HEADQUARTERS 20TH ARMY CORPS, }
July 31, 1863. }
Respectfully referred to the commanding officer, Third Brigade,
First Division. The General commanding the corps is pleased to hear
so favorable a report of the regiments of this Brigade.
By command of Major-General Sheridan.
G. P. THURSTON, _A. A. G. and Chief of Staff_.
With these extracts I may fitly close this brief story of a regiment
whose career was alike creditable to the State it represented and to the
men who served in its ranks. I do not claim for the Eighth higher
soldierly qualities than belonged to many other regiments. I simply
assert that, having great opportunities to serve its country, it was
always equal to them, and that wherever it was placed it did its whole
duty. It was the only Kansas regiment that served in the great “Army of
the Cumberland.” Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan, and
many other States had scores of splendid regiments in that grand army,
but the Eighth alone represented the martial spirit of Kansas in its
ranks. It would not be fair to say that the regiment was ever treated
unjustly because of this fact; but it is true that when it first joined
the army the Eighth was regarded with some suspicion and a great deal of
curiosity. Whatsoever respect it won, whatsoever reputation it made,
whatsoever fame it afterward enjoyed in that great army as a
well-disciplined, brave and patriotic body of soldiers, was squarely and
fairly earned by honest deserving, for it had neither original good
repute nor the kindly aid of other regiments bearing the name of the
same State, to promote its fortunes and its reputation. Alone in a great
army of two hundred thousand, this little body of seven hundred men kept
stainless the honor and added luster to the fame of Kansas. In less than
six months after it joined the Army of the Cumberland, no regiment was
better or more favorably known; and until its final muster-out it
steadily held the respect and confidence of its commanding generals and
of the troops with which it was most intimately associated.
In the noisy and distracting political feuds which were so numerous in
Kansas at that day, the Eighth had no part nor lot. It was so far away
as to be beyond even their echo. No man who belonged to it ever made
money out of the war. One and all, officers and men, they came out of
the army as poor in purse as when they entered it; but they brought back
and deposited in the State House at Topeka three torn and tattered flags
that all the wealth of this year’s harvest could not buy. Kansas will
preserve among her priceless treasures, as long as her government shall
endure, these ragged and faded flags—all that remain of the Eighth
Kansas Volunteer Infantry except its few hundred scattered survivors and
the history with which it glorified the name of the State.