s pleasing roll of personal acquaintance
and friendship the names of others of my comrades, as genial, true and
gallant, doubtless, as the regiment affords, but whom it was not my
happiness to know.

I must content myself, in closing these prefatory remarks, with
expressing my thankfulness for having been permitted to share in a
glorious service with as noble and gallant a regiment as ever offered
itself, a free sacrifice, on the altar of Country and Liberty.

It is due to the Twenty-Third Regiment that I should not conclude
without observing that the memorial which follows is not in any sense
to be considered as representing that regiment. Having been connected
with the Twenty-Third only during its absence, it would be simply a
piece of impertinence in me to claim to speak for it. And this very
circumstance of being an outsider has given me an advantage. For,
unconscious of any motive except to tell the truth and render praise
where I believed it to be due, I have felt at liberty to say many
things which modesty would have forbidden a member to say, as well as
some things which one representing the regiment might have thought had
better been left unspoken. I have aimed to give, simply, truthfully,
the story of the life we led, in all its lights and shadows, as far as
my limited opportunities furnished the materials.

I.

OFF TO THE WAR.

The Pennsylvania Governor, Curtin, cried to us for help; the President
called out from the White House that he wanted us to come down to the
Border; our Governor, Seymour, said go, and accordingly we hurriedly
kissed those we loved best, and started for the wars. Let us look at
the record in order:--

_Monday, June 15th._--News comes that the rebel General Lee is on the
march for the free States. The President issues a Proclamation calling
immediately into the United States service one hundred thousand men
from the States of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland and Western Virginia;
supplemented by a call on New York for twenty thousand more, all to
serve for six months, unless sooner discharged. To this proclamation
the various brigades of New York State National Guards respond with the
greatest promptitude and alacrity. Special orders leap from numberless
head-quarters, while armories and arsenals are quickly alive with the
first nervous movements of excitement.

_Tuesday, 16th._--The whole city is moved with a common impulse. The
rebel invasion; the startling call of the Pr