a part of the “Army of the Cumberland.”
With this military division it served until its final muster-out, in
January, 1866.
Its organization was commenced in August, 1861, and its first company
was mustered in on the 28th of that month. By the 12th of October, eight
companies had been recruited and mustered; in December, the ninth was
added; and early in January the regiment had its full complement. In
February, however, a reorganization of Kansas regiments was made.
Companies D and H, of the Eighth, which were cavalry, were transferred
to the Ninth Kansas; Companies F and K were consolidated, and three
companies of Colonel Graham’s battalion were transferred to the Eighth,
making it a full regiment of infantry.
From the date of its organization, in September, 1861, until May, 1862,
four companies of the regiment did duty along the Missouri border, in
Southern Kansas; others formed part of the post garrisons at Forts
Leavenworth, Riley, Kearney, and Laramie. Early in May five companies
were ordered to Corinth, Mississippi, and proceeding to Columbus,
Kentucky, by steamer, they marched thence along the line of the Mobile &
Ohio Railroad to Corinth. After a service of two months in that army,
the Division to which the Eighth was attached was ordered to reinforce
General Buell. By rapid marches through Eastport, Mississippi, and
Florence, Alabama, it joined the “Army of the Ohio” at Murfreesboro,
Tennessee, and took part in the extraordinary campaign which ended at
Louisville, Kentucky. Thence it moved southward again, with the command
to which it was attached, through Perryville and Lancaster to Crab
Orchard, and thence to Nashville. There it remained nearly six months,
doing provost duty, and there, in February and March, 1863, the five
companies left in Kansas joined headquarters, and for the first time in
its history the regiment was united.
Early in June, 1863, the Eighth rejoined its Division at Murfreesboro.
It participated, during that summer, in the campaign against Tullahoma,
and, late in August, forming the advance guard of the Twentieth Corps,
crossed the Tennessee river at Caperton’s ferry, in pontoon boats. It
took an active part in all the movements of the campaign which followed,
ending with the battle of Chicamauga and the siege of Chattanooga. On
the 23d of November, covering the front of its brigade as skirmishers,
the Eighth captured Orchard Knob, the headquarters of Generals Grant and
Thomas during the battles of the succeeding two days. On the 25th it
participated in the storming of Mission Ridge, and its flag was one of
the first, if not the first, planted on the summit.
Two days later the Eighth marched, with its corps, to the relief of
Burnside, at Knoxville; took part in all the movements of that dreadful
winter campaign, and formed a portion of the rear guard on the retreat
from Dandridge.
Early in January, 1864, at Strawberry Plains, East Tennessee,
four-fifths of all the members of the Eighth then present reënlisted as
veterans. Returning home in February, the regiment received a furlough
for thirty days. Reassembling at this Post, early in April, it returned
to the South, and took part in the campaign against Atlanta. Thence,
with its corps, it moved back to Nashville, and participated in the
battle which ground the Rebel army of the West to atoms.
During the first six months of the year 1865, the Eighth was stationed
at various points in Alabama and Tennessee, but late in July it was
ordered to Texas, where it remained until the 29th of November, when it
was mustered out, and ordered home for final discharge. It reached Fort
Leavenworth on the 6th of January, 1866, and on the 9th was formally
disbanded.
Its career, it will thus be seen, commenced at a very early period of
the civil war, and terminated long after the last hostile shot had been
fired. From the date of its organization until its final muster-out,
there were 1,081 names on its rolls. But its largest numerical strength
at any one time was 877, in March, 1862. The largest aggregate force,
“present for duty,” was 656, at about the same date.
The records of its service show that it traveled 10,750 miles;
participated in fifteen battles and many skirmishes; and lost in battle
three commissioned officers and sixty-seven enlisted men killed;
thirteen commissioned officers and two hundred and seventy-six enlisted
men wounded; and one commissioned officer and twenty enlisted men
missing; or a total of seventy killed, two hundred and eighty-nine
wounded, and twenty-one missing; and an aggregate of three hundred and
eighty killed, wounded and missing. Of the missing, nearly all were
killed, and of the wounded about one-fifth died of their wounds. The
regiment’s loss by the casualties of battle, it will thus be seen, was
nearly sixty per cent. of the greatest number it ever had present for
duty.
In addition to these losses three commissioned officers and ninety-two
enlisted men died of disease; one hundred and ninety-two were discharged
for disabilities resulting from wounds or disease; and fifty-three died
of wounds. The total loss by death, including the seventy killed in
battle, was two hundred and eighteen, and by discharge because of wounds
and disease, one hundred and ninety-two, making a total loss, by death
or disability, of four hundred and ten.
The regiment brought back to the State, and deposited at Topeka, three
flags. Under the first, carried until it returned home on veteran
furlough, in February, 1864, it marched 3,681 miles, and lost three
commissioned officers and forty-nine enlisted men killed, ten
commissioned officers and two hundred and eighteen enlisted men wounded,
and twenty enlisted men missing. Under the second, carried until after
the battle of Nashville, it marched 2,660 miles, and lost three
commissioned officers wounded and one captured, and eighteen enlisted
men killed and fifty-eight wounded. Under the third it traveled 4,409
miles, but sustained no loss in battle.
The largest loss the Eighth sustained in a single engagement was at
Chicamauga, where out of a total of four hundred and six officers and
men present, its killed, wounded and missing numbered two hundred and
forty-three, or sixty per cent. of all engaged.
A brief, dull sketch this is of the services of the Eighth Kansas, I
know. But I am anxious to condense it into as brief a space as possible;
and dull as it is, it will revive in your memory a thousand thrilling
recollections; meager as it is, it will give any soldier or any
intelligent civilian who was an interested observer of the events of the
war, a fairly comprehensive idea of the part the regiment bore in that
great struggle. This is all I have sought to do. It would require
volumes to tell the story in full. For this regiment not only saw all
“the pomp and circumstance of war,” but all its ghastly desolation,
misery and despair as well. It sounded all the notes alike of war’s pæan
and of its dirge. The tramp of its swift and steady march echoed in the
highways of twelve different States. Its bayonets flashed from Fort
Laramie to the Gulf, and from Kansas to North Carolina. At Nashville it
did duty in white gloves; at Strawberry Plains it was shirtless,
shoeless, and in rags. It was feasted in Kansas and starved in
Chattanooga. It hunted guerrillas in Missouri, combatted Longstreet’s
veterans at Chicamauga, stormed the blazing heights of Mission Ridge,
fought a continuous battle from Kennesaw Mountain to Atlanta, and broke
the lines of Hood at Nashville. It built roads, bridged rivers, convoyed
trains, destroyed railroads, operated mills, policed cities, gathered
crops, and made history. And wherever it was, or whatsoever it was
doing, the calm and patient endurance, the magnificent courage, the
splendid discipline, and the unfaltering patriotism of its soldiers
could always be relied on.
It is pleasant to remember, too, and I am sure there is no true soldier
of the Eighth who will not proudly recall the fact, that on many
different occasions the drill, discipline and military appearance of the
regiment were complimented in official orders, issued from corps and
army headquarters. At Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in June, 1863, the
following order was published:
INSPECTOR GENERAL’S OFFICE, 20TH ARMY CORPS, }
MURFREESBORO, June 19th, 1863. }
I take pleasure in reporting to you the following extract from the
report of the Inspector of the First Division, especially as the
same regiments have attracted the notice of the Corps Inspector:
_Extract_—“The drill, military appearance and dress of the Eighth
Kansas is the best observed in the Division; that of the
Twenty-fifth Illinois next.
(Signed) H. W. HALL,
_Captain, and Inspector First Division_.”
Very respectfully, HORACE N. FISHER,
_Lieutenant-Colonel, and Inspector-General_.
HEADQUARTERS, 20TH ARMY CORPS, }
June 20th, 1863. }
Respectfully referred to Colonel Heg, commanding Third Brigade,
First Division, who will have this creditable compliment conveyed to
the above-mentioned regiments.
By command of Major-General McCook.
A. C. MCCLURG,
_Capt. and A. A. G._
On the 15th of July, 1863, the following order was issued:
HEADQUARTERS, DEPARTMENT OF THE CUMBERLAND, }
INSPECTOR-GENERAL’S OFFICE, Tullahoma, July 15, 1863. }
COLONEL: I have the honor to make the following extract from the
semi-monthly inspection report of Lieutenant-Colonel H. C. Fisher,
Assistant Inspector-General 20th Army Corps:
_Extract_—“The Eighth Kansas, lately attached to this corps, is
splendidly equipped and well cared for. Its long stay in Nashville
has enabled it to attain a polish to a certain degree impracticable
in the field, but its example is valuable to the corps.”