Читать книгу The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes - J. Q. Howard - Страница 12

Appointed Major—Judge Advocate—Lieutenant-Colonel—South Mountain—Wounded—Fighting while Down—After Morgan—Battle of Cloyd Mountain—Charge up the Mountain—Enemy's Works Carried by Storm—First Battle of Winchester—Berryville.

That a loyal citizen of the antecedents, ardent patriotism, and impulsive nature of Rutherford B. Hayes would enter the army in the war for the Union, was to be looked for as a thing of course. He had been in the habit of obeying every call of duty, and could not therefore disobey when duty called loudest. He regarded the war waged for the supremacy of the constitution and the laws as a just and necessary war, and preferred to go into it if he knew he "was to die or be killed in the course of it." He had been a most earnest advocate of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency, and had been an anti-slavery man of established convictions long before the candidacy of Fremont for the Presidency. He did not think the Union should be destroyed to make slavery perpetual. He desired to mitigate and finally eradicate that evil. He had prayed for the election of General Harrison for the sake of the country; he had cast his first vote for Henry Clay, his second for General Taylor, and his third for General Scott. But the old Whig party having ceased to be a living organization, he gave his whole heart to the Republican party and its cause, and by political speeches, and in other ways, helped forward the movement in favor of equality of rights and laws. The insult to the flag at Fort Sumter aroused to the intensest pitch the patriotic indignation of a united North. At a great mass-meeting held in Cincinnati, R. B. Hayes was selected to give expression to the loyal voice, by being made chairman of the public committee on resolutions. It is not needful to add that these resolutions had all the fire and intensity of the popular feeling. The knowledge that it was his purpose to enter the Union army having reached Governor Dennison, that officer appointed Hayes major of the Twenty-third Ohio Volunteer Infantry, June 7, 1861. With this appointment was coupled the appointments of W. S. Rosecrans as colonel, and Stanley Matthews as lieutenant-colonel of the same regiment. Colonel Rosecrans, with the other field-officers, had just set to work organizing the new regiment, when Rosecrans was appointed brigadier-general, and ordered to take command of the Ohio troops moving in the direction of Western Virginia. Upon the promotion of Rosecrans, Colonel E. P. Scammon, an officer of military education, was placed in command of the Twenty-third.

After a brief period of discipline at Camp Chase the regiment was ordered, on the 25th of July, to Clarksburgh, West Virginia, and on the 29th went into camp at Weston. We shall not follow it in this or in subsequent campaigns, in its marching, scouting, skirmishing, or counter-marching. It is enough to say, that in this first campaign it assisted in clearing the whole mountainous region of Western Virginia of a formidable enemy.

Major Hayes was appointed by General Rosecrans, on the 19th of September, 1861, judge advocate of the department of Ohio, the duties of which service he discharged about two months. He received his first promotion, to the rank of lieutenant-colonel, October 24, 1861. Passing over less important events, we come to the first serious battle in which he was engaged.