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enemy's destructive fire, and shared with your comrades
of the Army of the Cumberland, the glories of a victory, than
which no soldiery can boast a prouder.
In that unexampled campaign of vigilant and vigorous
warfare from Chattanooga to Atlanta, you freshened your laurels
at Resaca, grappling with the enemy behind his works, hurling
him back dismayed and broken. Pursuing him from thence, marking
your path by graves of fallen comrades, you again triumphed over
superior numbers at Dallas, fighting your way from there to Kenesaw
Mountain, and under the murderous artillery that frowned from
its rugged hights,
with a tenacity and constancy that finds few parallels, you labored,
fought and suffered through the broiling rays of a Southern midsummer
sun, until at last you planted your colors upon its topmost hights.
Again on the 22d of July, 1864, rendered memorable through all
time for the terrible struggle you so heroically maintained under
discouraging disasters, and that saddest of all reflections, the
loss of that exemplary soldier and popular leader, the lamented
McPherson, your matchless courage turned defeat into a glorious
victory. Ezra Chapel and Jonesboro added new luster to a radiant
record, the latter unbarring to you the proud Gate City of the
South. The daring of a desperate foe, in thrusting his legions
northward, exposed the country in your front, and though rivers,
swamps and enemies opposed, you boldly surmounted every obstacle,
beat down all opposition, and marched onward to the sea. Without
any act to dim the brightness of your historic page, the world
rang plaudits when your labors and struggles culminated at Savannah,
and the old "Starry Banner" waved once more over the
walls of one of the proudest cities of the seabord.
Scarce a breathing spell had passed when your colors faded from
the coast, and your columns plunged into the swamps of the Carolinas.
The sufferings you endured, the labors you performed, and the
successes you achieved in those morasses, deemed impassable, for
a creditable episode in the history of the war. Pocotaligo, Salkahatchie,
Edisto, Branchville, Orangeburg, Columbia, Bentonville, Charleston
and Raleigh are names that will ever be suggestive of the resistless
sweep of your column through the territory that cradled and nurtured,
and from whence was sent forth on its mission of crime, misery
and blood, the disturbing and disorganizing spirit of secession
and rebellion.
The work for which you pledged your brave hearts
and brawny arms to the Government of your fathers, you have nobly
performed. You are seen in the past gathering through the gloom
that enveloped the land, rallying as the guardian of man's proudest
heritage, forgetting the thread unwoven in the loom, quitting
the anvil and abandoning the workshops, to vindicate the supremacy
of the laws and the authority of the Constitution. Four years
have you struggled in the bloodiest and most destructive war that
ever drenched the earth with human gore; step by step you have
borne our standard, until to day, over every fortress and arsenal
that rebellion wrenched from us, and over city, town and hamlet,
from the lakes to the Gulf, and from ocean to ocean, proudly floats
the "starry emblem" of our national unity and strength.
Your rewards, my comrades, are the welcoming plaudits
of a grateful people, the consciousness that in saving the republic,
you have won for your country renewed
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