HO shall count the stars of the firmament and describe their endless courses in infinite space? Almost such a one would be required to number those emblematic stars, single or double, whose silver light shone from the shoulders of the National generals during the great civil war. They were almost countless in multitude, and the orbits they might have described, had time and opportunity been given, are as incalculable as those of the fixed stars.

I write of one who, in the midnight darkness of the strife, bore on each shoulder a single star, which, as sometimes happens in the physical sky, rose and shone for a short time, to be suddenly extinguished.

Alexander Chambers was born August 25th, 1833, at Ellicottville, Cattaraugus county, New York. His father's father was born in the North of Ireland, but came to America in his youth. His mother was Scotch. His parents were united in marriage in New England. Young Chambers lived in his native town in Western New York, attending school or clerking in a drug store, until he had completed his sixteenth year.

In September, 1849, he entered the United States Military Academy at West Point as a cadet, and was soon initiated by his seniors into those hazing mysteries by which life is sometimes rendered long and burdensome to the "plebe” and correspondingly pleasant to his superiors at that famous school of Mars, whose usefulness, doubted and scouted at the beginning of the Rebellion, was demonstrated, and its tenure as a necessary feature of the Government, unalterably fixed in the affections of the whole people, by the grandeur of the military services of Grant, Sherman, Halleck, McClellan, Meade, McPherson, Sheridan and Thomas. After passing through the usual four-years' course, Chambers graduated in 1853 with that distinguished class which gave to the army Philip H. Sheridan, James B. McPherson and J. M. Schofield.

He was commissioned Brevet Second Lieutenant, and assigned to the Fifth Infantry, with which he served in Texas, Florida, and on the "Western Plains," a vast wilderness, filled with hostile savages, now known as New Mexico, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado and the Dakotas, where Indian "affairs" (the only designation allowed by the Government for engagements, no matter how severe, with the aborigines) were sufficiently frequent to afford all the young officers opportunity to try the metal of themselves and their swords. He engaged, also, in the expedition under Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston which in 1859 was sent to Utah to awe Brigham Young and his defiant and turbulent Mormons into subjection—a military demonstration known as the "Mormon War."

On the breaking out of the Rebellion Chambers had attained the rank of First Lieutenant, and was enjoying a short leave of absence at Owatonna, Minnesota, to which place his father had removed from New York.

In April, 1861, his leave having been cancelled, to effect the transfer of our volunteers from State to Federal control he was detailed as mustering and disbursing officer for Iowa, the latter branch of the office involving the responsibility for large sums of Government funds, which were faithfully ac

counted for. In this capacity he mustered into the United States service all the Iowa volunteers raised in the eastern part of the State up to the Sixteenth Infantry, which brought events to the beginning of the year 1862, when, in the short period of eight months, Iowa, with a population of a little more than half a million, had furnished for the defense of the Union fifteen infantry and five cavalry regiments and a battery of artillery-more than twenty thousand soldiers.

On the increase and reorganization of the regular army in May Chambers had been promoted to a captaincy in the Eighteenth U. S. Infantry, one of the new regiments.

At this point in the martial history of Iowa it looked as if no more troops would be required from our State, and that the young captain's services as mustering officer would no longer be needed. Taking this view of the probabilities of the course of the war, which at that time was the general belief, Governor Kirkwood, with that innate acuteness of judgment of the capacity of men which enabled him to make so many good appointments and such few bad ones, selected Chambers as Colonel for the Sixteenth Iowa Infantry; then in process of mustering at Camp McClellan, one mile above Davenport on the Mississippi bluff, where the Eleventh and Thirteenth Infantry had been organized.

In March, 1862, upon the opening of navigation, Chambers, with the Sixteenth, left Camp McClellan by boat, and debarking at St. Louis spent a few days at Benton Barracks, situated at the Fair Grounds, near the city, where they received their arms, and then embarked again for Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, which they reached and where they went into camp on the afternoon of the day before the first day's battle

of Shiloh.

I had frequently seen Chambers in Iowa in a casual way. One day at Keokuk I was in the lobby of the Deming House, where I saw him polishing his sword with a chamois skin. This was an index to his official character-no stain should be upon that sword, the symbol of his office. And now I saw

him at Shiloh as he rode in front of his regiment to take the position assigned him on that bloody field. He looked somewhat as in the picture which accompanies this sketch, the original photograph from which it is copied having been taken a few days before at St. Louis. He wore a prime new uniform, with silver eagles on his shoulders to designate his rank as Colonel; his sword was drawn and held at a shoulder, and at the time I ob served him he met some one, probably a general officer, whom he saluted with his sword, whose bright damaskin blade threw off the sunlight of that beautiful Sunday morning like a mirror, and his entire bearing impressed me as that of the embodiment of valor going to take his place in "battle's magnficently stern array." That night I saw him lame and bleeding and begrimed with the smoke of battle. One arm, which had been shot through near the shoulder, was in a sling, and he was lame from a spent-ball wound in the hip, but he was still preserving his soldierly manner. His regiment, although not organized or armed long enough to be proficient in the rudiments of tactics, behaved, under their brave young Colonel, with a steady impetuosity that for a time bent back out of alignment the Confederates in their front.

Three weeks after this the Sixteenth was brigaded with three other Iowa regiments-the Eleventh, Thirteenth and Fifteenth Infantry-to be thenceforth known as "Crocker's Iowa Brigade," in honor of its first commander, M. M. Crocker. This organization was destined to remain unbroken to the end of the war, something almost without a parallel in the history of the vast army which fought throughout the war to uphold the Union.

Chambers recovered sufficiently from his wound to rejoin his regiment in time to take part with it in the siege of Corinth, which terminated by its evacuation by the rebels May 29th. Then there were two comparatively idle months of camp life at Corinth, where men drank water that killed flies in two minutes, the tedium of which was partially relieved by the visit of Chambers' two brothers, William and Clarke, with

other friends from the North. Then came the three days' march from Corinth to Bolivar, Tennessee, which began July 29th. In the middle of this hot march, Chambers produced from his valise, as by enchantment, a delicious cake of magnificent proportions, such as is seen at nuptial festivals, really prepared, as was surmised by some, for such an occasion, but condemned to commoner uses by the exigency of war. This was generously distributed to the members of his mess and others, for Chambers was untainted by selfishness and would have divided his last crumb with his comrades.

From August 1st to September 12th Chambers was in command of his regiment at Bolivar, being a part of the infantry force supporting cavalry which was in almost daily collision with the enemy then threatening the place. On September 12th he left Bolivar with his command on a two days forced march back to Corinth. Little delay was made here, for the next night he went by rail to Burnsville, Mississippi, with his regiment, and the next day, with Colonel Mower, of the Eleventh Missouri, made a daring reconnaissance upon Iuka. Chambers was detached with his regiment on this duty because his capacity, known to General Grant, was absolutely needed there. Having ably performed this duty, and fallen back to Burnsville in the night, thus completing one of the most fatiguing efforts ever made by soldiers, after a day's rest for his tired men, he was dispatched with his regiment to Rosecrans' column, which he joined at Jacinto the night of September 17th. It was properly a two days' march from Jacinto to Iuka on this road, but the eager column were in line of battle before luka by three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day, September 19th, Chambers with the Sixteenth being in the centre. This battle was one of the shortest, but also one of the fiercest and deadliest of the pitched battles of the war. It was fought at short range from the first and at the close was a hand-to-hand encounter. It resulted in favor and to the glory of the National arms. Chambers, severely wounded, fell into the hands of the retreating