[View Figure]
BALDWIN J CROSTHWAIT,
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL.
[View Figure]
Hugh B. Reed
Col. 44th Ind. Reg.
THE FORTY-FOURTH
INDIANA
VOLUNTEER INFANTRY
HISTORY OF ITS SERVICES
--IN THE--
WAR OF THE REBELLION
--AND--
A PERSONAL RECORD OF ITS MEMBERS.
BYJOHN H. RERICK
, M. D.,SURGEON.
LAGRANGE, INDIANA:
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.
1880.
PRINTED AT
THE COURIER STEAM PRINTING HOUSE,
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN.
TO
THE VETERANS,
OTHER SURVIVING MEMBERS,
AND
THE
FRIENDS OF THE FALLEN HEROES
OF THE REGIMENT,
WHOSE BRAVE SERVICES ARE
HEREIN RECORDED,
THIS VOLUME
IS
AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.
INTRODUCTION.
AT a reunion of Union soldiers at Auburn, Indiana, in September, 1879, a number of the members of the Forty-fourth Indiana Volunteer Infantry met in the public square and formed a preliminary organization for the promotion of future reunions of the Regiment. A motion offered by Lieutenant Nicholas Ensley was unanimously adopted, requesting the undersigned to prepare a history of the Regiment. It was in obedience to that request that this book was undertaken.
It is now more than eighteen years since the organization of this Regiment, and fourteen years since the day of its muster out at the expiration of the Rebellion. Although the writer was with the Regiment during every day of its service except when absent a few weeks on sick furlough, he finds that time has dimmed in his memory many incidents of a personal character, that might be of interest. He has had, therefore, to depend mainly upon his letters written during the war, the official records, and the correspondence of soldiers published at the time, for the material of the following pages.
The Forty-fourth Regiment of Indiana volunteers was but one of tens of thousands, and but one among the one hundred and sixty-two regiments organized page: 6[View Page 6] in the State of Indiana, for the immortal work of suppressing the gigantic and iniquitous rebellion of 1861; yet whatever it accomplished, though no greater than that performed by many others, is worthy of permanent record, and remembrance by the government served and saved. Especially should the posterity of every soldier of that command take patriotic pride in possessing historic and written proof that in their veins flows the blood of ancestors who voluntarily left their homes and loved ones, and upon the most terrible and bloody battle-fields the world has ever witnessed, fought to preserve for them the American Union and the freedom of man. If this little book should have the effect of fostering such pride, and preserving the names and memory of the brave and patriotic men of this command, it will, I feel assured, accomplish the purpose for which it was requested. Shelley sang the spirit of this work:
- "I will teach thine infant tongue
- To call upon those heroes old
- In their own language, and will mould
- Thy growing spirit in the flame
- Of Grecian lore; that by each name
- A patriot's birth-right thou mayst claim."
J. H RERICK.
