Memorial of William Kirkland Bacon, Late Adjutant of the Twenty-Sixth Regiment of New York State Volunteers (Volume 3)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1863. Excerpt: ... ADJUTANT BACON. I Propose to erect a simple memorial, inscribing thereon the name of my departed son. It is a debt due to his memory, which some one should discharge, and who better than the father that knew and loved him If I needed a warrant for this, I might plead even high authority. I remember more than forty years ago, to have read with great admiration, and with much youthful sensibility, the memoir prepared by the poet Beattie, of a son of brilliant promise cut off in the morning of life, and passages of that moving tribute now, at the distance of nearly half a century, still linger in my memory; and every admirer of Burke will readily recall that heart-broken wail over an only son, dearly loved and early lost, which will live as long as the unequaled orations that have made his name immortal. I do not of course venture to compare my case with these signal and affecting instances, but I use them by way of illustration, or better still, perhaps, of apology for my attempt. Much, under these circumstances, must of course A be pardoned--and will be by the feeling and the charitable--to the paternal heart sorely wounded, and parental hopes shattered and crushed, but I still think with President Stearns, who has given to us an admirable portraiture of a son of the finest promise and most devoted heroism, the Adjutant of a Massachusetts regiment, who gave his life for his country at Newbern, that if proper allowance is made for parental partiality and tenderness, perhaps, in the case of one so early called away, no person could give a better impression of his real life and motives than his father. I approach the task with no desire or expectation of making a sensation, or bequeathing a name to posterity. Fame is nothing to him now who sleeps quietly wi...