The New York Times/1894/12/19/Old Soldiers Dine and Talk
OLD SOLDIERS DINE AND TALK
ANNUAL REUNION OF THE SURVIVORS
OF ELEVENTH CORPS.
Carl Schurz Meets a Long-Lost Protege —
Col. Hamlin Says the Corps
Has Been Maligned.
The fifth annual dinner of the Association
of the Eleventh Army Corps, Army of the
Potomac, which was held at Morello's last
night, was attended by a number of
veterans, who wore the crescent corps badge
on their lapels.
The battle of life has scattered the survivors more than did the charge of the “great flanker” at Chancellorsville, and those who attended the reunion last night came from widely divergent points. Ohio sent the largest contingent, and Maine, Connecticut, New-York, and other States were represented.
A pleasant incident of the affair was a meeting between Carl Schurz and a former private of the Forty-fifty New-York. The latter's name is Peter Schlilowsky. The two had not met since Schurz interceded with President Lincoln for a pardon for Schlilowsky, whom Hooker had ordered to be shot as a deserter. Schlilowsky was then but eighteen years old. His regiment was making a forced march to Chancellorsville, and the young private, who should have been in the hospital instead of on the march, fell out of the ranks, unable to stagger on any longer. The regiment marched on, and a few hours later the young man was placed under arrest, tried by a drumhead court-martial on a charge of desertion, and ordered to be shot.
Schurz interceded, gained a reprieve, and after the battle of Chancellorsville obtained a pardon from President Lincoln. Schlilowsky has long been anxious to meet and thank his benefactor, but never had an opportunity to do so before last night. Schurz instantly recognized him.
Gen. Di Cesnola was the first speaker of the evening. Apropos of the dinner from which he had just arisen, he told of some war-time collations, some of which were disposed of under more exciting circumstances.
Gen. Schurz, in a brief address, said that no war in history had been so perfect as the civil war in America. It was waged, he said, to restore the Union, and that, he added, had been so thoroughly accomplished that now there exists no more ill feeling between the North and the South than is cherished by rival football teams.
Col. C. A. Hamlin of Bangor, Me., who was serving with the Eleventh Army Corps when it was routed at Chancellorsville by Jackson's onslaught, had a new version of that disaster. The Eleventh Corps, he thought, had been unjustly censured for its conduct on that field.
“The investigations,” the speaker said, “clearly prove or seem to prove, that the disastrous results of the battle of Chancellorsville cannot be justly ascribed to the want of vigilance and soldierly conduct on the part of the rank and file of the Eleventh Corps. And the members of the corps earnestly ask for the closest scrutiny of the events of that day as they actually occurred, and they only seek that plain justice which impartial soldiers willingly accord to each other.
“Furthermore, we may say that these unjust imputations and imprecations which have been scattered far and wide over the land for the last thirty years, blighting the honor and embittering the lives of 10,000 American citizens, ought to have been righted long ago, and would have been if the War Department had ordered an impartial investigation, which was earnestly asked for by some of the officers of the Eleventh Corps.
“All the resistance Jackson's corps met with worthy of the name of resistance was by the men of the Eleventh Corps, who were attacked in the rear by vastly superior numbers, and who resisted Jackson's advance without receiving aid from the reserves, two miles in the rear. Analysis shows that no other body of troops of equal number could have held the flanked positions much longer and have escaped destruction. Furthermore, it appears that this resistance retarded Jackson an hour and a half, and cost the Eleventh Corps quite 1,500 men in killed and wounded, or about 500 more than the British lost at Bunker Hill. The attack commenced at 5:30 P. M., and Bushbec's line retreated at 7 or 7:15, and then Jackson ordered his tired columns to halt at and around the Dowdall tavern. The statement that Berry's infantry and Pleasanton's guns halted Jackson is erroneous, for no line of battle of Jackson's men during that night approached within 800 or 1,000 yards of Berry, with dense woods intervening.”
Among those present were Gen. Horatio C. King, Gen. Charles W. Santelle, Gen. John T. Lockman, Gen. Franz Sigel, Gen. Thomas L. James, Gen. Orland Smith, Gen. F. W. Osborn, Gen. James Grant Wilson, Col. William Beidleman, Capt. Francis Irsch, Capt. A. B. Searles, Capt. L. M. Jewett, Capt. C. A. Paddock, Baron Otto von Fritsch, Capt. Justrow Alexander, Capt. J. T. Leubuscher, and Capt. F. Werneck.
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