The times., 1899-03-19

of the distinguished leaders in the civil
war. Gray hairs We're on the side of the
Contederates in those commanders who
fought brilliant campaigns. When the
eonillct began Grant was 80; Burnside, 81;
Mcclellan, 35; Sherman. 40; Meade, 46;
Hooker, IS; ThomE, As; Rosecrans, AZ;
Buell., 4S; Sheridan: 30, OF the foremost
southerners Lee was 54s A. Sidney John
ston. 5S; Joseph E. 5ohuston, "a; Stonewall
Jackson, 81; Longstrest, 40; Beauregard
a; Bragg, 46; Hood, 81; A. P. Hill, sc;
]. E. B. Stuart, 2S;< Forrest, 40. The
crime of being Young man was not light
ly passed over in Washington, surely, for
ii was held that Sheridan was too youthful
TO be appointed colonel of cavalry regi-
ment when he was thirty-one. Miles re-
ceived the same sort of rebuff at the Bos-
ton State House when he asked to be COM
missioned captain of 100 patriots who had
elected him their leader at the age Of
twenty-one. Young men were coming to
the front in 1865 because of the immense
armies In the field and lack of trained old
heads to take the lead. For that reason
the highest battlefield valor has been as
sociated with names like Sheridan, Stuart,
Custer Fitzpatrick, Wilson, the fiery Gle
burne, and John B. Gordon, who were all
under the average age for commissioned
officers as it stood in the last year of the
war.
But long before that the gray locks of
fighting warriors had been conspicuous on
scores of bloody battlefelds and the bullets
of Yankee and Confederate spared them
not. Gen. Leonidas Polk, the ex-bishop
known as the surpliced warrior of the
South, was killed in the defence of Allan
ia at the age Of fifty eight; Mansfield, in
his sXtieth year, fell at Antietam while
deploying his army corps, regiment by
regiment, for grand charge, and Gen.
Wadsworth was fifty-seven when he leaped
his horse over the Confederate works at
the battle of the Wilderness and fell dead
within the enemy's lines. But the oldest
hero of them all was General Sumner. who
| led the fighting Second Corps of the Army
of the Potomac when he was sixty-six
years of age. The nickname given to
| Sumner on account of his fiery ardor in
| battle 'Old Bull of the Woods, had ref-
erence to his impetuosity when the hour
| came to charge.
That Dewey had many grayhaired COM
| peers in the battles against Spain is shown
| by the long list of veterans who made his
| tory for the army at Santiago. First to
| fall was Colonel Wikoff a soldier who
| had held a commission in the regular es-
| tablishment for more than thirty-seven
| years. BY Wikoffs side almost, when
| killed, was the second In command Of the
| First Brigade. Colonel Worth with nearly
fell within few feet of his dead chief.
| Next in rank came Lieut.. Col. Liscum, who
| at that moment was climbing the rough
hillside at the head of his negro regiment.
| That young staff officer, Charles T. Tay-
man. mentioned in the official reports as
the breathless messenger to the front,
owed his breathhlessness to race after
Liscum to tell him that the command of
the brigade devolved upon him.
Jicc,,ro was and hadn't much
| the start of Tayman at the bank OF the
| river, but the youngester nearly gave out
before he could deliver the message. AL
| most instantly the old man disappeared in
| the tall grass wounded; but gray hairs
were still in evidence on that part Of the
| field Major Ellis and Major Auman OF
| the Thirteenth, charging abreast of Lis
Gums colored troops were war veterans
hard crowding threescore. They went down
| before San Juan blockhouse was reached.
Then Colonel Ewers. of the Ninth, gray
beard. who had fought in that regiment
| under Grant as farcback as 1862, took COM
| mand of the victorious line
| Meanwhile, Just to the right of Wikoff's
| brigade, Hawkins, a soldier who began his
| career in 1852, was leading on the Sixth
and Sixteenth, under Egbert and Theaker,
graybeards who were to fall outside the
breastworks. Hawkins crossed the trenches
and was shot the next day while repelling
the Spanish counter-assault Next to Haw-
| kins, Wheeler waslthe oldest man on the
| firing line, and how valiantly he battled
until the victory WIS won has been told
| II should be noted that with one excep-
| tion every regiment, battalion, and squad
ron of the regulars engaged at San Juan
went into action led by veteran of 1861,
and the ten generals and field officers who
were the victims of Spanish bullets in that
| battle were close to 60, while some nota-
bly, Hawkins, had passed the threescore
mark by couple OF years.