PREFACE. A POPULAR writer has said, "Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers and martyrs, the greater part will never be known till the hour when many that were great shall be small, and the small great; but of others, the world's knowledge may be said to sleep; their lives and characters lie hidden from nations in the annals that record them." In presenting to the public a book of this size, it would be but folly to claim that it gives anything like a full history of the noble and self-sacrificing acts and gallant conduct of the Vermont troops, during the four years that they were engaged in the War of the Rebellion. Many of their most noteworthy deeds will never have a public record. They must forever remain the sacred property of those who enacted them. Hundreds of noble men, entitled to the highest meed of praise, and the greatest gratitude of their fellow-statesmen, will be counted with the unnumbered host whose unnoticed sufferings and toils, in field and camp, form always the material out of which military glory comes to the few. The author, in preparing this work, has aimed to convey an idea of the camp, garrison and picket duty performed, and the battles fought, by the several regiments and companies which I went to the field from Vermont. To do this he has availed himself freely of the Adjutant and Inspector General's records and reports, covering the period of the war, - without which an attempt to prepare a book like this must have proved abortive. many de Biographical notices are given of a few only of the serving men who took prominent parts in the great tragic drama put upon the stage by the deluded people of a section of the country; while there remain hundreds, and perhaps thousands, entitled to the same especial consideration, whose record could not be obtained by ordinary means. The book is submitted with the hope that the veil of charity will be thrown over its short-comings and imperfections. June, 1869. O. F. R. W. BIOGRAPHICAL.-Brown, Lieut. Col. Addison, Jr. Cummings, Lieut. Col. Charles, Farr, Captain Dennie W., Phelps, General John Wolcott, INCIDENTS. Before the Battle of Bethel, Bravery at Lee's Mills, . 259 251 263 . 267 UNIV. OF THE REBELLION. FROM the day of the adoption of the Constitution of the United States there has been an antagonism between the Northern and the Southern portions of the Union. That Constitution contains not one word hostile to liberty and humanity. In it, however, is a single phrase which has been interpreted differently by the different sections of the country-"held to labor." At the North, these simple, harmless words mean a hired man, an apprentice. At the South, they mean a slave, feudal bondage, the right of property in man, and all the attendant oppressions and cruelties. From these different constructions of the spirit of the organic law of the country, and the widelydifferent modes of life and of thought, the antagonism between the North and the South has grown with the growth and strengthened with the strength |