John A Logan, Library of Congress

I've been doing some research on the civil war, studying the battles that my ancestors fought in.  One such ancestor is Eliakin Wilson (my great, great, great grandfather).  He fought with the volunteeers of the Iowa Sixth Infantry.  He saw many bloody battles during his four years in the Tennesse Army (Union). 

Shortly before his departure from Tennesse, his commanding officer, John Logan, gave the following speech.  It is long, but worth the read.

Officers and Soldiers of the Army of the Tennessee:

The profound gratification I feel in being authorized to release you from the onerous obligations of the camp, and return you laden with laurels, to homes where warm hearts wait to welcome you, is somewhat embittered by the painful reflection that I am sundering the ties that trials have made true, time made tender, sufferings made sacred, perils made proud, heroism made honorable, and fame made forever fearless of the future.

It is no common occasion that demands the disbandment of a military organization, before the resistless power of which mountains bristling with bayonets have bowed, cities have surrendered, and millions of brave men have been conquered.

Although I have been but a short period your commander, we are not strangers; affections have sprung up between us during the long years of doubt, gloom, and carnage, which we have passed through together, nurtured by common perils, sufferings, and sacrifices, and riveted by the memories of gallant comrades whose bones repose beneath the sod of a hundred battle-fields, which neither time nor distance will weaken or efface.

The many marches that you have made, the dangers you have despised, the haughtiness you have humbled, the duties you have discharged, the glory you have gained, the destiny you have discovered for the country for whose cause you have conquered, all recur at this moment in all the vividness that marked the scenes through which we have just passed. From the pens of the ablest historians of the land, daily are drifting out on the current of time, page upon page, volume upon volume of your heroic deeds, which, floating down to future generations, will inspire the student of history with admiration, the patriotic American with veneration for his ancestors, and the lover of republican liberty with gratitude for those who, in a fresh baptism of blood, reconsecrated the powers and energies of the Republic to the cause of constitutional freedom.

Long may it be the happy fortune of each and everyone of you to live in the full fruition of the boundless blessings you have secured to the human race. Only he whose heart has been thrilled with admiration for your impetuous and unyielding valor in the thickest of the fight, can appreciate with what pride I recount the brilliant achievements which immortalize you, and enrich the pages of our National history. Passing by the earlier but not less signal triumphs of the war in which most of you participated and inscribed upon your banners such victories as Donelson and Shiloh, I recur to your campaigns, sieges, and victories that challenge the admiration of the world and elicit the unwilling applause of all Europe. Turning your backs upon the blood-bathed heights of Vicksburg, you launched into a region swarming with enemies, fighting your way and marching, without adequate supplies, to answer the cry for succor that came to you from the noble but beleaguered Army at Chattanooga. Your steel next flashed among the mountains of the Tennessee, and your weary limbs found rest before the embattled heights of Missionary Ridge, and there with dauntless courage you breasted again the enemy's destructive fire, and shared with your comrades of the Army of the Cumberland the glories of a victory than which no soldiery can boast a prouder. In that unexampled campaign of vigilant and vigorous warfare from Chattanooga to Atlanta you freshened your laurels at Resaca, grappled with the enemy behind his works, hurling him back dismayed and broken. Pursuing him from thence, marking your path by the graves of fallen comrades, you again triumphed over superior numbers at Dallas, fighting your way from there to Kenesaw Mountain and under the murderous artillery that frowned from its rugged heights; with a tenacity and constancy that finds few parallels you labored, fought, and suffered through the boiling rays of a southern midsummer sun, until at last you planted your colors upon its topmost heights.

Again, on the 22nd of July, 1864, rendered memorable through all time for the terrible struggle you so heroically maintained under discouraging disasters and that saddest of all reflections, the loss of that exemplary soldier and popular leader, the lamented McPherson, your matchless courage turned defeat into a glorious victory. Ezra Chapel and Jonesboro added new lustre to a radiant record, the latter unbarring to you the proud Gate City of the South. The daring of a desperate foe in thrusting his legions northward exposed the country in your front, and, though rivers, swamps, and enemies opposed, you boldly surmounted every obstacle, beat down all opposition, and marched onward to the sea. Without any act to dim the brightness of your historic page, the world rang plaudits where your labors and struggles culminated at Savannah, and the old "Starry Banner" waved once more over the wall of one of our proudest cities of the seaboard. Scarce a breathing spell had passed when your colors faded from the coast, and your columns plunged into the swamps of the Carolinas.

The suffering you endured, the labors you performed, and the successes you achieved in those morasses, deemed impassable, form a creditable episode in the history of the war. Pocataligo, Salkahatchie, Edisto, Branchville, Orangeburgh, Columbia, Bentonville, Charleston, and Raleigh are names that will ever be suggestive of the resistless sweep of your columns through the territory that cradled and nurtured, and from whence was sent forth on its mission of crimes, misery, and blood, the disturbing and disorganizing spirits of secession and rebellion.

The world for which you pledged your brave hearts and brawny arms to the government of your fathers you have nobly performed. You are seen in the past, gathering through the gloom that enveloped the land, rallying as the guardians of man's proudest heritage, forgetting the thread unwoven in the loom, quitting the anvil, abandoning the workshops, to vindicate the supremacy of the laws and the authority of the Constitution.

Four years have you struggled in the bloodiest and most destructive war that ever drenched the earth with human gore; step by step you have borne our standard, until today, over every fortress and arsenal that rebellion wrenched from us, and every city, town, and hamlet from the lakes to the gulf, and from ocean to ocean, proudly floats the "Starry Emblem" of our national unity and strength. Your rewards, my comrades, are the welcoming plaudits of a grateful people, the consciousness that, in saving the Republic, you have won for your country renewed respect and power at home and abroad; that, in the [un] exampled era of growth and prosperity that dawns with peace, there attaches mightier wealth of pride and glory than ever before to that loved boast, "I am an American Citizen.”

In relinquishing the implements of war for those of peace, let your conduct, which was that of warriors in time of war, be that of peaceful citizens in time of peace. Let not the lustre of that brighter name you have won as soldiers be dimmed by any improper acts as citizens, but as time rolls on let your record grow brighter and brighter still."

General John A. Logan’s Farewell Address
Headquarters Army of the Tennessee
Louisville, KY, July 13, 1865