Colonel Murphy, after resigning from his regiment, and while awaiting his commission in the regular army, which appointment was tendered him by President Lincoln, was engaged in the battle of Fair Oaks, and all through the seven days’ battles on the peninsula, from Gaine’s Mill to that of Malvern Hill, as a volunteer aid, and this without rank or pay.
He erected the first field hospital for the army of the Potomac at Harrison’s Landing.
Colonel Murphy was one of the first three officers who escaped from Richmond after Bull Run. The history of this remarkable escape was very graphically described by John S. C. Abbot, the historian, in “Harper’s Magazine” of January, 1867. Colonel Murphy was one of the old forty-niners of California, having arrived in San Francisco on the ship South Carolina in June, 1849, the first sailing ship to arrive with passengers for the mines from New York, after a short passage—for those days—of 156 days.
Of the 300 passengers on board, the only lady was Mrs. John White, the mother of the late U.S. Senator White now living in San Francisco, who wrote two years ago that she was not aware of any living survivors of those passengers except herself and Colonel Murphy, who were the two youngest people on the ship.
He went from California to Shanghai, China, and established the first commercial house at the mouth of the Yang Kin Pang River, opposite the foreign quarter at Shanghai, and loaded the first vessel that carried Chinese agricultural products to San Francisco.
Colonel Murphy has done more than any other man in the way of introducing the products of California in Europe, and secured the first gold medal for the grand wines of that State at the Antwerp Exposition.
He has done yeoman service in making known the splendid fruit of the golden State, and it was mainly through his efforts while in the service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture that the California wines and fruit are now on sale in nearly all the grocery and wine houses of Northern Europe.
It was through his initiative work that the exports of our Indian corn was so largely increased from 24,000,000 bushels the year he commenced the propaganda to over 213,000,000 last year.
If he had devoted the last fifteen of the best years of his life with the same enthusiasm and energy that he has given to this work in any legitimate business, he might have been a well-to-do man to-day.
Colonel Murphy spoke as follows:—