General Rosecrans Returns to Delaware County, Ohio |
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"The Diary of John Beatty" |
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Tuesday, May 27, 1884 Received an invitation to day from the committee having in charge the Decoration Ceremonies at Delaware on the 30th instant to be present on the evening of the 29th at a reception to be given General W. S. Rosecrans, but I replied that I was unable to leave home on that day. The General was born in Delaware County and will be the living hero of the occasion and very justly, for he has rendered great service to the country and won for it a number of important victories. The early engagement of the war known as the battle of Rich Mountain was a small affair when contrasted with later contests, but it gave to McClellan his great start as a commanding officer, and for it he was indebted wholly to Rosecrans. At Iuka, Corinth and Stone River the latter acquitted himself most honorably. In the advance on the fortified position of the rebel army at Tullahoma and in crossing the Tennessee and flanking Bragg out of Chattanooga, he displayed the highest quality of generalship, and had he won the battle of Chickamauga, he would have become the idol of the nation and either the president of the United States or the General of the Army. The misinterpretation of an order on the part of Wood, or possibly a misapprehension of the condition of the Right Wing on the part of Rosecrans, or probably the failure to push his army into Chattanooga and fight the battle there, spoiled one of the finest reputations of the war and left one of its ablest leaders to a position in the hearts of the people far below that occupied by many men inferior to him in point of military sagacity
and service rendered.
William Starke
Rosecrans graduated from West Point in 1842. He attained
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Thursday, May 29, 1884 Called at the Neil this
morning to see
Genl Rosecrans who is on his way to Delaware to attend the soldiers
meeting which is to take place on tomorrow. The General is in
splendid health, and was in the best of humor. He said he did not
propose to make a speech at Delaware, but would simply give a free
and easy talk to his old neighbors, and went on to say that he
remembered the town very well where from the log cabin in which he
was born near Berkshire, Delaware County, he heard the wolves howl,
and that they had good strong voices, and that when he asked his
mother what they were she told him they were gray wolves. Since
that-the short space of not an old man's life, the forest has been
cut down, and the ground cleared, and productive farms made, and I
presume there has not Friday, May 30, 1884 Went to Delaware on the noon train. The town was thronged with people. The number was estimated at fifteen thousand. The procession was formed and the carriages ready to start when I arrived.
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A seat was given me beside General Robinson,
the Republican candidate |
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(12/03/2009) |