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Now, I will We whipped

barrels of beer in it; and it was a German regiment. show you what the result of that great battle was. Kirby Smith himself. He had 32,000 men, and I had 3,200, but I had strategy, you see; I got the drop on him. He sent his fellows out on that field there. A skirmish line deployed, with the idea that a skirmish line could capture a Union sutler's wagon. That is just where I wanted to get him. He got his skirmish line out there. We didn't open with the artillery, but I sent out two com panies of Dutchmen, and they fell on that skirmish line, and just sent it kiting And then he found I had got business on hand. Then he discovered that that wagon out there meant something, and thereupon he sent up a column of attack, just what I wanted him to do. And then I put on the whole Dutch regiment, and opened the artillery, and just gave him fits. Do you suppose that we were going to lose that sutler's wagon? I tell you, the fate of the campaign depended on that. We wanted to drive the enemy out of Kentucky, and I didn't want to get hurt myself, because I calculated to win the day by strategy. I went out on the left flank-away out. It was one of the most desperate battles I ever was in. I got back myself. Well, they pounded away there for an hour, and I didn't run. The brigade stood its ground, because it hung to the sutler's wagon. At one time I thought it was lost. The Dutchmen were coming back, and had their arms full of sausages, and tobacco, and cigars, and something put up in vials a little like this (holding up a champagne bottle), and I appealed to them again, in the name of the Republic, to arouse their patriotism; formed them in column of assault, and sent them back, and in five minutes they recaptured the sutler's wagon. Then a shout of victory ran along our lines, and Kirby Smith got out of there, you bet, mighty quick! What was the result? Kirby Smith had been used up in that fight over the sutler's wagon, and immediately retired across the Kentucky river. As Lieutenant Floyd said when he reached the battle-field of Buena Vista: He wasn't in the fight. He got to the front and pitched his tent, and expected to have a fight the next morning, but he didn't want to get into it. He got up very early, and he went out, and didn't see any enemy. Pretty soon the outposts came in, and said the enemy had retreated. Lieutenant Floyd came back and called out his company, and says: "Soldiers, thank God, they have run!" That is the way we felt.

I knew of one sutler to have been killed. He was killed in a

peculiar way. I never knew of one that could be killed with a shell or a solid shot, or a Minnie ball, but this one was struck with thunder. We buried him with the honors of war. If I live to get rich, I am going to build a monument to his memory; for of all that distinguished array of sutlers that helped to save the country, he is the only one that I know of that lost his life, and it took a thunder-bolt to do that!

Mr. President, don't you think we would have been before Corinth yet if it hadn't been for the sutlers? I want to ask you to define your position now as a military critic, but it does honestly appear to me, that as that great army environed the camp of Beauregard at Corinth, it was really the sutler's train there that kept us inspired. Wasn't it that? It did me, anyhow. We captured Corinth. I witnessed the performance myself. Then we started and made a little tour down through Mississippi; but the sutler was there. He went with us into Alabama, and across Tennessee, and through Huntsville, and up to Belle Creek.

was.

The hardest fate that could befall a man serving his country was the fate of a sutler to a cavalry regiment. They were so often dependent upon other people for support. I recollect close to Iuka one night. An honest, patriotic and enterprising sutler came along, and we had gone into camp, and he said that he was sutler to the 3rd Ohio Cavalry, and he didn't know where his regiment He was willing to turn in and fight and charge anybody, it didn't make any difference to him whom. He wanted to join us, you see, for the night, and I told him to turn right in. So he turned around and got his works all covered. Then the first fellows to advance were the members of the 1st Ohio Artillery, marching as infantrymen. They went down and told him they would support him-act as a reserve-in any charge that he would make. Thereupon he took the rear board out of his wagon and proceeded to charge. Fortunately, he had two barrels of beer. Lord, what a benediction that was just then! He put one barrel of beer under each end board, and I told him I guessed 1 would keep them until the next day, and he said he would. But, do you think, the very men he had gotten down there to support his. charge got an empty cracker barrel and put it under the end board and rolled out a barrel of beer! I never knew how they did it, but it was strategy. Well, when he got through charging, he proceeded to gather up his money. When he took hold of

that one barrel, he found it empty. He wondered who had been there since he had been gone. He just then began to realize the fact that he was connecting himself with a command that understood strategy. And thereupon he sent out exploring parties to recover the lost beer. I didn't blame him; indeed, to lose a barrel of beer on that campaign was a serious thing. But he didn't find it. But the next morning it was disentombed-nothing lost in that way. I shall never forget the taste of that beer. I don't know whether it was made in Toledo, nor I never stopped to inquire. Well, that invigorated the army, you see, the triumph of that night and the recuperation. Next morning we moved on vigorously. That night there was a Michigan sutler-Governor Alger ain't here, or I would call on him to defend it. I will appeal to my Wolverine friends to remember me kindly when I get through with this. We went down to the river and waded it waist deep, and the sutler was there. He was always on hand when great hardship was to be endured and great danger to be encountered, and great perils to be overcome. He was there that night, and he wanted to make a charge, and came up, and insisted on making a charge. I told him it was folly to attempt it in the dark, but that sutler had such confidence in his skill as a strategist that he begged to be permitted to charge that night, before the rising sun. I told him to go in. And he opened his ranch and proceeded to charge, and make things lovely Finally, a boy stepped up, and asked him for a piece of sardine. "Plenty of them,” he said, "I have got twenty cans." When he went to hunt the cans he didn't find them, and I think he is hunting for them yet. I allude to these things to show you that the sutler was continually making sacrifices and co-operating with the generals of the army in putting down the rebellion. Where do you think those sardines had gone to? The same men, who had supported the other sutler at Iuka, came and volunteered to stand that charge that night, dark as it was. When he went to look for his sardines, they had taken them away. He thought. He said it was one of the most singular things that he had ever experienced in all his military career, that the sardines were gone, when he knew they were there. I never knew until the next morning at breakfast what did become of them. But the next morning at breakfast a fellow from the battery by the name of Pue came to me and put a thing in my hand-a box. I didn't ask him what it was.

He

said he caught it the night before. It was a box of sardines. I inquired into it, and those fellows had taken every box of his sardines, and run them all into the muzzles of their cannon. Nobody would think of looking in a cannon for a sardine, would they? This is one instance where a sutler was willing to sacrifice his all. I came here from a reunion of my regiment that closed at 5 o'clock. I came here on purpose to present the stern facts, and to insist that they shall be recorded in the annals of this war. They were not mustered into the service, and compelled to serve, like you and I, but they were voluntarily there-present, wherever there was a charge to be made. On an occasion down in Tennessee, when we were campaigning after John Morgan, his fellows being hungrier than we were, down by Tyro Springs, they swept in and captured three sutlers and their wagons; and I tell you, if there ever was an army that felt the shock and seriousness of the loss, our army did. We had a notion to come home. If we couldn't have sutlers, how were we going to stay there? Three days after that we got a lot of Confederate papers through the lines, and there was published there an account of a great victory near Tyro Springs, in which three sutlers' wagons had been captured, and the whole Confederacy was thrilled with gladness and joy. They thought the Yankees were cleaned out. I tell you, it was a severe below to the armies of the Republic.

Finally, Mr. President, and comrades of the Army of the Tennessee-I belonged to that army I belonged to one arm of the Grand Army of the Republic which saved the Republic in its hour of peril, and we come together in these social meetings, because we have a right to come. No men on earth have a better right to come-I want the sutlers brought there the next time, Mr. President. Let us be just while we are generous. I don't know whether anybody is going to write a book on the subject. I shall, if I can get time, and rescue from oblivion that distinguished class of people, and place them where they belong, as constituting one arm of that grand army that swept the Southern states, and pulled down the rebel flag, and stamped it in the dust, and then, like the rest of us, laid aside the garb of war. and became good citizens and moral men. I know two of them that have been elected township trustees within the last three years.

Now then, I don't know who is to get up a great national monument. I have been thinking about this. You know we are

troubled about a surplus in the treasury. Now, put me down for making a political speech. It will be a good one, Democrats, and Prohibitionists, and Republicans, all troubled because we have got too much surplus, too much money. I would myself, personally just like to be in that fix a little while. But I insist that this great surplus, that the Grand Army of the Republic has put in the treasury, shall be taken and appropriated to the erection of a grand memorial monument, and I would put it upon the highest hill, and have it reach to the stars, and in characters and figures that should be carved in granite and marble, the acts of our brave armies on it. I would have every arm of the service represented. I would have a group of distinguished generals, standing around the peerless and unmatched Ulysses S. Grant. I would have a squadron of cavalry following the flaming sword of the immortal Phillip H. Sheridan. Then I would have a cluster representing the artillery arm of the service, and I would have a cluster representing the naval arm of the service. And I would have a place for the chaplains, and I would elevate the army mule and perpetuate his fame, his glory, in imperishable granite, and right above the mule I would have the army sutler. Until such a monument as that is erected, we will fail to do honor to our comrades. At the next meeting of the Society of the Army of the Tennessee, should you have any difficulty, I will come here with my experience in the charging of sutlers, and I will endeavor to satisfy you that I am right.

MUSIC by Male Chorus.-"A Thousand Years."

The President:-We have completed our work to-night. We have finished the work of the local executive committee. I am sure you have all enjoyed it. The expression on your faces shows it. I know that every soldier, who recalls the scenes we have witnessed, is the better for this meeting of the Army of the Tennessee-always characterized by these scenes-by wit, and humor, and by songs and story. And ladies, to you I think we owe a debt. I think I have never attended a meeting where there was such perfect order, such close attention, and to you in a large measure I attribute it. I hope, when you go home, you will feel that you have shared in a patriotic duty; and may your dreams be sweet. And let us join, comrades, one and all, old and young, in saying good night. May we meet again a year hence at Cincinnati, Ohio, with as full ranks as God may spare us.

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